A nice and creepy cover to start the series. (Incidentally, a while back someone on ebay was selling these cover paintings as originals. Were they authentic or just art school reproductions? Who knows, but they were asking around $200 each.)
Here's a photo of the contents pages:
I won't go through every story (unless someone requests it), rather I will mention some of the standout stories or art and give a general impression of the stories in the digest. Also, I will endeavour to post a list of "Labels" to each blog post, so that people looking for a specific type of story might more easily find them.
This first book has several fictional stories as well as Ripley stories. Also there are three written stories, like the ones in the first Boris Karloff book.
My impression is that this is a good introduction to the series, although I would have wanted more Ripley's. Also there are several pages of those Ripley factoids with a sentence or two to accompany a drawing scattered throughout.
Of the Ripley stories, there are a few stand outs. One is "The Dark Rider", about the real Napoleonic cavalry general Steingel. He had a premonition of his death that he confessed to Napoleon on the eve of the Battle of Marengo in 1800. The artwork is quite good for a comic book, Steingel is dressed as an elite Chasseur a Cheval and the Austrian Cuirassier looks near enough the part. The depiction of Death on horseback is quite effective.
"The Werewolves of Poligny" is a good story, but the artwork isn't quite there.
"Double Image" is a story about two men who had remarkably similar lives in parallel.
"The Beast of The Humboldt" is an odd name for a bigfoot story. Basically it's the origin story of the term bigfoot, where a road crew find big tracks and damaged road building equipment. The art work is sub par, as Bigfoot looks like a silly haystack, with buck teeth. Too bad the artwork let the story down. The Digest was published about 3 or four years after Roger Patterson's film at Bluff Creek, so it could be the original story was written and drawn before that seminal event.
"The Vampire" is a good story. A soldier in Hungary is attacked when out on campaign, and he returns home a sick man. Some of the vampire lore is mixed in the story. The vampire must eat dirt from the vampire's grave as a curative, and sunlight can kill the vampire. Oddly, the soldier dies in a road accident, so I suppose the dirt was working?
"The Haunted Villa" is based on a story by Pliny The Younger, about ghosts in ancient Greece.
"The Devil's Steed" is a well drawn story about a demon horse, the first of the Ripley's demon stories. Good story with great art.
A couple of interesting stories, one about the curse of the Hohenzollern family and the near death of Sir Walter Scott before he was even born.
The worst story is an odd one.
"Midnight Mysteries Trojan Horror", about a wierd looking horse that attacks humanity from outer space.
Not the best issue, but pretty good for a beginning.
This is a page from "Dark Rider". Great looking Grim Reaper! Incidentally, I looked up the story, and the General died after being wounded and having an arm amputated in 1796 IIRC.
This is the haystack Bigfoot with buck teeth I mentioned in "The Beast of the Humboldt". I think bigfoot has more to fear of dentists that we do of him.
This last image is from "The Devil's Steed". Throughout the Mystery Comics Digest series, this particular artist does yeoman work, bringing these stories alive with his artwork. He did many stories of beasts and demons, and he also drew some very pretty female characters.
