Make it a double! For another great Gator Gal tale, check the THOIA Archive for--- Bride of the Swamp!
NEXT UP: Another Atlas request fulfilled!
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Drive In Movie!
Drive-In season is finally upon us once again, and what better way is there to celebrate this event (as well as Double Features) than with a hilarious THOIA post about—the Drive-In!
From the June-July 1955 issue of Panic #9 (art by Jack Davis)
"Hey--how'd you get so heavy all of a sudden, Lydia?"You know, you're just never supposed to say this, no matter how true it really is. And honestly, the second-person narrative is accusing me of being a woman again. That must mean I'm losing weight, right?
ReplyDeleteAwesome story, with some really weirdo art. It has an edited quality to it, like it's been murkied-up by shading revisions, or even enlargement, on a panel by panel basis. Maybe it's those strangely thick and inelegant lines. But it looks so different from the norm that I like it a lot anyway.
So where does a were-beast fall in the ol' zombie-to-pythoness hierarchy again?
I AGREE WITH MR CALVIN, VERY STRANGE ART BUT VERY COOL. WHEN HER ARMS START CHANGING IT KIND OF MAKES MY SKIN CRAWL! LOVE THE ENDING TOO.
ReplyDeleteTHE EC STORY WAS FUNNY AS HELL, JACK DAVIS IS AMAZING. THANKS KARS, ANOTHER WINNING DOUBLE FEATURE!!!!!
At the drive-in, in the old man's Ford...The art was super-duper keen in "Drive-In Movie" -- I love super-duper colour saturation!
ReplyDeleteLots to love about the "Beast of the Bayous." The odd art, the strangely frank dialog, etc. But the larger issue that I keep looking at in these horror stories in general is that they all (or most) seem to take place in a world where it's perfect reasonable to suspect a human being of being a were-snake, a were-gator, a swamp-monkey-pig man, a vampire, a witch, or whatever. In these stories, you can pull a woman with a bullet wound from the water and think to yourself "She's injured in the same place I shot the alligator. I wonder..." I don't know about everybody else, but in that situation, I wouldn't be suspicious at all. "Somehow she got hit" I'd think, and move on. Nobody seems to totally freak out (and I mean totally freak out!) at these absurd concepts, or their eventually revealed reality. It's as if somehow, all comics writers at this time came to a tacit agreement that the world they all would operate in wouldn't be like our world. The strange would be strange, sure, but not out and out fantastic. Not patently insane.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, this goofy netherworld populated by the (apparently justifiably) superstitious make it easier to move 5 to 8 page stories along faster, but how did it all happen in the first place? How did this blanket device for writing come about exactly? This may seem like a small thing to longtime readers of comics, but if you step back and get a little distance, it's an odd phenomenon to say the least.
There's something about that gator crawling away to the swamp with those human arms, resigning herself to a life in the swamps, that seems both sad and intensely creepy at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThis was great.
ReplyDeletegood to see some ec here too thanks man!
ReplyDelete"Blast, why didn't I bring my rifle?" Uhhhh, that IS a rifle, Dude. Shame on the editor!
ReplyDeleteI love how she just assumes Ouanga is a real witch. And that ribbon is a laugh riot. Nice, art. Very similar to Ingels before his 'ghastly' period when he just used a lot of shadows.
ReplyDeleteGood Bayou, ladies and gentlemen.