Forbidden Worlds #10 (American Comics Group, October 1952) is a five-story pre-Code horror anthology under a Ken Bald cover — pencilled and inked by Bald himself, and distinctive enough that it was later selected for IDW's Classic Monsters of Pre-Code Horror Comics: Ghosts. The issue opens with "The Unknown Vampire", in which survivors of a plane crash discover their tropical island already has a resident. "Bride of Doom" is the sharpest hook: Joe gradually works out that his friend's mysterious fiancée refuses to be photographed and has had previous husbands, every one of whom disappeared. "The Curse of Rada!" follows a treasure hunter who unearths a voodoo idol and is marked for vengeance by the dead, while "Portrait of Satan" — featuring Rudolph Gregor and the Devil himself — and the science-fiction-flavoured "Strange Machine" round out the book. Interior art comes from Al Camy (whose story features Dr. Vinson and Edith), Jay Disbrow (signed, on the story with detective Joe Simms, Bill, Lorelei, Linda Forsyte and Harry Carter), Jon L. Blummer and Charles Sultan, under editor Richard E. Hughes.

Forbidden Worlds launched in July/August 1951 as a dime comic subtitled "Exploring the Supernatural!", the companion to ACG's Adventures into the Unknown — the medium's first ongoing horror title. ACG was a small, resolutely independent New York publisher founded by Benjamin W. Sangor and co-owned by Fred Iger, and its horror line kept a house style distinct from the competition: atmospheric, often wry, and far lighter on gore and sexual content than the EC and Harvey books of the same year — one reason both ACG horror titles survived the 1954 Senate subcommittee hearings and the Comics Code without wholesale reinvention. Issue #10 marks the end of the series' first expansive phase: monthly since #7 and now down to 32 pages from the 52 it launched with. It also closes the second PS Artbooks archive volume, which collects #6–10. The series ultimately ran 145 issues to August 1967 and won the 1964 Alley Award for Best Regularly Published Fantasy Comic.

What makes issue #10 stand out is that its material kept getting reprinted. Content from this number appears in Dark Horse's Forbidden Worlds Archives Vol. 3 and in IDW's 2019 pre-Code monster anthology — unusual recognition for a mid-run ACG issue, and a sign that "Bride of Doom" and the Bald cover have real staying power. "Bride of Doom" in particular is a neat piece of period craft: a Bluebeard story retold through the very modern anxiety of the camera, where the refusal to be photographed is the monster's tell. And because the 1952 material is generally treated as public domain in the United States, the original issue is freely readable through Comic Book Plus and the Digital Comic Museum — with the important caveat that the modern reprint editions are not.