After yesterday’s post about early Marvel Mythos comics I remembered before any of those came along , there was another….
Old comics continue to surprise me. You think DC and Marvel did everything back in the 1970s and then you find out that just isn’t the case. For example, Treasure Comics #2 (August-September 1945) featured a strip called “Dr. Styx” about a ghostly occult detective bearing that name. I was fully expecting the usual EC type ghost host but was stopped dead in my tracks when the focal character mentioned he was reading a book by Ludwig Prinn! On I go and there it was mention of the Outer Ones banished from the Earth, Cthulhu, Abdul Alhazred. Here was a genuine Cthulhu Mythos comic! Dr. Styx saves the Earth from the heat-sucking spirits by summoning what must be the Elder Gods. The tale ends with a trite newspaper headline declaring it a cold snap and Dr. Styx agreeing it is better that humankind never knows… Sadly, the monsters look like evil ghosts and are not great Mythos squidgies…
1945! Not 1975. Not 2005. That’s only a few years after the forming of Arkham House Press. The work of August Derleth seem to be present in that good-wins-over-evil plot (never a Lovecraftian idea). The anonymous writer/artist obviously read either Weird Tales, “Trail of Cthulhu” by Derleth perhaps) or some Arkham House collection. Sadly, Dr. Styx did not continue in a Mythos vein. The later stories were of much more ordinary with poltergeists and séances.
I can’t shake the feeling that the main character is based on Frank Belknap Long. Here is a photo of Long at this time. Then look at this comic frame? Similar? Coincidence?
All this got me wondering, what is the very first Lovecraft comic? Is it this very story? The undergrounds and obscure independents are littered with them. Comics like Death Rattle, but these were 1960s at the earliest. Marvel and the Warren Magazines did some in the 1970s. The Internet and Google seem quite unable to answer this question. Was Dr. Styx the first?
For the completists out there: here are the other issues of Dr. Styx sans Mythos:
“Playful Poltergeists” (Treasure Comics #3, October-November 1945) has Styx hired by a realtor who can’t sell a house because it is haunted. When he meets the ghost that is controlling the poltergeits (what idiots they are!), he sides with the ghost. The house seller, Stones, drove the man and his wife into their graves. Stones rushes home to hide in his vault. The next day he is found dead of a heart attack. Not a great piece possibly drawn by Charles Voight.
“Suicidal Seance” (Treasure Comics #4, December-January 1945-6) has a medium raising Satan himself. He kills the woman and her lover. Dr. Styx has to convince their ghosts that evil does not have any power over them to force the Devil to reanimate them. Happy ending!
“The Dissected Soul” (Treasure Comics #5, February-March 1946) is drawn by Bernie Krigstein. The artist, like FBL, was a New Yorker. He gained fame with E. C. Comics, a company that sold Horror Comics before the creation of the Comics Code. Those EC Comics were descendants of Adventures in the Unknown (beginning Fall 1948) and Frank Belknap Long wrote the entire first issue and much of issue 2 and 3 before moving on. But all of this was after Dr. Styx… Krigstein is the reason the last two stories had decent artwork.
This tale has a Dr. Dhark, a Dr. Jeykll mad scientist, injecting his future son-in-law with serum that makes him a raving maniac. Dr. Styx takes him out with a genii named Xaczakra. The cops come looking for the maniac and Styx allows himself to be arrested before disappearing.
The last Dr. Styx story has no title (Treasure Comics #6, April-May 1946). The ghost of Vincent Matthews haunts the house of Henry Northrup. To lay the ghost, Dr. Styx simply has to overcome the ghost wrestler-style then get Vincent to see the spirit of his dead sister. The two spirits float off together to happier places.
With Issue 6, Dr. Styx and Bernie Krigstein were done with Treasure Comics. These were the days when artists worked for studios, such as the Eisner Studio or Jack Binder’s Studio, and strips were sold off to packagers such as Prize or Harvey Comics. The future for Krigstein would include Fawcett and EC Comics as well as MAD magazine. For Dr. Styx, public domain status.
Treasure Comics are available at DCM for free download. This piece is dedicated to JVJ who scanned these comics for us all.
