Friday, March 7, 2008

The Man Who Cried Vampire!

Just when you think you’ve seen every vampire story out there, along comes this freaky Joe Maneely classic with one of the most bizarre pre-code twists imaginable. No bullsh*#ting…

From the August 1953 issue of Strange Tales #21





15 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I DIDN'T KNOW...I DIDN'T...AR-G-G!"

HA! MANEELY'S STYLE IS SO FUN THAT IT MAKES EVEN THE CREEPIEST STORIES A BLAST TO READ.

Uncle Ernie said...

Maneely's pen work and the lettering, a lot of words, give an interesting, overall texture to the pages.

Anonymous said...

vampire......BULLS?

Anonymous said...

Great post! I loved the twist ending, who says vampires have to always be 2 legged humans?

The Vicar of VHS said...

Vampire Bulls! CRIPES!

Certainly did't see that one coming! And it looks like Clint Howard makes another appearance, at least on the splash page. I'll have to see if he was ever in any of the HBO Tales from the Crypt stories...apparently he was BORN to play these types of roles!

Oh, and nice cameo by Ted Raimi as the priest. ;)

Mr. Karswell said...

>vampire......BULLS?

No, FLYING vampire bulls.

>looks like Clint Howard makes another appearance

This character's facial features change quite a bit throughout the entire story. Around the middle of page 4 he briefly resembles Robert Taylor (with a moustache)...and then somewhere on the last page he suddenly becomes Richard Boone (uh, with a moustache.)

Mr. Karswell said...

Another bit of trivia: that's Elsie Borden in the opening splash panel... many people don't realize she had a very lucrative side career playing victimized cows in pre-code horror comics.

Anonymous said...

Great story. Started out kind of noir-ish, then unusual vampire finish! Loved it.
Keep 'em coming....and leave 'em up as long as you can. Many are worth revisiting. I never thought of printing them out. If you are forced to take some down due to space limitations, give us some warning. I guess I could also save them as web pages.

Adriano (Adrio) Petrucci said...

hi friend! excuse me, have written without thinking! I wanted to thank you, but have written in Italian! excuse me! I hope that you are liked my poster. return soon for seeing the new poster! hi and good job

Mr. Karswell said...

>If you are forced to take some down due to space limitations, give us some warning.

Will do!

Anonymous said...

you post alot of joemaneely stories and for that i am eternally grateful

Anonymous said...

Well,it's original....boy Stan must've not liked farm animals,we already saw that cow/dream story,and Atlas also did a story called "The Hog".

raven said...

Hmmm. . . what's to keep these vampire bulls in check? Why wouldn't they just go on a rampage, hence infecting all other cattle until there is no prey left? A-bull-ham Van Helsing?

Mr. Karswell said...

>A-bull-ham Van Helsing?

Good one.

Dane said...

Vampire bulls... well, there's something you don't see everyday. That was a fun one.