LATER THIS WEEK ON THOIA: Cannibals! Gnomes! More Vampires!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Slow Death in Quicksand
In our last post, "The Real McCoy", THOIA reader Todd commented on the father character in that story and sarcastically awarded him the "World's Best Dad of 1954." This gave me a good laugh, as well as the idea to give out the same award to another proud papa of perfection, this time for 1953 (and from Dark Mysteries #15.) What was the point to make this excursion a family affair? Who knows, but while harkening back to other THOIA themes like "Stupidest Killers Weekend" and "Most Deserving of a Gruesome Death," it's also what makes this tale so startlingly unique, and goddamn hysterical.
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14 comments:
I like how vicious the kids are. The only hero in this story is the snake. I hope the snake gets some treasure.
The sociopath bunch! Or is it Family Affair, the evil version?
Vicious children, cruel parenting, greed, and quicksand.
That brings to mind 'Stick In The Mud', a piece from 'Mysterious Adventures'. I never actually read it, but the plot elements were cited in the infamous 1955 Senate report linking comic books to juvenile delinquency.
Do you happen to have the story, Karswell? It might benefit those of us who are far closer to senility than delinquency.
I'D LIKE TO PRESENT SOMEONE THE WORLDS BEST BROTHER AWARD TOO, HA!!!!!! CRAZY STORY......BY THE END I WAS LAUGHING LIKE CAPTAIN PETTGREW TOO.
Initially I was going to complain about how the first paragraph of the story gives the whole plot away, but then I read this thing to discover that's the least of its offenses. What a mess. It's almost as if this were some sort of insane round-robin where the staff passed the pages around the office and a different writer (or janitor) wrote each panel.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend (and not planning any trips to the beach with your fathers!) I wanted to say real quick that I appreciate all the story submissions many of you have been emailing to me, I'm just a little swamped right now with a few other things to get to first, but I will get your scans up shortly so hang tight, and thanks again!
And what's everyone think of the THOIA theme song? I get about a dozen emails a day from BOX notifying me that people are downloading it, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it. (If you haven't heard it yet, check the righthand sidebar underneath the THOIA tee shirt info up towards the top.)
NEXT UP: An asshole for dinner!
Wow -- what a family!
I like the way on the last page how father decides to ask for help from some living skeleton standing there.
"An asshole for dinner"? I'm not hungry.
i like how the narrator stopped droppin' his/her G's about a third of the way in. and yeah, skeletons in pirate garb are always a big help when it comes to gettin' out of quicksand...
Those Jubels make the Bundys look like the nicest people on earth.
Well, it's all in the fambly. I also couldn't believe how heartless the little brats were. And quicksand in the bay? A fantastic story! Thanks as always for the efforts Karswell.
"An asshole for dinner"? Can't wait!
This series was notorious for grim stories like this. It's why it is one of the best too!
Almost like a horror version of Arrested Development!
I read this story just now, two years after you posted it.
Laughing my head off about your comments...
"World's best dad"...
And the World's Most Hardboiled Family, I might add.
Hilarious.
This reminds me of a very similar story I saw a long time ago. It featured three young men, all brothers and they went to visit an old man in a cottage by a swamp who used to know them when they were kids.
He told them a story of how he hid some treasure in the swamp when he was a member of some pirate crew or something and the brothers throw him in quicksand to make him tell where exactly and leave him to die.
While they push a raft on the water ghosts appear and one brother is frightened and jumps overboard and is bitten in the throat by a snake. When the ghosts disappear the other two carry on and find the treasure but the ghosts appear again and the second brother runs away into the jaws of an alligator that pulls him underwater.
The last brother grabs the treasure and gets away but is pulled by a monster into the same quicksand pit back where they began and throws the chest at the ghosts pleading for his life. As he drowns the chest breaks open against a tree and the money flies out over the water carried by the wind.
The twist is that some people in a boat find some of the notes and recognize it as counterfeit phony money.
The similarities with this story amaze me.
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