Weird Adventures

P.L. Publishing, which created and published the three issues of this book, is a complete enigma.

P.L. has an almost non-existent digital footprint, aside from their scant eight titles that are listed on the Grand Comic Book Database, which is usually an invaluable resource for small, little-known companies. This is not the case with P.L.

What is known is that, although an American company, they printed their books in Canada in order to get around some obscure U.S. law. Exactly what particular law that was, eludes any online search.

P.L. Publishing, according to available records, was around for only one year, 1951. They give the impression of being fairly ambitious at the outset, releasing, almost simultaneously, eight titles of a varied nature; Western, Sci-Fi, Romance, and Jungle. Oh yeah, and supernatural/suspense - which category Weird Adventures would fall.

The book certainly LOOKED good, and their covers, not coincidentally, had a definitively “EC” look.

Although you might expect a group of unknowns to have handled the creative duties, P.L. did manage to get some respectable names. Within it’s pages we see familiar craftsmen of the time including Robert Q Sale, Matt Baker, John Giunta, Manny Stallman, and Charles Nicholas. However, some lesser-knowns lent their services - Red Holmade, Rob Jenny, Richard Case and Homer Fleming. One would be hard-pressed to find other work by these guys…maybe they were Canadian?

Going by the covers, you would inevitably find the kind of images so common to comics of this period; gloved-hands pushing a pleading man off of a pier to his certain death; some sort of muscular but brainless neanderthal-type, under a spell of some hooded, bony ghoul  commanding him to throw a pretty gal wearing a low-cut dress, which the beast holds aloft, into a fiery pit; a scientist, a hooded green-skinned ghoul and (strangely) an iguana setting about a terrified man shackled to a table, and about to do something horrible to him involving some unidentifiable tools.

That’s it. Three issues and out. And by the end of the year, P.L. Publishing would be a memory. Maybe.

The confusion and obscurity of Weird Adventures without a doubt add to its collectability. If you can find any of the three issues, check out their value on Quality Comix’s online price guide!