“The Beast From Beyond” was a strange Northern that appeared in Quality Comics’s Web of Evil #3 (March 1953). The creators are not known. This was a six-pager that features dragon-like monsters in the French Canadian woods. Three couples have hired a guide named Pierre to take them moose hunting. (This comic is available free at DCM.)
Ellen and Ed go with the guide, Pierre, to scout out moose sign. Instead they find a gigantic footprint. Later around the campfire Pierre speaks of creatures that visit the planet to hunt men in the woods.
The next morning Ed and Ellen go off alone to be the first to shoot a moose. They meet something else! When Amy and Bill find their rifles they think it is all a gag and Pierre is on it. He denies it.
They soon see that the monsters are real. Joe and Sally are not lucky and end up alien-dragon chow.
Bill and Amy make a run it for while Pierre tries to stop the monster. The couple end up like their friends. Pierre makes it to Hammockville and the cops. (Oddly the cops are American style sheriffs and not RCMP!)
The cops come to the rescue with grenades and lots of guns. But soon a revelation is discovered. The monsters are mechanical things operated by men.
The jig is up. The men controlling the monsters are part of the Chuck Elston gang. They had planned to scare away the tourists with Chinatown dragons while they waited for Chuck to show up with the money from a big robbery. (Bill, Amy, Sally, Joe, Ed and Ellen are released.) Unfortunately, Chuck had a heart attack while he was sneaking off with the cash to Mexico. Their fortune ends up being as imaginary as the monsters.
This is a pretty standard trope from the Pulps and Mystery fiction, where the monsters prove to be false. This false monster tradition is often called The Scooby Doo school today. The one moment in the entire comic that really works is when Pierre tells the tale by the fireside. The idea of hunters coming from another planet to kill men will be movie bonanza with the Predator. Alien Vs. Predator (2004) was actually set in a snowy clime, Antarctica not the Arctic. Kind of like The Thing Meets Alien and Predator.
