From the January 1953 issue of Strange Mysteries #9
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Zombie Vengeance
Or: I Don Juan to be a Zombie! I’m very interested in your comments today on this one, I mean, it’s another typically crummy Superior Comic print job, but oh what a glorious tale of the living dead! And I don’t know about you but I get a strong smiley sense of hot “sex-slave” perversion from the closing panels here. Yeah yeah, Fly Boy, we can’t blame you for choosing to stay there with your newfound, robotically obedient, subservient jungle Princess--- and riiiiight, all of your own “free will” …of course.
From the January 1953 issue of Strange Mysteries #9
From the January 1953 issue of Strange Mysteries #9
That's a weird one! Spooky, too, till I got The Cranberries stuck in my head.
ReplyDeleteI never know how to feel about the mild type of racism in these Haiti tales. I know they are running from black representations because its the fifties. And I'm generally okay with that because half the time those representations are far worse, when included, than the fact of their denial. Still, I can't quite wrap my head around this strange world where Haiti is filled with blue and blonde people.
ReplyDeleteAnd trees! I've been to Haiti, and there certainly aren't any trees there anymore. Haiti has been nearly totally deforested, it's a pad of red mud eroding at breakneck speeds. But back in the early fifties, maybe the trees hadn't all been cut down for the charcoal industry yet. Still, the jungle look adds to this otherworldly Haiti, exotically imagined, worlds away form the real place.
"I must be a thousand miles from civilization!" he says.
That's subtle. Haiti is about two hundred miles across, and a little less than that top to bottom. He's only about seven hundred miles from Miami.
I had much the same reaction as Mr Cavin to that “thousand miles” nonsense. With Penton's poor navigational sense, it's no wonder that he crashed! As the crow flies, there's no place on land in Haiti that's more than 192 miles from any other place on land there.
ReplyDelete" take me, master! " yeah, right!!!
ReplyDeleteseven hundred miles from miami? so, the thousand miles from civilization thing was wrong. . .how, exactly?
heh. nah, i'm just yanking your chain!!
I wonder if the flyboy would have been so quick to want to stay with Lily if she hadn't stayed pretty. But then, she's freshly dead...in a year or so her looks might well suffer. But by then the suggestion is that Tom will be zombified himself, so he probably won't care.
ReplyDeleteAh, lurve.
Love this kind of wacky unintentional humor ; the pilot entering the tavern thinking "what a strange creatures" seems more out of a MAD magazine , rather than a pre-code horror ...anyway the story has some great moments art-wise , like the splash page and the panel with the living dead leading the leashed zombie-hounds ...
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing !
That Tom Penton... Wot a man! He musta watched Haeckel's Tale, and realized that being a zombie isn't all bad. Rigor Mortis certainly licks the problem of erectile dysfunction, donnit?
ReplyDeleteI Wanna Be Your Ghoulfriend
An' if you let me be your ghoulfriend
I'll never let you down
Could we ever get together?
And if so, tell me how
Will I ever see your pale complexion?
Get to kiss that twisted mouth?
So if you let me be your ghoulfriend
I'll never let you down.
- Zombina and the Skeletones
What a splash! Giant Skull Woman with Jesus Halo, Beautiful Blond Bondage, Zombie Church Congregation, Flyboy Shock, Nonsensical intro paragraph...It's almost too much!
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit confused by the Zombie Lore version being used here--typically the zombie master was not himself a zombie, and it's the first I've heard of becoming a zombie of one's own free will as a trope, but a lot of the fun of stuff like this is seeing how the writers make up their lore on the fly in service to the story.
The art here is quite good, imo--page 4 especially has lots of hotness on it, and the "zombie dancing dip on pg. 7 is also great.
As to the sex-slave subtext, I think it's not very "sub" here--it's hard to read "TAKE ME, MASTER!" in any other way. The unanswered questions at the end are rather intriguing though--I mean, Juan's still out there with his zombie hounds and Tavern of the Living Dead, so Tom's decision doesn't seem particularly well thought-out. But then he's not thinking with the Big Brain, obviously.
And of course, Zombie Hounds > Hulk Poodles. "They're dead...BUT TERRIBLE!" Which is to say, they're all messed up...
LEAD ME TO THE JUNGLE WITH A ZOMBIE BABE LIKE THAT!!!
ReplyDeleteOH MASTER INDEED
Wow that is a sick and twisted love story - but yeah not sticking to real zombie lore at all. But then I forgive them that because they gave me Zombie Dogs - oh yeah!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant set of comments here already this mourning gang, thanks to everyone for stopping by. I encourage you to check out the last three posts from our holiday weekend too in case ya missed anything, lots of good stuff... and definitely don't miss yesterday's ghostly pirate tale You Can't Cheat a Ghost, if anything at least gawk at that gruesome splash panel! Woo.
ReplyDeleteNot quite as twisted as that story about the two corpses that give birth to a zombie, but pretty close.
ReplyDeleteWOW! I just discovered your blog.... GREAT! I was a big fan of the old horror comics reprint mag TALES TOO TERRIBLE TO TELL, and this strip would have fit right in. Great stuff -- cool art, absurd to the point of surreal story, barely disguised sexual theme.... this is why I love pre-code horror trash! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteVery cool story, "Take me, Master" is best line since the killer mermaid's "Meat is good" awhile back.
ReplyDeleteFor zombies, they was a lot of independent thinking going on. Are there many other zombie animal stories?
ReplyDelete"Take me, Master" is best line since the killer mermaid's "Meat is good" awhile back.
ReplyDeleteAnd before that: "Coffee, boys?"
I really can't say anything that hasn't been said yet,except that someone should make a list of "hottest zombie girls of all time",only a necrophilious nut(or me)would be able to do it,but i'll be up to the challenge.....i don't know whether to be proud or filthy now.see ya tommorow(with the list.).
ReplyDelete