Eerie was James Warren's second magazine dedicated to horror in the classic EC vein and in its ninth issue there's a story titled "Experiment in Fear!". This is a tale written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Gene Colan which takes place in a concentration camp. The experiments in question here are actually mild compared to some of the dastardly and grotesque "experiments" conducted by the Nazis on those they considered less than human.
We have a Nazi doctor here who wants to prove Aryan superiority by proving that the emotion of fear itself is a trait limited to the lesser varieties of peoples of the Earth, those selected by the Nazis for extermination in their death camps. It's an elaborate laboratory arrangement to induce fear, so much fear that the subject or better said, the victim always dies. When the tables are turned on the Doctor himself of course, we learn what we always knew, that fear is common to all men and women and rising above it is realizing that, as a wise man once said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Note: This post originally appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.
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Eerie 9 is a great comic magazine with some strong stories and lovely art by Adams Ditko and Grandenetti amongst others. I always found this particular story to be pretty impressive and hard hitting for a horror magazine, as you say it is nothing as horrific as what the Nazis actually did but it was certainly a powerful story that was unsettling with excellent Gene Colon art.
ReplyDeleteGene Colan's artwork always had a naturalistic aspect to it, a sense of realism that added to stories of this sort.
Delete"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" is one of my all-time favourite quotes - said by FDR of course, America's greatest president in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThat quote is something to remember when we feel cowed by the threatening world around us. As for FDR, his greatness is manifest though as a chap who prefers regular order, he did challenge the normal expectations. In his case at least it seemed to be to save a nation and a world, in a more recent case the challenges to norms seemed more about the glory of a single individual.
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