Tales from the Crypt #31
"Survival... or Death!" is a chilling, character-driven tale from Tales from the Crypt #31 (1952), a standout issue written by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein and brought to life with sharp, dynamic art by Jack Davis, whose bold pencils and inks define the story’s tense atmosphere. The cover, also by Davis, captures the story’s grim tone with a striking image that hints at the dark irony within. This issue, a 10-cent comic from 1952, presents a stark, self-contained parable of human nature, where two men on a cargo ship test their own instincts through a cruel game of survival—only to find the line between man and beast is far thinner than they imagined.
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Two men aboard a cargo ship are bored until they get the idea to build a rat trap and ask the Captain to have a barrel built with a platform in the middle of it and a run off down the center. They fill it with water and attach a teeter to the rim with some food attached to the end of it so that when a rat attempts to get it, it falls into the water and swims to the platform. When another rat approaches and falls into the drink, they bet on which rat will survive the bloody struggle for the platform. Later, when their ship sinks, two find out that humans are not much different from rats!
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).