Number 82


The Dead Who Walk


Comic book companies usually try to capture readers' attention and get them to keep coming back to ongoing titles. This comic, The Dead Who Walk, under the imprint Realistic Comics, is an unnumbered, one-shot title.

The Dead Who Walk was released in 1952 as part of the horror comics boom of the era. It must've sold pretty well because it's not an uncommon title to find.

The artwork for The Dead Who Walk is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Joe Orlando, pencils and inks.

The story moves at a breakneck pace. For such a short story there are a lot of characters: Kent, his fiancée, Anne, her brother Jack, Dr.French, a "man of cold, scientific logic," and the evil brothers who are stealing bodies, George and Walt Bacon. That isn't even counting the named corpses animated by the pair of body snatchers: Juan Fernandez, Foley the mechanic, Torelli the importer…talk about packing a lot into a small space! The story, which concerns "egos," (i.e., "souls") jumping from body to body, reads like a weird menace pulp magazine tale of the 1930s and '40s, where plots like this were common. A Realistic Comic it might have been, but realistic it wasn't.