Witches Tales #25
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeWitches Tales #25 occupies a distinctive place in pre-Code horror history because it presents two entirely different artistic visions under one cover — Warren Kremer's visceral decapitation image on the exterior and Howard Nostrand's formally experimental interior story, 'What's Happening at 8:30 P.M.?', which unfolds entirely from the perspective of personified germs inside a human body rather than depicting conventional horror. That interior piece has been singled out by scholars including historians Bhob Stewart and John Benson as a conscious homage to Will Eisner's noir page design and Harvey Kurtzman's EC storytelling grammar, making it one of the most analytically rich examples of cross-publisher artistic influence in 1950s comics. Its repeated appearance in definitive scholarly anthologies — including Fantagraphics' Four Color Fear (2010) — cemented it as a benchmark of what non-EC publishers were capable of achieving in the genre. The cover itself, with Kremer's bell-tower ghoul wielding a severed head as a clapper, has earned its own reputation as one of the most extreme images Harvey ever put on a newsstand.
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Published in June 1954 by Harvey Comics under its Witches Tales Inc. indicia, issue #25 appeared in the final months before the Comics Code Authority's enforcement wiped out the pre-Code horror genre — the series itself would be retitled Witches' Western Tales beginning with issue #29 in 1955 as Harvey scrambled to comply. Leon Harvey was the credited editor, but the Grand Comics Database notes that Sid Jacobson served as the actual day-to-day editor on the title. The interior story 'What's Happening at 8:30 P.M.?' was drawn by Howard Nostrand, who confirmed in Squa Tront #13 (2012) that he did not write the script — that credit belongs to Nat Barnett — though Nostrand's visual conception of the piece drew on ideas he traced back to his very first assignment at Harvey, a germ-themed story in Chamber of Chills #13.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover dated June 1954 (GoCollect lists on-sale date as May 31, 1954); published bi-monthly by Harvey Comics under the Witches Tales Inc. indicia.
- Cover art by Warren Kremer depicts a bell-tower scene with a severed head replacing the bell's clapper — the cover story has no visual connection to the interior feature it nominally illustrates.
- Lead interior story 'What's Happening at 8:30 P.M.?' written by Nat Barnett and drawn by Howard Nostrand; Nostrand publicly confirmed Barnett's script credit in Squa Tront #13 (2012).
- The Nostrand/Barnett story is narrated entirely from inside a human body, with personified germs as characters — an unusually experimental premise for a mainstream horror anthology of the era.
- Historians Bhob Stewart and John Benson have documented Nostrand's visual approach in 'What's Happening at 8:30 P.M.?' as a deliberate synthesis of Will Eisner's noir layouts and Harvey Kurtzman/EC compositional grammar.
- Additional interior art by Bob Powell (including a MAD-style 'Ali Barber and the Forty Thieves' parody) and Manny Stallman; Leon Harvey credited as editor, Sid Jacobson as actual editor per the Grand Comics Database.
- The Nostrand story was reprinted in Fantagraphics' Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s (September 2010), a leading scholarly anthology of non-EC pre-Code horror.
- Witches Tales ran 28 issues (1951–1954) before the Comics Code forced a title change to Witches' Western Tales with issue #29 in 1955.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Crypt of Horror #1 (2005), Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 #[nn] (2006), Crypt of Horror #2 (2006), Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s #[nn] (2010), The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics! #8 (2014)
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