The Severed Hand in Comics II

If you missed the last one…

The severed hand is one of horror’s classic monsters. Like most, it started in fiction before coming to comic books. The scuttling horror of The Beast With Five Fingers (1946) cemented the severed hand in Horror cinema.  The comic books that followed certainly had that film in mind while making their own four color versions. (TV shows like The Addams Family made it funny instead of terrifying. most monsters end up in the Monster Nursery.)

As so often happens, most of the authors of these comics are not known. Where possible they have been indicated. Many of these comics are available for free at DCM.

Golden Age

“The Avenging Hand” (Yellowjacket Comics #7, January 1946) was written and drawn by Alan Mandel. A gambler kills his partner then cuts his hands off with an axe. After that he is haunted by hands until they come for him at night. This comic is the second oldest to appear but it is the first one to show the hand crawl into bed and strangle someone. In that respect, it is the oldest representation of that trope to be found in comics (so far!)

“Lend Me a Hand!” (Vault of Horror #18, April-May 1951) was written by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein. Dr. Johnstone is a surgeon who performs amazing things with severed limbs. Driving home very tired, he has an accident and loses a hand. He murders a drunk for his hand and attaches it to his own arm. Later when he tries to find the cadaver, the hand detaches and strangles him in the graveyard.

“The Hands of Horror” (Adventures Into the Unknown #19, May 1951) has two rival artists, Pierre and Henri, engaged in a competition. When Henri ruins Pierre’s work, Pierre stabs him. Pierre is haunted by a pair of severed hands, which finally strangle him. The tale is being written down by Henri’s severed hand, a nice touch.

“The Haunted Hand” (Strange Mysteries #2, November 1951) begins when Frank buys a severed hand at auction for five dollars. He plans to use it as part of his costume for a party. The mummified hand goes walk-about, strangling Frank’s girl, Jill. Frank brings in the cops to try to clear his name but the hand suffocates him. This one is odd in that the hand slaps itself across Frank’s mouth rather than choking him like all the other hands do.

“The Hands of Darkness” (Adventures Into the Unknown #29, March 1952) starts with Cliff and Gail in their new airplane. They get stranded near a creepy castle on the Cornish coast. Cliff tries to break in and sees weird white hands inside. He breaks down the door to discover that the ghost of an evil sorcerer and his fiends, the Imps of Tophet, still exist there. The couple run back to their plane and escape. This story mixes magic and science in a strange way. The Imps of Tophet look like bumheads from Star Trek.

“Fingers of Fear” (Sensation Comics #109, May-June 1952) may have been written by Gardner F. Fox. Fox mixes the severed hand with the head-sprouting of Edward Lucas White’s “Lunkundoo”. (Stephen King would do his own version of this later with “I Am the Doorway“.) Albert Tisdale murders the members of his expedition to the Matto Grosso. He doesn’t want to share the riches found there. When he returns to civilization his fingers change to look like the men he murdered. The fingers on that hand try to kill him. Wearing gloves does not conceal the faces. Eventually the hand strangles him in the fashion we all know and love. The cops who find his body discover his hand has turned black.

“Clutch of Doom” (The Thing #3, June 1952) begins with the master of Galvin Manor dying, leaving the house to his kin. There are rumors that treasure is hidden in the house. Henry Galvin poisons his cousin Howard and is hung for it. He says his hand will curse those that follow. Various relatives and servants try to find the treasure but die by what they think is a spider. It is actually the grip of a skeleton hand. Miss Marcy inherits, is attacked but survives. The hand is defeated and she gets the treasure.

“Hands Off!” (Journey Into Mystery #3, October 1952) has Eugene Yaro, the inventor of artificial limbs, penniless and desperate. Perry Nugent refuses to manufacture his inventions. When a strange master of the past appears, he convinces Yaro to take revenge. The man is found strangled with the artificial hands nearby. The weird master takes Yaro’s real hands as payment for his assistance.

“The Betraying Hands” (The Unseen #7, November 1952) has the artist Eric Klay and Elaine visiting a fortune-teller. The medium warns Elaine that Klay is evil and the deal he is trying to make with her is crooked. Klay strangles the fortune-teller then the woman. He takes the money she had for the painting and leaves. Klay is in an car accident and horribly changed. He has his hands successfully reattached. His murderous hands and the ghost of the palm reader make him kill again and again. Finally, the hands detach and strangle him.

