Chamber of Chills Magazine #13
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeChamber of Chills Magazine #13 (October 1952) holds a secure place in pre-Code horror history as the confirmed debut vehicle for Howard Nostrand's solo work at Harvey Comics — 'The Man Germ' is the story Nostrand himself identified as the first job he did for the publisher after leaving Bob Powell's studio. That debut appeared in one of Harvey's flagship anthology titles at the precise moment Harvey was mounting its most ambitious challenge to EC Comics' dominance of the horror genre, making this issue a useful marker in that creative rivalry. The issue also illustrates Harvey's characteristic talent pool in full: Bob Powell, Abe Simon, and Moe Marcus each contributed a story, assembling a cross-section of the studio's mid-run output under editor Sid Jacobson.
In "The Lost Race," a determined professor ventures into the African wilderness, driven by a radical theory: that evolution might reverse itself. His expedition takes a terrifying turn when he tumbles into a hidden underground realm teeming with ancient, monstrous creatures from a forgotten age.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Chamber of Chills launched in June 1951 as a bimonthly, ten-cent anthology after Harvey repurposed the numbering of its Blondie Comics title, beginning at issue #21; the numbering was reset to #1 with the fifth issue in February 1952, making #13 the ninth issue under the renumbered run. Harvey editor Sid Jacobson oversaw the title and actively directed artists to study EC Comics' style — handing Nostrand a stack of EC books and telling him to replicate what he found there. The series ran 26 issues total before the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings effectively ended Harvey's horror output and pushed the publisher toward its better-known children's fare.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Cover art by Al Avison, a veteran of the Simon-Kirby Captain America studio at Timely Comics.
- Interior stories: 'The Man in the Hood' (art: Bob Powell), 'The Lost Race' (art: Abe Simon), 'The Man Germ' (art: Howard Nostrand, script: Nat Barnett), and 'The Things' (art: Moe Marcus).
- 'The Man Germ' — a body-horror tale narrated from the perspective of a germ traveling through a human host — is the story Howard Nostrand identified in his own words as his first solo assignment for Harvey Comics, making #13 the debut issue of one of the era's most distinctive pre-Code artists.
- The story concept of 'The Man Germ' anticipates by over a decade the premise of the 1966 science-fiction film Fantastic Voyage.
- At least one story from this issue was reprinted in Harvey's own Tomb of Terror #15 (May 1954); other stories were later reworked and reprinted by Eerie Publications in Weird and Terror Tales in the 1970s.
- The entire issue was collected in Harvey Horrors Collected Works: Chamber of Chills Vol. 2 (PS Artbooks), which reprints issues #8–13.
- Howard Nostrand's work from this issue (and the broader Harvey horror run) was spotlighted in IDW/Yoe Books' The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics #8: Howard Nostrand's Nightmares (November 2014).
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Reprints
Reprinted in Tomb of Terror #15 (1954), Horror Tales #5 (1973), Weird #6 (1973), Terror Tales #6 (1973), Witches Tales #1 (1974), Men of Mystery Comics #45 (2004), Crypt of Horror #12 (2011), The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics! #8 (2014), The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics! #18 (2016), Creepy Worlds #250 (2025)
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