Today
I received this volume in the mail, Mystery Comics Digest: Ripley’s Believe It
or Not #4, June 1972. Well do I vaguely remember the first time ever I saw
it, and the circumstances under which it was purchased. It was grocery day, a
Saturday, and Mike and I (at least – was John there? Did he get his own digest?)
were with Pop shopping at Baenziger’s. We were at the magazine rack next to the
little checkout where they bought cigarettes, and for some reason Pop agreed to
buy us each a Mystery Comics Digest. Once again, I put my money on the wrong
horse, and chose the Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #2 (well, it had
exciting looking reptilian monsters on it), while Mike chose the Ripley title. After we had all read the mags and saw what
was inside, I had a bout of buyer’s remorse. Although Karloff had its good
points, Ripley’s had that Real Life High Weirdness that I’ve always
found attractive, and (in my opinion) better art to boot.
Besides
the ‘real’ life stories, my brothers might remember The Hug of Death
(gypsies and wrasslin’ bears), A Tree Grows in Transylvania (Baron
Tibor), and Where There’s Smoke There’s Fear (the usual irony with magic
lamp wishes).
Anyway,
with this volume I think I’ve finally got copies of all the Mystery Comics
Digest we had as kids, and a few more that we didn’t. I find out now that
although we always thought of Karloff and Ripley’s and Twilight
Zone (of which, although I have a faint impression that we might have had a
copy, I can’t remember anything concrete about it at the moment) as separate entities,
they were all published under the rubric of Mystery Comics Digest, and were released, a different title a month, in rotation. The series came out from
March 1972 to October 1975, and had 26 issues. This, according to Wikipedia, is
how they played out:
- Believe It or Not!-
#1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25
- Boris Karloff-
#2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26
- Twilight Zone-
#3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24
They
were all reprints from their original Gold Key titles, included some original stories, and sometimes had panel stories that were told in prose in other
issues and vice versa. Altogether, I now have 8 of the 26. And there the score
will probably stand, barring any fortuitous finds.
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