Sensation Comics #109 Poster (1952) Jim Mooney The Fingers of Fear DC

Description

Toward the end of its eleven-year run, Sensation Comics- formerly the home base of such super hero stalwarts as Wonder Woman and the Atom- switched its focus to tales of the supernatural, like issue #109’s “The Fingers of Fear.” (The title of the series would be changed to Sensation Mystery as of the following issue.) The eerie cover story involves an unrepentant quintuple murderer whose five victims show up one evening growing out of the fingers of his left hand. As if that weren’t odd enough, in some panels they are topless while in others they appear to be wearing white athletic T-shirts. How they got there is never explained, although they immediately (and understandably) set about engineering their killer’s demise. He attempts to thwart them by wearing a chain-mail glove, to no avail. In true 1950s-horror-anthology fashion, a police detective turns up at the end to tack on a tidy moral about the evil that men do living on after them. Supplying th lurid cover pencils for Sensation Comics #109 was former Bob Kane ghost Jim Mooney, who went on to become the longtime artist on the Supergirl backup features in Action Comics. Sensation Comics is the title of an American comic book series published by DC Comics that ran for 109 issues between 1942 and 1952. For most of its run, the lead feature was Wonder Woman, a character which had been introduced in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941). Other characters that appeared included the Black Pirate, the Gay Ghost, Mister Terrific, Wildcat, Sargon the Sorcerer, Hal Mason, the Whip, the Atom, Little Boy Blue, Hop Harrigan, Romance, Inc., Lady Danger, Doctor Pat, and Astra. The series briefly became a romance title starting with issue #94 (November 1949). Johnny Peril became the lead feature with issue #107, when the theme of the comic changed to a supernatural/mystery format. The title was changed to Sensation Mystery with #110 and ran for another seven issues. The retitled series ended with issue #116 (July-August 1953). The Sensation Comics title was used again in 1999 as the title for one issue of the Justice Society Returns storyline. Little is known of the early life of the man called Johnny Peril. His name may even be an alias, assumed to thwart investigations into his past. Whatever his past, Johnny Peril has always been associated with adventure and intrigue. His past occupations have been many, but they have invariably been jobs whose high risk factors – due to their unusual natures – cannot have been compensated for solely by money.He has left few corners of the world untrod, traveling from the steaming equatorial jungles of Africa to the eerie depths of the Bermuda Triangle. However, when asked what drives him to undertake these serious assignments, he has never given a straight answer, preferring to express a desire for a “nice, normal case.” Johnny Peril became a private detective, making the professional acquaintance of renown psychic, Heather Storm. Johnny Peril first appeared in Comic Cavalcade #19 (Feb 1947) originally under the name “Mr. Nobody”. He was created by Howard Purcell. James Noel “Jim” Mooney (August 13, 1919 – March 30, 2008) was an American comic book artist best known for his long tenure at DC Comics and as the signature artist of Supergirl, as well as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, both during what comics historians and fans call the Silver Age of comic books. He sometimes inked under the pseudonym Jay Noel.