Saturday, September 13, 2008
Buried Alive
Does the trick of being "buried alive" while relying on someone else to dig you up in the nick of time (you know, before you suffocate to death) ever really work out to anyone’s advantage in pre-code horror comics? Whenever someone in one of these tales comes up with this brilliant plan for whatever purpose, you just know it ain’t gonna turn out pretty… no spoiler there I suppose. And like the Jack Cole post from yesterday (with its own equally ill fated ending), this one also comes from the Feb ‘54 issue of Web of Evil #11
Man,Pepe sure was devoted.Hugo also seemed to treat him fairly,unlike a lot of other bad guys with henchmen.wonder how their act woulda gone if they teamed up with Gallico the Great(decapitator)?.
ReplyDeleteHere's to the old Simulated Death Routine - letting people horribly down since Romeo and Juliet. :D
ReplyDeleteHm. Somehow the splash panel from the sequel got stuck onto the beginning this installment. That's okay, I know how that one ends, too. What I'm really interested in is the spin-off from page five, panel four:
ReplyDelete"I had a Date with a Gravedigger!"
Starring a mustachioed Nils Asther as the sexton who must date tonight (and every night!).
NOTHING CREEPIER OR MORE HORRIBLE THAN BEING BURIED ALIVE I BET. I LOVE THOSE PANLES ON PAGE 5 AND 6 WHERE WE SEE INSIDE THE COFFIN. THANKS FOR GETTING MY WEEKEND OFF TO A DISTURBING START!!
ReplyDeleteDeadest Saturday on record around here. I apprecioate the few of you who stopped by today and commented, but seriously, should I just start chucking weekend postings? I'd hate for a story to get overlooked just cuz it's the weekend. Let me know what everyone thinks.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow: Jay Disbrow!
I arrived late today ; anyway another great story : LOVE the artwork , this is not Fox or Cole , but the close up panel on page one is memorable !
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing
very cool story, dozens of variations on this buried alive theme but this seems like one of the better ones
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the weekend posts and would hate to see them go. it is weird how everyone just disapears on saturday and sunday though
?
Christ in a Chrysler...Hugo almost deserved his fate for entrusting his life to a halfwit like Pepe. I wouldn't have counted on that guy to lead ants to a picnic, never mind dig me up.
ReplyDeleteOh, and...yeah. That whole murder thing was bad, too.
I intend to start working the phrase "pack up, Pepe!" into my conversations from now on.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't just you - Flickr's like Grand Central through the week and like a crypt on the weekends.
And I was surprised there was so much activity here during the holiday weekend last week. But to answer your question:
ReplyDelete"...should I just start chucking weekend postings?
It depends. If you are finding yourself wanting to rescue some time for other things, it seems like the weekends are a good time to do it. Obviously that's what many of your readers are doing.
Or, if you are eyeing a dwindling resource you wish to prolong, then you should definitely do it. Obviously it would be better to have five years of weekday-only THOIA than just three and a half years of full weeks. For example.
But, if you don't mind weekend posting for these meta reasons, then keep doing it. Honestly, for whatever it's worth, there were some who people came by on Saturday. And possibly it's become routine for some of your readers to enjoy a three-story Monday morning. Maybe they even look forward to that.
One of the problems with the blogging format, especially for a gallery cache such as you have, is that it reinforces a unhelpful "date-ism", a prejudice against interacting with archived information. RSS feed subscriptions and web 2.0 tagging have helped solve this to some extent. But nothing changes the overall fact that you are creating, and we are reading, a database in the language of a journal. This places an undue emphasis on timeliness.
But whatever. Obviously some people are stopping by, and more will be reading through the week. I don't think your numbers are surprisingly low for what's basically the last weekend of Summer. So don't worry about it.
>finding yourself wanting to rescue some time for other things
ReplyDeleteWell this has been the case since Day One of THOIA. Not really that much of a concern though since I work from home, and as I've mentioned on another blog it doesn't take me long to put together a post anymore now that I've got the scanning and image correction etc all down to a fine science.
>if you are eyeing a dwindling resource you wish to prolong
Not even coming close to a dwindled resource. Between what's left in my own collection and of course contributors like Brian Hirsch, THOIA could likely be around forever.
Possibly I spoke too soon today, but it is something I've been thinking about for awhile anyway. Thanks for writing Mr C, and to everyone else who commented today too.
I love weekend postings; this is a rare case where I got behind.
ReplyDeleteFirst time I have heard of suspended animation where the guy took a time out, then picked up where he left off.
Pepe needs his own spinoff!
ReplyDelete