Unusual Tales #39

Charlton's Unusual Tales #39 (May 1963) delivers a genuinely unsettling cover by Dick Giordano, where a sneering, robed villain spreads his arms wide and declares his mind-controlled captives to be his — "mine! mind and soul!" — while a desperate young man thinks only of escape. Looming in the foreground are three blank-eyed, entranced faces bathed in an eerie red glow, making the villain's boast feel disturbingly credible. The teaser for the interior tale "Strange Fortress" — about a man kept prisoner on an island — sets a mood that's part sci-fi paranoia, part pulp thriller, exactly what 12-cent anthology horror did so well in 1963.