From the July 1952 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #33
Thursday, August 2, 2007
The Girl Who Died Twice!
A haunting ACG story from King Ward that features many of the same kinds of cinematic / atmospheric elements displayed in his other story The Howling Hunters which I posted last month. It's good stuff, I really love the way he draws slinky, evil looking black cats too. The opening splash panel reminds me of film classics like Horror Hotel and Mario Bava's Black Sunday... and speaking of Black Sunday, anyone else notice any eerie similarities between the main character in this story and Scream Queen legend Barbara Steele?
From the July 1952 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #33
From the July 1952 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #33
your right that totally does look like her..... page 5 at the top for sure
ReplyDeletebeen waiting for this one since you talked aboutit before, very cool!!!!!!!!!
My opinions have been slowly changing about ACG titles since reading the ones you've posted here, I used to think ACG was one of the worst examples of pre-code horror but then again I had only seen a few issues and hell even EC had some crap moments too so nobody's perfect.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the Steele resemblance as well.
Totally agree about the Steele thing,even if the hair color threw me off at first,and yeah,this would totally have been the kind of thing she'd have starred in,in fact;who says Bava didn't read comics?
ReplyDeleteI was mostly referring to the big eyes and facial structure of the character in the comic, hair color is always subjective... for example Barbara had black AND blonde hair in her duel role in Nightmare Castle.
ReplyDelete>who says Bava didn't read comics?
Hopefully we'll get some additional insight into Bava's influences when the Tim Lucas book ever comes out... I got my pre-order boommark in the mail last week finally so I suppose it's soon.
didn't you say something about this story coming out many years before her first movie? that is weird because its totally her!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYes, to repeat what I was talking about in the Howling Hunters comments, this story and issue came out in 1952 and Steele's first film role didn't happen until 1958. It's obviously all just a big coincidence but fun to imagine that Bava read this comic book, fell in love with the girl, and then scoured Europe looking for someone who looked like her for Black Sunday.
ReplyDeleteCould'a happened...
The writer seems to have confused the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The clothing and behavior of the characters in the flashback are unbelievable for 1752, but would fit into 1652 just fine.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in eighteenth-century America, they weren't burning people for witchcraft. Come to think of it, even in 17th century America they didn't burn them. They hung them.