There’s a long and storied tradition of US horror anthology comics, with a particularly fascinating period in comic book history being the moral panic, resulting from the rise of the gruesome titles mostly published by EC Comics in the 1950s, which became such a big issue that it led to senate hearings on the matter.

This in turn led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority (or CCA). The CCA policed comic book content to the extent that even the words ‘Horror’ and ‘Terror’ were no longer permitted on the cover of a comic, and content was severely watered down and censored to make it more ‘suitable’ for the nation’s youth to consume.

Yet horror comics persisted, and you wouldn’t necessarily know that the content was watered down if you’d picked up a copy of The Unexpected #211 in 1981. There’s some fairly gruesome stuff in this issue, which I picked up in a big stack of cheap comics I discovered in Coffee and Comics. If you’re ever in the vicinity of Clacton-on-Sea in the UK, you should definitely pay this wonderful little shop a visit, because it’s a treasure trove of comics, merch and toys old and new, as well as being a cosy coffee shop. The owners are a lovely couple who take time to speak to and get to know absolutely everyone who pops into the shop, and I’ve rarely felt as welcomed in any geeky emporium. The coffee and cakes are good too, which is a bonus!

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. There are four stories in this issue, which makes it feel like fantastic value (especially at the price I paid for it!). A gluttonous actor can’t stop eating ever rarer and more exotic meat, a woman greedily goads her husband into uncovering his inheritance at a haunted mansion and, in a sci-fi based tale, a distress signal from a mysterious planet turns out to be something far…hungrier.

Lastly, there’s a part of an ongoing series starring the character Johnny Peril. With this being so late in the story, I didn’t really get what was going on, but the strength of the other three, done-in-one stories more than made up for the disappointment in this last one.

Each of those first three scary stories has at least one host (as is fairly traditional in this type of comic) to introduce and narrate, and also has the essential twist ending, which usually ends with a deserving character getting their comeuppance.

It’s all fairly tame, slightly gruesome fun; it does make me wish that there were more of these types of anthology series around, particularly as (final story aside) you can just pick up any issue and get multiple complete stories, with darkly amusing endings too.

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