Issue(s): Chamber of Chills #3
Cover Date: Mar 73
Title: "The thing on the roof / All the shapes of fear / The girl who cast no shadow"
Credits:
Roy Thomas / George Alec Effinger / Gardner Fox - Writer
Frank Brunner / Don Heck / Ernie Chan - Penciler
Frank Brunner / Bill Everett / Ernie Chan - Inker

Review/plot:
As i understand it, the goal behind Chamber of Chills was to put out a horror book that was more on the Lovecraftian side of things. Roy Thomas apparently name-checked Howard, Ellison, Sturgeon, and Bloch in the intro to issue #1, and issues #2 and #3 both have adaptations of Robert E. Howard stories, and the focus seems to be more on his horror elements instead of, say, barbarians.

You can see from the cover of this issue that we're dealing with tentacled horrors. That's from the Howard adaptation, which also features references to Nameless Cults and a Temple of the Toad. The weird thing is that the woman that appears on the cover of the issue isn't in the story at all.

The second story in the issue is a kind of ghost story where a guy riding a motorcycle hits a kid crossing the street because he was distracted by a giant ghostly hand reaching out for him. And then later while he's in the hospital bed, he has a vision that replays events, and he tries to reach out and stop himself from hitting the kid but of course now it's his hand that distracts the version of himself on the motorcycle.

The third story is really why we're here, because it will be referenced during Roger Stern's Dr. Strange about six years from now. A reporter notices a woman, Marcia Trent, who casts no shadow.

She tells him that it all started when her father started seeking out the lost crypt of a god named Ningal. She lost her shadow when her father died inside Ningal's crypt.

The reporter agrees to help Marcia re-enter the crypt and see about giving her father's remains a proper burial and/or getting her shadow back, but when they get there, a demon springs from the Ningal statue and kills him. And apparently this is a thing Marcia does all the time.

Having read the Roger Stern Dr. Strange story and being somewhat confused by it, i was surprised at how little story there is here, and that it's a complete story in and of itself that doesn't continue into issue #4, since the Strange story references both this issue and a story from next issue, which is also by Gardner Fox but is not related to this story at all, plotwise. This is a fairly standard horror story, albeit with an ancient god for a bad guy. I wonder what Stern saw in it to want to bring it into continuity quite a few years later.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The Thomas story brings to mind the Lovecraft story "The Thing On The Doorstep". I'm not quite sure that "Roof" was the actual title of the Howard story being adapted.

Fox had used the missing shadow theme before in a Spectre story in SHOWCASE #61.

The Spectre's antagonist in the issue is Shathan, a stand in for the Devil. This was a couple of years before Mephisto's debut.