We mentioned today's title when we looked at an issue of Gold Key's The Outer Limits, but I wasn't sure I had read it before: from 1975, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #62. Cover painting by Luis Dominguez.
Per the Wikipedia for Boris Karloff, and the GCD's cover for the last issue, #97; Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery began as Boris Karloff Thriller for two issues, then ran for ten years after his death! I suspect it was a fairly easy license to manage; Gold Key probably mailed a little check to the estate every quarter, and then quietly cranked out little horror stories with Karloff introducing them in a thematically appropriate outfit. He starts in a jaunty captain's hat for "From the Edge of the Earth," with art by Jose Delbo. (As often the case for Gold Key, there were no credits; and the GCD did not have a writer listed for any stories this issue.) An entrepreneur hires a shifty sea captain for an expedition to find a sea monster: the captain creates a fake monster corpse to be found, so the entrepreneur will sink more money into a follow-up search, but there's another double-cross coming.
Somewhat less dignified is the next story's "Martian" Karloff, for "The Man Who Cried 'Martian,'" with art by John Celardo. A fraudster pitches his book "First Aliens on Earth," very much in the ancient astronauts theories of the 70's; but he's got the daughter of a legit archeologist to give him legitimacy. He's lying through his teeth, of course...but that doesn't mean he's wrong!
Karloff has the appropriate winter's hat for "The Russian Egg," art by Jose Delbo again; but is just a floating head for the cover story, "It's in the Cards," art by Adolfo Buylla. A night accountant hates his boss and his punch-card computer, but lucks into the right cards to unlock the safe and loot the place. The computer may have other ideas, though. The second two stories were a little weak; but the first two weren't half-bad for this sort of thing. I wish I could find my old Twilight Zone digest, though; I swear Gold Key had a few winners in that lot...
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