“The Lake of Madness” appeared as a text filler in Ibis the Invincible #5 (Fall 1946). This strange Northern was written by Joseph
Millard, better known to Science Fiction fans as Joseph J. Millard, author of The Gods Hate Kansas, his only novel. Millard was a prolific author but he spread his attention equally between SF, Westerns, detective stories and adventure tales. Like Donald Bayne Hobart, Charles S. Strong, and Otto Binder, Millard was the perfect man for writing text stories for Timely (later Marvel Comics) and Fawcett. His credits in text stories numbers over a hundred and eighty, with most being Westerns. One series of these was a serialized novel about the sailor Hoodoo Harrigan in Master Comics.
For one story though, Joseph Millard turned to the frozen North to tell of a lake with an evil reputation. Typical of Northerns, the hero is an R. C. M. P. corporal who is bringing in his man. That criminal is a fellow named Niven, who is a murderer and a seller of drugs.The two have to cross a strange bubbling lake…
Millard doesn’t try to build up the supernatural aspects of this story though phantoms do appear. Everything is explained away as a Science writer would do. (Millard wrote Science articles for Ray Palmer’s Amazing Stories.) My own preference would have been for more doubt about the nature of these ghosts, but Millard quite clearly doesn’t want to go there. It is a strange Northern but a very controlled one. Considering this tale appeared in a comic book dedicated to a master of Egyptian magic, Ibis the Invincible, I think he could have gone farther out of the scientific realm.
All of the Ibis comics are available for free at DCM.
Great northern filler…I enjoyed it