COVER UPDATES: STRANGELY ENOUGH, PART TWO!

Another edition of C.B. Colby's influential Forteana title Strangely Enough!, this time from Popular Library using their uncredited house style of cameo illustrations.

Courtesy those scalawags at (of course) the Popular Library, 1959 (original pub. 1940).

THE WEIRD, THE WILD, & THE WICKED by Brad Steiger and John Pendragon

"TAKE CARE OF THAT SISSY, J. EDGAR!"

Settlers defeating savage Indians, the "revolting" rites of said Native Americans, scary slaves and Voodoo Queens ... despite the sexy cover art, this dreary volume has more in common with C.B. Colby's Strangely Enough! from 1940 than it does with any contemporary, cutting edged works on psi or the unknown. Pendragon's influence seems nil, with nothing much in the way of ESP or astral content. Instead, we get a bunch of time wasting chapters on weird guys from olden times and the aforementioned residue of Manifest Destiny.

The first chapter sets the tone, with Thomas Day embarking on a bizarre quest to raise the perfect wife from childhood. He adopts two orphans girls to this end. Steiger's writing is cutesy and glib, and you'd be forgiven for thinking Day was some random crank and not a major man of letters of the time! Day's story could fill an entire book, but Steiger boils it down to a quick, easy filler chapter, the first of many about a guy from way-back-when who did something weird.

Ma Barker's Bloody Brood provides that pull quote up above, one of the few exciting moments in this text. Another chapter on Victorian grave robbers is pretty good, but too many others are on the level of KING'S PIGS SQUEAKED THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Fat guys getting custom coffins makes for a good time too, but not enough to carry the filler. There should be plenty of historical heft here with characters like Day or John Nichols Thom, but Steiger's glib treatment robs each story of any weight or context. The result is a boring slog.

As a final insult, Pyramid Books suggests we check out their other titles "listed in the back of this book" ... and then don't list any! Was everyone asleep at the wheel?

Pyramid Books, 1969

COVER UPDATES: STRANGELY ENOUGH!

The popular Scholastic edition of Strangely Enough! by C.B. Colby, copyright 1963. Illustrations by David Lockhart.

STRANGELY ENOUGH! by C.B. Colby

Author C.B. Colby delivers this collection of stories taken from his "Adventure Today" newspaper column. There's no pretense to "fully documented" facts in this one, as Colby cheerfully admits that these are campfire stories meant to be shared and enjoyed. There's a load of urban legends here with multiple vanishing hitchhikers, ghosts in graveyards, and specters like ol' Ocean Born Mary and the Shadmock! That missing Eskimo village is back again, along with that missing Chinese army. Colby also includes frequent flyers like Flight 19 and assorted saucers, plus the Devil's Footprints of Devon and the moving coffins of the Barbados Vault. All told, Colby packs in 99 bite sized entries in 125 pages, a rapid fire pace that rivals Smith and Steiger. 

Given their status as spooky campfire tales, Colby's not above a little fabrication here and there. For example, the story of the "Tragedy Atop the Glacier" which references a real plane crash of a C-46 cargo plane in the PNW. In Colby's telling, the bodies of the dead mysteriously disappear and are never found, an assertion not backed up by any documentation.  Most of the stories lack enough specifics to even necessitate any fakery on Colby's part, and he invites the reader to take it or leave it as part of the fun.

Other stories give a hearty dose of American culture in the 1940s, especially a trio that deal with Native Americans. These three tales reinforce the ontological identity of the "dead Indian" wherein Native Americans exist solely to die out, making room for white settlers. In "The Old Chief's Tomahawk" a dead Indian returns to save a white child from a hungry wolf, the young girl having previously shown him a kindness as he was dying. "The Indian Guide" is a similar tale of a girl saved from a blizzard by her old Indian friend, unaware that he's been dead for two days! "Outsmarting the Indians" is a more straightforward story of frontier conflict, as a pioneer woman outwits marauding Indians by rolling heavy cheese wheels down the stairs.

A reprint by Scholastic Books in 1963 cemented the title as a nostalgic memory for many, with multiple reviews and retrospectives available online, including this one which showcases some of Colby's illustrations, which are MIA from the 1959 Popular Library edition. Strangely Enough is available to read and download at archive dot org.

C.B. Colby: the name that guarantees cheap thrills!

Popular Library, 1959 (original pub. 1940)