August horror fantasist Robert Bloch developed out of the Lovecraftian tradition of the early pulps to become a household name for books such as "Psycho", which replaced unspeakable elder gods with just-as-nasty yet smaller-scaled devils like Jack the Ripper. In 1943 he scripted a blackly ironic tale of three ordinary people, researcher Professor Phillips Keith, his assistant Lily Ross and the reporter/pulp horror writer they hire to document their great experiment. The tense interplay of this claustrophobic chiller is effectively captured by artist Giffen in his multi-paneled homage/distillation of José Muñoz’s stark art style as the experiment proceeds and the parapsychologists proceed to bring the Devil to Earth and trap him a glass cage. But as the lives of the trio spiral down into a miasma of darkness, guilt and regret, we have to ask: “is he really trapped?”
