"A Rag - A Bone and a Hank of Hair!" is a seven-page short comic story published in issue #13 of Black Magic, released in June of 1952. Credits for the comic are missing, but the art is generally identified as being by Mort Meskin.
One day in summer, Marcus Jagger is visited by Carl and Rose Laverne who have a vaudevillian magic act. Rose's backup costume is in ruins and they need Marcus to make her a new one based on the old one, because they're fully booked and can't visit for a fitting. Marcus discovers an old and forgotten tailor's dummy hanging about in his store that seems to match Rose's small form and accepts the job. He finishes the job to the Lavernes' satisfaction and dumps the tailor's dummy in the corner of his apartment near the rarely closed window and the radiator. Over the course of the months up to winter, the tailor's dummy absorbs dust, mud, rain, soot, rust, and oil, and bathes in the sun's warm rays. Unknown to anyone, fragile life starts brewing inside the dummy. One night during winter, Marcus's radiator stops working and as it can't be repaired until the next day, he goes to bed early. However, while the cold inconveniences him, it is outright deadly to the weak organism of the tailor's dummy. In search of warmth, it does something new: it gets up. It gets up and heads over to the one source of warmth in the room, which is Marcus. It embraces him tightly, strangling him in the process and thereby dooming itself. Some days later, Marcus is found by his neighbors and the police, who assume he pulled the dummy on top of himself to keep warm and accidentally got smothered. The police take Marcus's remains to the morgue and the janitor burns the dummy later on.
"A Rag - A Bone and a Hank of Hair!" is among those stories inspired by Theodore Sturgeon's "It". The tailor's dummy gains life in much the same primordial soup way as It does, with the poignant difference that It gets its humanoid form from being molded around a human skeleton while the tailor's dummy owes its humanoid form to the cut of its fabric. "A Rag - A Bone and a Hank of Hair!" also utilizes some of the themes found in "It", for instance by mirroring Alton's loneliness with Marcus's loneliness.
Although it's unclear to whom to credit the script of "A Rag - A Bone and a Hank of Hair!", Black Magic was a magazine produced by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In 1968, Joe Simon debuted Brother Power the Geek, an unorthodox superhero whose origin is a redo of that of the tailor's dummy of "A Rag - A Bone and a Hank of Hair!"
"A Rag - A Bone and a Hank of Hair!" provides examples of:
- Bookworm: Marcus Jagger has no wife or family and his circle of friends and acquaintances is limited. Therefore, he has turned to books, from which he reads to get through the loneliness of his existence.
- Death by Irony: Marcus Jagger is reading a book about marriage and life when the female tailor's dummy gets up in search of warmth to survive on and finds only him as a source. Her constrictive embrace kills him.
- Downer Ending: Marcus is a middle-aged man who is possibly dealing with depression and definitely profoundly alone, desiring a wife for companionship above all else. Yet he keeps his problem to himself and finds fulfillment in reading. For some bizarre twist of fate, his tailor's dummy comes to life and accidentally strangles him trying to preserve its own life, which by killing Marcus it fails to do. Marcus's death is deemed an accident and life goes on for everyone else.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: The tailor's dummy has a full head of red hair that always is slumped over its face even as the dummy unassumingly gains life. Only when it has to get up to find a new source of warmth does it momentarily peak through its hair.
- Locked Room Mystery: After a while, Marcus's neighbors notice he's missing and get the police involved. They find the man in his bed in his apartment, which was securely locked and has no signs of forced entry. Yet Marcus is dead despite being in good health. The police reason that Marcus laid the tailor's dummy atop of himself for extra warmth in his unheated apartment and that the dummy must have slid over his face and smothered him in his sleep. Understandably, the police do not theorize that the dummy came to life and accidentally killed Marcus, even though that would've been the one correct conclusion.
- Lovely Assistant: Rose has a magic act alongside her husband Carl and while they might perform as equals, the fact that Rose is noted to be on the small side suggests that her part in the act is that of assistant.
- Murderous Mannequin: An old tailor's dummy is taken out of storage for short use and then dumped in the corner of its owner's apartment. Near the window, it gathers all kinds of substances: dust, mud, rain, soot, rust, and oil. The summer sun brews life into this concoction, but it's a life easily extinguished without warmth. In winter, it instinctively goes looking for a source of heat when the apartment's radiator stops working and wraps itself tightly around its owner's body, which is the only warm thing in the room. He suffocates and the dummy dies thereafter because corpses don't produce warmth.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The tailor's dummy is not a sapient creature. It's a primordial soup of living material interwoven with the dummy's fabric and stuffing with only some capacity to ensure its own survival. It needs very little for that, so for the first few months of its life, it lies passively in a corner looking like any ordinary dummy. Come winter and the cold necessitates the dummy to actively find a source of warmth to keep itself alive. Running purely on instinct, it tightly embraces the one warm thing it can find, which happens to be a human. The human suffocates in the dummy's grasp, which not only is something the dummy couldn't comprehend to be the outcome but which also bereaves it of the source of warmth it needs for its survival.
- Passed in Their Sleep: The police deduce, logically but incorrectly, that Marcus was cold in his unheated apartment and therefore laid the tailor's dummy atop of him for extra warmth. It then must have slid over his face during the night and smothered him in his sleep.
- Shout-Out: The title of the comic comes from the poem "The Vampire" by Rudyard Kipling, in which "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair" refers to women as creatures that lack the substance to actually make them worthy of courting.
- Slain in Their Sleep: Marcus is reading in bed before properly falling asleep when his tailor's dummy embraces him from behind, wrapping around his neck in a desperate search for warmth that ultimately strangles him.
- Stage Magician: Carl and Rose Laverne have a popular vaudevillian magic act. It is because Rose's one backup costume gets damaged that they find their way to Marcus Jagger's store, who has a reputation for being reliable at rush jobs. And a rush job they have: the new dress needs to be done in two days before the two move on to the next town and Rose won't have time to come in for fittings.
- Tender Tears: Marcus Jagger is not happy about being unmarried, but while his loneliness eats at him he keeps up a pleasant demeanor in public. Only at night while he reads in his books and the words remind him of the companionship he doesn't have does he allow a few mournful tears to roll down his face.
