Returning to where we left off last Sunday, Sept. 6th and the uncredited, “Lou Finesque” vampire story illustrated by--- Frank Frazetta? Bill Everett? Syd Shores? Harry Anderson? Or how about Paul Gustafson (Gustavson?) Anybody? And like “Vampires Dance at Dusk”, today’s somewhat ho-hum tale has really nice art and is from another short-lived St. John’s horror series, the August 1952 issue of Weird Horrors #2 (thanks to Mark Borbas for the scans!) Is this the same artist? Begin scrutinizing!
NEXT: More Weird Horrors by ???
15 comments:
Still zero comments?
This is clearly by the same artist who drew Vampires Dance at Dusk. The only difference is that the reproduction quality isn't as good. You have a match, Karswell.
i don't know who this artist is but i like his way with the feminine form...
These scans are not mine but ones I found on various sites on the net. I extracted the jpegs to see if Karswell agreed with me that it was the same artist. A big thanks to the original scanners on these.
I checked out the tencentdreams post that Lysdexicuss noted. It's a signed Anderson story from the forties and it does look like the same guy, about 10 years earlier. Thanks L.
LOOKS LIKE THE SAME ARTIST TO ME TOO, RIGHT DOWN TO THE ROUNDED CORNERS OF THE FIRST PAGE AND THE TITLE LETTERING. KIND OF AN AVERAGE STORY BUT THAT SPLASH IS GREAT!
Thanks. That it's from the forties explains a lot.
Todd, I meant that the specific superhero story posted on tencentdreams was from the forties, which does help explain his art style a little bit. These St. John stories are from the early fifties, or at least were published then. If it is Harry Anderson, he did horror art for Atlas and ACG in the fifties also. I don't think he did much after that. Anyone?
This has to be the same artist, but we still don't have a name. The style (again) suggests that these may be reprinted, although if there are lots of such stories, that seems less likely. But as for the guesses so far, none really fit (with the possible exception of Gustafson, but even he took a much less regimented approach to layout, so I have my doubts). As for Frazetta, Shores, and Everett, there are many examples of their work out there from this period for easy comparison, and nothing matches.
Anderson is not so well known but if you look at his work, his sense of weight and mass is more accomplished than this fellow's (check out his Lambiek page for a couple of samples) and he also approached layout and panel construction much differently.
Still, this has been fun.
Crap, I'm getting confused! Harry Anderson did work for Atlas. Gustavson did art for ACG, two stories of which I mentioned in the other mystery post comments.
From Brian James Riedel:
Found these samples at Lambieks site, thought they were close enough for discussion. Rafael Astarita had a long career working for Chesler's shop on "Centaur" features. He also worked for National/DC, Fiction House, St. John, Fawcett, Avon and others. Here's the link:
http://lambiek.net/artists/a/astarita_rafael.htm
Also, we have two more sets of Weird Horrors story scan submissions by our "Mystery Artist of the Week" (both from Mark again, thanks!) for tomorrow. Everyone round up their know-it-all comic book buddies and let's figure this one out!
"…And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
The story was a mess! There were way too many characters in it and by the end, even the author seemed to have been confused – first, Mrs. Smyth was said to be the butler's sister, but one panel later she was suddenly his mother. Huh??
Nice splash page, though.
That was a confusing story.
Why did Mike stay behind while allowing his sister and frail, elderly father go to subdue a female maniac? Who is the old guy who snuck up behind Mike and bashed him with a club? Why did the butler stay in character as a half-retarded hunchback monster even when he was going into the swamp to dump Mike's body? How did Edna escape from the mysterious geriatric head-basher? Why was the butler/hunchback so insistent on trying to snatch Edna? And what was the butler's motivation to dress up like a hunchback and scare people in the first place?
The artwork confused me. All the characters kind of looked alike, and most everyone had black hair, so it was difficult to distinguish each character. There was no character expression in the faces, which were hard to read, and the eyes were difficult to read. In addition, the storyline was hard to follow. This was a frustrating read with no payoff.
Yep, we can all safely agree that this story stinks... anything good about it pretty much begins and ends with the gorgeous splash panel.
So any other last thoughts on who the artist could be, before I throw a couple more examples into your laps?
Wow. That Betty has a great sense of comic timing.
Almost as fast as she could say, "Don't step in the bog!"...
As for the artist, I must defer to the experts. But we can safely rule out John Belfi or Fletcher Hanks.
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