Beware The Wig-Maker!

Harvey Comics couldn't resist the urge to use the stock phrase "hair-raising tale" for the cover of Witches Tales #23 with its short horror story, The Wig Maker. Set in the small town of Webster during 1890, one of the settlement's successful stores was oddly Lemuel Boone's Rarefied Wig Salon". Lemuel gets a visit from Mr. Averall who needs a wig as all his hair fell out and wants it to look like his original blonde locks. Lem then sets out that night to the local cemetery to find a buried bundle with similar hair that he cuts off with a hatchet, so the peculiar perruquier gets most of his repository from the formally alive. His business thrives over time but gets a challenge when a rare female customer wants a fully brunette wig. Lem ransacks the boneyard for a dark-haired duplicate to end up only with nothing, although he finally hits pay dirt when he tries a native burial ground. Lem makes his sale only to literally lose his head when the ghost of the corpse he desecrated later shows up for payback by scalping the grave robber. Of course, the spectral victim speaks in hackneyed dialogue that you would normally hear on any given episode of F-Troop, nevertheless the native ghost also had the totally original name of Geronimo. It's good to see a greedy white man get his upcoming, but it still could have been done without the overused Indian cliches.