Chamber of Chills #8 (Harvey, 1952)

A classic pre-Code mad scientist cover. After committing the unforgivable sin of killing his own assistant, a deranged chemist presses forward anyway, resurrecting the corpse with an experimental chemical to see if his deadly theory will work -- resulting in a lab-born, mummy-like horror and a true "Formula for Death!" As EC ignited the horror boom of the early 1950s, Harvey Comics followed suit, twisting the wholesome Blondie into the macabre Chamber of Chills. One of the line's defining talents was Lee Elias, a Harvey mainstay best known for Black Cat, who steadily escalated the shock factor with increasingly grim and graphic imagery. Elias would go on to produce some of the most memorable horror covers of the era for the series, including the infamous femme fatale skull cover in Issue #19. This particular issue is also notable for interior decapitation scenes that helped attract growing scrutiny, emblematic of the excesses that ultimately brought the pre-Code horror era to an end.