Comic Book Review: Forbidden Worlds Vol. 15 edited by Richard E. Hughes
Forbidden Worlds started as a horror anthology comic book series from American Comics Group in 1951. In 1955, it ran foul of new restrictions on horror in comics, but soon retooled as “stories of strange adventure” which conformed with the Comics Code and kept being published until 1967. This volume reprints #89 (August 1960)-#94 (March-April 1961). At this time almost all the stories were written to some degree by editor Richard E. Hughes using multiple pseudonyms.
The volume opens with “Top Secret!” (art by John Forte) a tale in which an Air Force plane observing the test of a new type of atomic bomb is blown into a parallel Earth where Ice Age fauna never went extinct and the Roman Empire has colonized what in our world would be America. Captain Marcus Crane falls in love with the lovely Claudia, daughter of the local proconsul. He and his crew fend off an attack from a tribe of Native Novae Romans, who are depicted as superstitious savages, only to be pulled back to their own world where months have passed since they disappeared. Marcus now seeks a way back to his beloved.
The final story here is “The Conquering Breed!” (art by John R.) In the year 3060, humanity is exploring the galaxy, looking for new habitable worlds. The crew of the Orion finds a mostly-oceanic world they dub Hydra and decide to investigate. What they don’t know is that another scout ship from a previously unknown alien species is already there. The aliens have superior technology, but note that the humans strongly resemble the legendary race known as the Conquerors.
The Conquerors had eons ago beat the alien race’s butt to a fare-thee-well before disappearing, and it’s taken until recently for the aliens to start rebuilding their empire. Legend has it that a lost colony of the Conquerors still exists, and the humans might be them. So the aliens take them captive and isolate them on an offshore island to undergo intelligence and behavioral tests. The humans enact an escape plan far more quickly than the aliens feel they should have been able to, and the aliens decide Hydra belongs to the Conquerors now.
The best story in these issues is #94’s “Herbie and the Spirits!” (art by Ogden Whitney) Herbie Popnecker was ACG’s greatest creation. A rotund, bespectacled boy with a bowl cut who is always licking a lollipop, Herbie is described by his disappointed father as “a fat little nothing.” But despite his unassuming appearance and dour demeanor, Herbie is in fact gifted with amazing powers. It’s just that neither his parents nor his schoolmates ever see him do anything. (Once superheroes became big again, he became the parody hero Fat Fury, but that’s after this issue.)
The Popnecker family has moved, and Herbie gets a disappointed reception from his new classmates, who (based on his old school’s reputation) were expecting an athlete. Some of the boys dare Herbie to go into the old haunted house, where they plan to scare him as a prank. They run into a “professor of the occult” who has created a “spirit doorway” in an attempt to make contact with the spirit realm. Just as he’s unlocking it, the boys prank him with a firecracker, and in the ensuing chaos, everyone except Herbie (who missed all the excitement) runs off.
Unseen, the door lets through four inhabitants of Spiritland: a witch, a ghost, a “creep” (basically a person with a hunchback) and “Frankenstein.” They figure that there’s no one left on Earth that knows how to stop them, so they just need to create enough havoc with their spirit powers to drive the humans mad with fear, then take over.
Herbie investigates the string of disasters by interviewing animals and a scarecrow. He tries to alert the authorities, but of course they don’t take this unimpressive child seriously, especially since his story is pure fantasy. So it’s up to Herbie to stand against the forces of evil alone, armed only with his lollipops!
It’s a fun, wacky story.
The other stories tend to the average at best. Evil person gets their comeuppance, reformable person has hallucinatory (or is it) experience that convinces them to change their ways, good person has weird thing happen that turns out well for them.
The PS Artbook reprints are no-frills, just reproducing the entire issues as they originally printed, ads, letter pages and all. No fancy introductions or ancillary materials here!
Content note: period racism, sexism, ethnic prejudice. One story involves “gypsies” as a group hunted by the Nazis.
The Herbie stories have been reprinted elsewhere; this volume is more for the person who’s heard of Forbidden Worlds but never actually seen a copy. (If you want a more horrific experience, the pre-Code volumes are what you’re looking for.)
