I think we'll stick with the March - April 1953 issue of Dark Mysteries #11 for a bit. It's absolutely infested with icky precode gems, like this horrific Hy Fleishman favorite about some very hungry, very violent vermin. You're gonna love it.
I think we'll stick with the March - April 1953 issue of Dark Mysteries #11 for a bit. It's absolutely infested with icky precode gems, like this horrific Hy Fleishman favorite about some very hungry, very violent vermin. You're gonna love it.
6 comments:
A great terror tale that this time actually only works with articulated skeletons!
I love the art on this; it's dense, there is never skimping on a background, and even when Kenny is building the brick walls there's great plays of light and shadow.
Page 3, panel 2 is about as "Jeepers" as it gets.
Page 5, panel 1, I love the little rat gnawing at the eye socket. The rats are so cute here, though the splash cheats a little with rats as big as dogs!
It's a breezy read that takes a standard plot with the obvious skeletal revenge and does it really well, with excellent art. I'm kind of surprised by Jim, though, this is one of the few tales like this where Kenny doesn't do away with Jim, either, just buys him out!
The cops in this town, wow. Kenny builds an extra thick wall the day his business partner and the woman that rejected him disappears and the cops are like "eh, what are you going to do?"
Well this is a chilling tale for the not so merry month of May (a summer heat wave came early in PA.)
The narrator is a mix of the modern day Crypt Keeper and Dr. Death from This Magazine is Haunted, a great look as a horrible horror host.
Jim seems a little too quick to get rid of Elsa, unless Jim was planning on doing to Elsa and Kenny what Kenny did to Rita and Hal.
Now there would be the plot to a never ending horror tale, a married man gets rid of his cheating wife and her lover, only to fall for another man's wife and then suffer the same fate, maybe the house or tomb where the bodies are disposed of has an evil curse on it causing the cycle of evil to go continue for centuries. I wish I had the skill to pen or draw such a tale, though.
Hy Fleishman was one of the greats, his skill as a horror comic artist should never be forgotten, and it never will be thanks to THOIA.
If Kenny didn't want to be the villain he should've shaved off the moustache.
The rats are *very* cute and for once in these tales look like rats and not like mutant foxes or something. They're also cooperative enough to let themselves be stunned and chained up. Couldn't be nicer, more helpful rats, really.
It's a coincidence, but at the bottom of Page 4, those swirls on the side of the plane looks like brand names marked out in a photo.
The idea of the rat puppeteers manipulating the skeletons of the dead is really wonderful. I kind of wish there was more of that stuff. I kind of wish there was a whole William Castle movie about it.
I really dig Fleishman's work here. The bricks are so lovingly rendered in every panel that features them. Page five is a particular fave, both the top part with all the rat-based horror between the walls, and the middle bit where Kenny is looking around the house for the source of the noise. I only wish that last panel was mirrored, to maintain the eye line of the previous panel.
But for me the standout image is Kenny watching some magician on TV at the bottom of page four, startled by the rat sound effects. That's exactly what I come to precode for.
"Page 3, panel 2 is about as 'Jeepers' as you can get."
Maybe it's saying the obvious, but it's easy to wish Rita were actually alive in that panel, considering how "gratuitous" the panel is in a non-horror way.
Speaking of "Jeepers!" Elsa has a pretty low-key way of reacting to things at the end - "How frightful!"
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