Strange Suspense Stories #71

A hooded crone looms large in the foreground of Dick Giordano's cover, her gnarled hands extended over a bubbling cauldron as she intones a vengeful curse — "rise ye powers, great and strong! Avenge me… for the horrid wrong!" — while a lord and his attendant look on in the background, seemingly unaware of the dark forces gathering against them. Charlton's Strange Suspense Stories #71 from 1964 sets an effectively eerie medieval mood, teasing the featured tale "The Old Lady's Curse" with that pointed question hanging in the air: Or Can She? Joe Gill's writing paired with Bill Molno's interior art promises the kind of unsettling anthology fare that made this series a reliable source of chills.