“Devil Claws” (Horrific #3, January 1953) starts after John Darlington has a successful night as a concert pianist. He has drank too much champagne and crashes the car with him and his wife, Mary. John loses his hands. He goes to a shady surgeon named Henry Jones for replacements. John can play again but his hands make him strangle Mary. When they find their bodies the cops wonder how Darlington could have strangled her with no hands! Jones walks away with the missing hands. We see he is actually the Devil.

“Hand of Fate” (Weird Mysteries #3, February 1953) has a tried and true formula. Two rivals doctors. One dies, has his hands cut off. The hands take revenge, strangling the other. Doctors, musicians and artists, all professions that require skilled hands, don ‘t fare well in these comics.

“The Clutching Hand” (Beware #14, March 1953) was written by Jesse Merlan. Joe Briggs is an ex-con. He has a fight with his girl, Margo. A stranger in a top hat and cape interferes, saying Margo deserves diamonds. Joe finds the guy and kills him. He robs the rich man, cutting his hand off to get at his ring. The hand moves. Later it disappears. Joe gives the ring from the dead man to Margo. Bloody hand prints are found in their apartment. The hand strangles Margo. Joe gets the rap when the cops show up. In jail, the hand comes for Joe, too. (Yes, it is that Harry Harrison.)

“Kill, My Minions of Death!” (Baffling Mysteries #17, September 1953)  has severed hands but they dance to the man’s tune. Dr. Ivan Bulloff creates hands that obey his commands. Ultimately, they turn on him and strangle him to death. Most often the hands operate on their own but here the owner is still in control. That “Kill, Hands, Kill!” echoes “Kill, Puppets, Kill!” that we wrote about elsewhere.

“Strangling Hands” (Web of Evil #7, October 1953) was written and drawn by Jack Cole. Jean D’Arst is a famous strangler in France. After his death his hands are cut off and put in a chest by Monsieur Bideau. The hands strangle him. Madame Bideau gets hung for the crime. Through the years, the hands take other victims, until they end up in New York in 1952. Curio dealer, Ralph Noram, ends up with them. Ralph’s nephew, Don, a man with many gambling debts, knows the history of the hands. He strangles his uncle, believing the hands will be blamed. But the box disappears and cops want the man who will inherit. Don escapes but ends up with the box. The hands get him, too. One interesting technique Jack Cole uses in this strip is he only shows the strangling in shadows. Since this is a Golden Age comic, I don’t think he did it to makes the story less scary. I think it was done for quite the oppose reason.

“The Hand of Clay” (The House of Mystery #33, December 1954) is a half-page filler from The House of Mystery. A clay hand is part of a prophetic dream. It is amazing how much they packed into four panels.

Silver Age

A few severed hands can be found in the Silver and Bronze Ages. Here are two from the Silver Age.

“The Clutching Hand” (Journey Into Mystery #78, March 1962) was written by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber. Writer Ted Wayne murders another writer, Ellis Brent, taking his last unfinished novel. Wayne finds he can’t finish the book. A pair of ghostly hands appear and do it for him. Later, when Wayne is arguing with his publisher over the advance, the hands appear and kill the other man. The secretary sees Wayne and blames him. He runs but the cops catch him. The ghostly hands write his confession. Wayne is to be hung. Ellis Brent reveals himself as the ghostly hands, pulling the lever that sends Wayne to his death.

“The Strangler’s Hand” (Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #19, September 1967) has a strangler on a rampage, taking five victims near the hospital. Nurse Susie tells Dr. Jed she’s frightened to go to the supply room. Jed strangles her, for the killer is not a patient but a doctor! Dr. Dan helps the cops apprehend Jed. Jed shoots Dr. Dan in the hand. As Jed dies, shot by the police, he curses Dan. Later Dr. Crane makes medical history, attaching a new hand to Dan’s arm that was destroyed by the gun. Dan is feeling uncomfortable with his new hand. He tells his girl, Mary, she shouldn’t see him anymore. In surgery, the new hands attempts to kill the patient. Dan is cursed. He seeks the help of a medium. Dan leaves on a ocean voyage but nothing helps. He finally attempts to cut his own hand off. The hand tries to strangle him. The ship’s doctor removes the hand, making it turn into the demon claw that it is.

Conclusion

There are other tales of ghostly hands that I didn’t include here because they aren’t quite what I wanted. The Hand of Glory, for example, is a corpse candle made from the hand of a convicted murderer. Its uses include finding hidden treasure. I think it deserves its own post though. Severed hands in the comics range from reattached limbs to skeletal phantoms. Whether in the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Brown Hand” or W. F Harvey’s “The Beast With Five Fingers”, severed hands are always harbingers of vengeance. As Shakespeare said: “That would deliver up his greatness so/Into the hands of justice.”