Vault of Evil #22
In "The Treasure of Planetoid 12!" from Vault of Evil #22 (1975), a bitter butcher’s scheme to ruin his ex-partner backfires in a chillingly literal way—locked inside a meat locker he poisoned, he’s trapped with his own crime and the very meat he intended to destroy. With no one coming to free him, the man’s desperate struggle to survive becomes a haunting study in isolation and consequence. Ben Brown’s art, inked by David Gantz, brings a stark, unsettling atmosphere to this grim tale, while Ed Hannigan’s cover, rendered with inks by Klaus Janson, captures the story’s eerie, claustrophobic mood.
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A butcher poisons his ex-partner's meat locker in order to drive him out of business but then comes back later to make sure he did not leave any evidence behind and gets himself locked in. Over the course of several days he waits for someone to come and let him out, but no one comes. He resists the temptation to eat the meat and eventually starves. When his body is found the owner wonders why he did not eat the meat since the inspector had declared it unfit and made him replace the entire locker with fresh stock.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).