From the October 1954 issue of Witches Tales #27
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Murder Mansion
As promised, here’s another Lee Elias illustrated story. With his thick, rich, detailed line work and great sense of color, Lee’s mouth watering nightmare visuals more than make up for the poorly paced, confusing storyline here (in fact don’t read this one, just look at the pretty pictures.) For a truly mind blowing experience, type “ Lee Elias “ into the GCD search engine and just look at all of his Harvey horror covers. Amazing!
From the October 1954 issue of Witches Tales #27
From the October 1954 issue of Witches Tales #27
WOW GORGEOUS STUFF FOR SURE!!!!!! THE STORY ITSELF IS A BIT BLAH BUT LEE MAKES THE BEST OF IT ESPECIALLY ON THE SPLASH AND THE LAST COUPLE PAGES.....HELL JACK KAMEN PROBABLY COULDN'T HAVE MADE THAT SCRIPT WORK EITHER.
ReplyDeletethe thing i like about his art is that its so loose and refined and recognizable... like kirby in that the men and woman all tend to have the same sort of face but in a good way
ReplyDeleteI saw some very similar artwork in a some pre-horror Western EC comic---I think it was about the dangers of VD. I saw it in one of the EC fanzines called Squa Tront.
ReplyDeleteTo steal some randomly appropriate thoughts from a recent John K post about Ballantine (the artist, not the publisher), these fundemental design principles apply to Lee Elias as well:
ReplyDeleteHis cartoons show that he has had solid training. His compositions are organized and handsome. His poses are natural, yet exaggerated. He uses negative space to draw attention to the positive images. His drawings are organic, use line of action, clear silhouettes, perspective. He is impressively skilled. He has a strong and personal sense of design, etc... to me these are the things that make a good comicbook illustrator, his stuff is just fun with a perfect balance of cartoony and realistic.
Well,your right;the story doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense,but it was a fun read,and yep'this is one of Lee Elias's best jobs,even though i can kind of see a Craig/Kurtzman influence here and there(pre-hag Lucy in the splash,the old village womans face)i still wouldn't call it a rip-off in the least since he'd been working in comics just as long,funny you should mention John K.,i dont always agree with him about adult cartoon sitcoms(c'mon SOUTH PARK is waaay superior to FAMILY GUY,even though they'll never touch the cartoons of old.)but he's a great art instructor and is probably pushing a far better generation of cartoonists in the right path.one thing about the story,i love how it has an authentic New-England feel,those are just the type of accents y'heer up thar!.
ReplyDeleteFamily Guy is a hunk of crap... I have a friend who is really into it for some reason and it's weird because I actually like it when he tells me about certain scenes or jokes from it, (it's obvious that my friend is a better story teller though.) But man, if I have to see the crummy "animation" and hear the lousy voice acting I just don't get any of it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, thats it----it reminds me of Kurtzman's style.
ReplyDeleteNot to switch subjects,but i hate FG too,all the jokes are played straight and expect to get a laugh out of the dumbest pop-culture experts,thats "clip-show"not comedy.playing an absurd situation seriously like on SP is real parody,admit,for some reason theyre able to actually inflict suspense in idiotic situations from pop-culture(the cliff-hanger about Eric's dad)and genuine holiday charm in the christmas specials;(involving Charles Manson and talking poo,respectively.)the diff between "clip-show",parody,and black-humor is somenthing just as prevalent to pre-code horror too,like Everett and Davis showed.on a lighter note,i love the crossed out comics-code symbol!.
ReplyDeleteWhen creating the no-code logo I was thinking about possibly re-doing it in high resolution and reversing it into a downloadable t-shirt iron-on possibly. Is anyone interested in something like that?
ReplyDelete>black-humor is somenthing just as prevalent to pre-code horror too
I totally agree... and that's the problem with practically everything Hollywood craps out, from laughless Simpsons TV clip show humor to unbearably ugly Shrek clip-show features, seems no one cares about good or even thoughtful writing, it's just an excuse to see how many lame pop-culture reference bombs they can drop into an already wanky scenario.
This strikes me as the bad apple that got the whole orchard banned.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first introduction to the artwork of Mr. Lee Elias. Wow!! What a talent. His drawings are really atmospheric and bring life to the story.
ReplyDeleteAnd now that I said story, I have to agree with everyone else- it made no sense whatsoever. confusing. However, I'm the type who believes you can enjoy anything for what it is--like an old rollercoaster. Sure its not as fast as the newer ones, but you still relish the experience.
It is surreal finding this via facebook. A unique time in history of comic books where horror was allowed.
ReplyDelete