Unusual Tales #49

Charlton's Unusual Tales #49 from 1965 poses the unsettling question right on its cover: mad scientist or genius? Looming behind two skeptical onlookers — one dismissing "Dr. Colby" as a phony — is a deeply creepy human-bird hybrid figure, wings spread wide and face eerily avian, surrounded by caged birds in a purple-hued laboratory. Cover work by Dick Giordano and Pat Masulli gives this eerie scene a genuinely chilling atmosphere, making "Doctor Colby's Birds" a fine example of Charlton's mid-sixties suspense anthology at its most imaginative.