Looking for more death on your dial? Check the THOIA Archives for Dial... City Morgue! And then tune in for the dementedly delightful D-E-V-I-L on Your Dial.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Dial "C" for Corpse
In our last post we dialed “Z” for Zombie, but today we dial “C”—for Corpse! From the May 1953 issue of Strange Mysteries #11, it’s another bat shit crazy example of Superior Comics brand of sick, sledge hammer style violence, plus another one of their typically wonderful (aka ridiculously stupid ass) trademark endings.
Looking for more death on your dial? Check the THOIA Archives for Dial... City Morgue! And then tune in for the dementedly delightful D-E-V-I-L on Your Dial.
Looking for more death on your dial? Check the THOIA Archives for Dial... City Morgue! And then tune in for the dementedly delightful D-E-V-I-L on Your Dial.
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13 comments:
This is a rare case where I think a story's stupidity is its appeal. Page three reads like a bad translation from a Romance language. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though nothing was really satisfactorily resolved.
>even though nothing was really satisfactorily resolved.
What do you mean? The story builds and builds and then... oh yeah, you're right... well, luckily the grass was wet.
I just Dial "H" for, of course, Horros Of It All. Nuff said, Horatio.
I can see that those Eerie Publications magazines wouldn't have to alter this artwork too much. What's that bloody mush on the tombstone in the last panel, his brain? Black and white would have a tough time capturing that shocking end!
A good way to begin the week. Thanks Karswell!
"Bill Walters had his revenge after all..."
Or, you know, after a couple of seconds. I'm a little surprised (and thrilled) that the story didn't end after page four. The reveal that it's a corpse who is calling, instead of a living cataleptic, is pretty tame but also kind of creepy.
Like, maybe the story should have been: frightened cataleptic rigs phone in grave. Later, his duplicitous wife gets a call that there's been an accident, etc. The crypt phone begins ringing the night after the funeral, but she won't answer, first out of greed, then out of growing shame, and later crippling guilt. For days, weeks, months, the phone rings incessantly. Okay, maybe she occasionally answers, experimentally, and then her husband's voice pleads, cajoles, begs, threatens--anything to get her to save him. Dig me up, dig me up. Eventually she goes completely crazy and digs his ass up. And he's dead, of course. Has been all along. Of course. The accident decapitated the husband months and months ago! So the widow is then committed to an asylum where she spends the rest of her life in a padded cell, but still calling her dead husband's grave on the phone every night and talking till the sun comes up.
The end.
but! what? hey, if...no! huh? and then...how? when...oh never mind, it was still awesome!
HA! ANOTHER WINNER, LOVE THOSE WTF ENDINGS.
"WTF ending?" There's barely a single panel in the whole story that isn't WTF! Page three is my favorite, though. Oddly colored ambulances they had back in the 50's if that second panel is any indication. Also, that dialog is unbelievable.
"LOOKS LIKE THIS ONE'S A GONER, DOC!"
"YEAH - MAKE OUT A DOA CARD AND PUT IT ON HIM!"
That's a bit cold even for a paramedic (or a "DOC"). I know some of you will argue this is a short story and defend this brusque exchange in the interest of brevity -- except look what's said in the very next panel -- twice! It's almost as if EVERYBODY in this microcosm is obsessed with death -- except the phone company, which I suppose is as it should be.
And what's with the freakishly long noses?
TAMFOS: LOL!
One more post ready to go for September 2009 and then we kick it up a notch or three for the greatest month of them all-- OCTOBER!!! Yayyy!!! Thanks again for the great comments, and I hate to sound like a broken ipod (I almost said record) but comments are important around here, so if you haven't already please Please PLEEEEASE get involved already--- I'm talking to you creepers out there that think I can't see you even though my statcounter tells me EXACTLY who you are. Come on!
You know what really makes me giggle? At the bottom of page four, Corpse Bill looks exactly like a teenage girl lying on her bed. "OMG, Alice! Pick up the phone! I totally know you're, like, screening me! Tcha!"
Boy, Bill rotted fast. Although, I guess if she'd had him embalmed, there would have been no doubt he was dead and therefore no story.
"Never saw one any deader!"
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