Monday, September 24, 2007

Surprise!

A spooky Jack Keller classic from the March 1953 issue of Adventures into Weird Worlds #16, this issue also has one of my all time favorite pre-code vampire girl covers!





7 comments:

Anonymous said...

GREAT STORY!!! I LIKE GLANCING AT THE THUMBNAILS BEFORE CLICKING AND ENLARGING THEM AND I THOUGHT THIS WAS GONNA BE A MUMMY STORY....GOT MY OWN TWIST ENDING

Anonymous said...

never thought gypsys were scary until i read this one.....oh yeah and the old lady from the wolf man

Mr. Karswell said...

I'm always amazed that Atlas was able to find such consistantly good artists with this direct, uncluttered "clean read" style like Keller, also see Sinnot, Dipreta etc...

Anonymous said...

It's also very effective to see someone tell the story from a more visual approach, instead of overloading every panel with word balloons. This also helps the pacing feel more natural.

Anonymous said...

This is off topic, but when I saw the word Surprise!, I thought of the John Carradine episode of Night Gallery.

Anonymous said...

I agree about the effectiveness of using clean,uncluttered art with minimal text,and some individual panels,like Stephen's ghost transforming,and pg.2 panel 1,are minor masterpieces,sometimes i think the only reason E.C is so popular with comic-haters is that they dont feel embarassed reading comics since they're actually reading text,but at the same time,minimal text and silent panels can be just as effective,and more subtle,E.C's "THING FROM THE GRAVE" pales in terms of plot and art next to Atlas's "ZOMBIE!",but is more respected since it uses text,but is a basic "love triangle + murder= zombie revenge" story,while Atlas evokes pity for it's "villain" and tells the story though his POV(even though its in 2nd person)and comes up with a REAL twist,so which is better overdoing it,or minimalism?and so as not to be a hypocrite and hog space,i'll cut to the point;sometimes simpler is better.

Mr. Karswell said...

"And in time they began to realise that there was more to pre-code horror than just EC... but then the rats and cockroaches joined their mutated hands together, stood on their evolving hind legs and in unison devoured the last of mankind's filthy, savage race... and the atomic winds blew hard and cold, sweeping away the last traces of civilization, the debris that was once called humanity..."