As some of you remember, I got into comic books because of my late uncle Leslie, whose worn stacks of comics I would read whenever I was at grandma and grandpa’s. He was into the old Marvel monster books, some of which were narrated by three witches. Stories like a giant alien mummy inside the pyramids who would bust out and then remember too late that they were entombed because they couldn’t stand exposure to Earth’s atmosphere. An alien conqueror who challenges all Earthlings to beat him in a one-on-one competition, and a guy challenges him to a sleep competition to beat his record of 1000 years. That sort of thing.
One story in particular stayed with me because I’m arachnophobic. A young boy is punished by his mom by being locked in a spider-filled closet. As he grows up, he becomes an exterminator who specializes in killing spiders. He gets a thrill stomping on them, taking revenge for what his parents did to him. Then one day a beautiful woman hires him. He goes to her house, is shown into a dark room and plunges down until he falls into a giant spider-web. A gigantic spider with the face of the woman (no explanation is given for her transformation) crawls towards him, saying, “You hate spiders? Well, spiders can hate, too!”
Creepy! I remember that story so vividly, right down to the look of some of the panels and the structure of the sentences.
Here’s the thing: I’m reading a story in my “Showcase Presents: House of Mystery Volume 2” and there is a story called The Exterminator that follows the exact same story I just told you, except that the artwork and dialogue has differences. It’s either obvious plagiarism that would make Joe Biden blush, or a writer used his own story twice for two publishers.
I wish I had the original from my Uncle Les’ collection, but I don’t because apparently at some point Grandma got it in her head that comic books were turning Les into a Satanist and most of the stack went into the burn pile. (Stupid 1970s.) Does anyone else remember this story?