Thursday, September 24, 2009

Hands Off! / Drop Dead!

Two eerie Atlas classics for you today from the September 1952 issue of Amazing Detective Cases #14. This was the last issue of this excellent series before it folded permanently, and the Atlas Tales site has alot of question marks about who the actual artists are for both of these stories... what's everyone think? Roussos? Benulis? Abel?









I also want to again thank Jamie Wilson (of the always awesome 10 Cent Dreams blog) for his recent cool posts, but more specifically for nailing the coffin lid on our "Mystery Artist" month. The examples he has revealed on his own blog are proof that it was The Jack Binder Shop responsible for the stories we ran. Check it out by clicking HERE!

12 comments:

  1. That would have made good Nine Inch Nails cover art.

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  2. Anonymous9/24/2009

    TWO GREAT STORIES WITH AWESOME FINAL PANELS AND THE SENSE OF HUMOR THAT ONLY COMES FROM ATLAS. I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THE ARTISTS ARE BUT THE NAMES MENTIONED SOUND GOOD TO ME.

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  3. Kenneth Landgraf writes in:

    "DROP DEAD is drawn by: Benulis and Jack Abel. I was a friend of Jack's and He inked me several times at DC . He use to rent studio space at Neal Adams's Continuity Studio in NYC. I met Wally Wood there several times as he was friends with Able. so you are correct about the artists on that story. best KEN"

    Thanks Ken!
    ---K

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  4. Woo hoo! Can't beat Atlas tales! "Don't Touch" was a fitting end for the ugly American abroad. I wish karmic justice would befall more people who deserve it; maybe that's why I like old pre-code horror comics so much.

    The professor's untimely and horrific demise illustrates the old adage of responsibility coming with power. Looks like he couldn't handle it. I was rooting for him along, though.

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  5. I would stack Atlas Horror up against EC Horror any day of the week~ great stuff !

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  6. working in a museum i've run into plenty of that particular kind of jerk who just can't resist running around touching stuff and declaring it all to be fake. as for the second story, IF ONLY! just be careful what you wish for, blah, blah...

    "it's because of men like you that all men must die!"

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  7. Trevor M9/24/2009

    The only fault with DROP DEAD! is that the mugger is clearly turned into a werewolf in the drawing and not a gorilla as described in the dialog. Other than that, this is a fully realized 4 pager. A rare accomplishment. The last panel is outstanding and the stuff of nightmares.

    The loser in HANDS OFF! is just some retrograde subnormal who has to touch everything and never advanced past 4 years old. There are a lot of arrested development adults like that in the world, unfortunately. That's why we have so many problems. Here's Aleister Crowley's grandson (really, all that remains are genetic tests!) touching things he shouldn't. Exactly like the character in the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tTCpn7-xVo

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  8. Karswell: Besides being a very cool story, what I love about Hands Off is the coloring. It really shows the kind of beauty and imaginative use of color that was possible with the four color process. As always, thanks for sharing. -- Mykal

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  9. Anonymous9/24/2009

    Drop Dead totally made my day.
    Thanks!

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  10. Everything that happens in Hands Off! after Vesuvius' wonderfully loose and brush-strokey eruption effect is probably just an Owl Creek occurrence. Pyroclastic flows travel several hundreds of miles and hour, you know.

    It's the sort of luck I have, too. In fiction, people tend to fantasize, in that final second before the rope snaps tight, that their lives become happy and fulfilled--they marry the beautiful woman, they make millions in a successful endeavor, they are beloved by friends and strangers alike. But, like this idiot, I'd spend that last eternal second falsely convinced that I was being held into lava by petrified mummies.

    You know how somebody maybe told you that making that horrible face too long might leave you stuck like that? That's what happened to my mind.

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  11. Mr C: I still have a horrible face I made in 4th grade, only mine happened cuz I was being mean to a girl in class and then someone slapped me in the back while I was making the face--- and it stuck!

    Good comments today, keep 'em coming! UP NEXT: Horror vs. Sci Fi Weekend! Plus another JK request filled. Hang tight, it's coming...

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  12. Anonymous9/26/2009

    Nice stories, even if the endings were somewhat predictable. I used to work in a museum in Rome for a couple of years and unfortunately, the "ugly American type" seen in the first story does resemble some of the tourists we used to get fairly well.

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