In the early eighties Pacific Comics marketed a pair of anthology-titles, ALIEN WORLDS and TWISTED TALES. The principal editor of both magazines was Bruce Jones, who had "made his bones," so to speak, writing stories, many horror-themed, for the Warren line of magazines. Jones was certainly aware that Warren's approach to anthologies-- that of combining punchy short stories with lush artwork-- was not exclusive to that company. The combination of deft storytelling and finely delineated visuals had, even in the 1960s, been made famous by the EC Comics work of the 1950s. I don't think I would be projecting to say that TWISTED TALES was Jones' parallel to the publishing strategy of EC's gore-met offerings, like TALES FROM THE CRYPT, while ALIEN WORLDS was Jones' emulation of the company's more outre material from WEIRD SCIENCE. When Pacific Comics folded, a few more issues of both mags, probably consisting of inventory material, were published by Eclipse Comics, including the issue considered here.
"The Maiden and the Dragon," however, does not deal with the science-fictional content seen on the cover, as it's a magical fantasy-tale, of the sort EC also dabbled in from time to time. The title immediately suggests the standard fantasy-trope of a helpless maiden requiring rescue from a rapacious dragon by someone, usually a heroic knight. However, in the tradition of EC twist-endings, there's a reason why the maiden gets top billing here.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
The story begins in a fairy-tale Persian city, "Harran," ruled by a caliph named Haroon Asim. Asim's problem is not with serpentine beasts, but with the devourer Time. He has four daughters who might succeed him after his death as ruler of Harran and its lands. He loves the three elder daughters, but doesn't like the youngest, Bachquet, because her birth brought about the death of Asim's favorite wife. Bachquet, to whom Asim has not shown love, is probably the best qualified to inherit the caliph-dom, but Asim just can't decide.
One day he meets an old woman at a well, and tells her his problem. The stranger proposes that Asim devise a test for his four daughters, to see which one of them has "the right stuff." On the woman's advice, Asim seeks out a witch-woman-- never seen in the story-- and has himself transformed into a gigantic dragon. In this form the transformed caliph waits until all four of his daughters take a summer day near the sea. The dragon-ruler lurches out of the sea-waters and tells all four women that they are his prisoners. Then he asks the oldest daughter to return to the palace and to bring him her golden riches, in ransom for her sisters. The first daughter escapes, takes her gold, and flees the country. The dragon repeats his deal with the next two daughters, and they too choose their own safety and wealth over the fate of their sisters.
Finally, Bachquet the youngest is left. Asim can no longer let her go with any threat to her siblings, but he tells Bachquet that if she returns with her own riches, he will reward her handsomely. Bachquet does come back, unlike her sisters. However, she comes back not with gold but with a sword, and uses the weapon to slay the dragon. The "twist ending" is that Bachquet arranged this whole scheme; that she posed as the old woman to put a bug in Asim's ear, and so that she could commit regicide upon her unloved father without anyone ever knowing. (Presumably if any of the other sisters ever came crawling back, they'd verify Bachquet's story about the dragon holding them prisoner, and perhaps Bachquet even blamed her father's absence on the monster.)
I don't imagine that Bruce Jones was trying to do anything more than craft a good "O.Henry" gimmick. Still, here he works with material a little more resonant than that of the average horror-SF short story. The idea of the ruler apportioning his riches to his daughters is likely to have been borrowed from Shakespeare's play KING LEAR, where the titular king chooses to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, as long as they all pledge to him their undying love. The division of the kingdom is a disaster in Shakespeare, and in Jones' story, even the division of wealth ends up sowing disloyalty in the three daughters who actually *may* have some feeling for the caliph.
In LEAR, two of the ruler's daughters tell him what he wants to hear, while the third, Cordelia, refuses to give her father such extravagant flattery. Ironically, by the end of the play, it's clear that Cordelia, the one who seems to withhold her love, is really the one who loves her father best. Bachquet is more in the tradition of the EC underdog, who avenges ill-treatment with a carefully laid-out (if improbable) master plan-- and in this case, the ill-treatment is that her father withheld love from her because of the mere fact of Bachquet's birth. Thus Asim reaps what he sows-- though he does at least leave his least-loved daughter with an intact caliph-dom.
I would not call this a "feminist" story as such. But at the very least, it's an interested "twist" on the "tale" of Maiden and Dragon.
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