Monday, June 21, 2010
The Black Shadow / The Weasel Returns!
After spending some time in the black 'n white paperback 60's, we now return to the 4-color days of 1950's supernatural pre-code horror! Kicking things off with Fred Kida's "The Black Shadow" from the March 1952 issue of Amazing Detective #11, followed by Joe Sinnot's "The Weasel Returns!" from the September 1952 issue of Amazing Detective #14 (this one was a request from THOIA reader Mark Borbas.) More Atlas all this week... stay tuned!
That first story is awesome, in all the wrong ways yet awesome nevertheless. It's like a spooky cavalcade of stupid. As for the second story, I like the unambiguous ending. Sure, she's a widow, but it's about as happy an ending as you could expect here. Both have that wonderful dreamlike pre-code quality I love.
ReplyDeleteI AGREE WITH TODD, THE FIRST STORY IS GREAT.SHADOWS ARE CREEPY AND THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT MOVIE. THE SECOND STORY WAS COOL TOO BUT I'D LIKE TO SEE HER CASH THAT CHECK AND PROVE TO THE COPS SHE WASNT RESPONSIBLE FOR WEASELS DEATH! GOOD LUCK!
ReplyDeleteThere's some really wacky profiles of Mike in the first story (bottom of pg 3 for instance), and the whole secret order of shadows angle strikes me as a story that would appeal to young readers especially. I bet several kids went out and tried the salt-and-magic-word trick after reading that one!
ReplyDeleteBut the art in "The Weasel Returns" is just fabulous--love the stylized, shadowy faces and the strange coloring, particularly the green-tinted view of "Ticker" that makes him look like Sydney Greenstreet. In fact, no one else could play Ticker in the film adaptation, imo. As for Weasel, it's easy to say Peter Lorre, but he didn't have the schnozz for it. Maybe a young John Barrymore, Jekyll & Hyde era?
Always a blast to see Joe Sinnott - and he outdoes himself on this one - just so many different kinds of ugly on the male characters, and moody as all heck! (Well, not Don Heck, but you know what I mean.)
ReplyDeleteLove the Weasel story. I knew Sinnott was a great inker but haven't seen that much of his pencils.
ReplyDeleteSinnott is one of my faves too, and there's lots of his stuff in the THOIA Archive (Kida too) just use the handy blogger search engine at the top of the page.
ReplyDeleteAlso as mentioned, "The Weasel Returns" was a request from Mark Borbas, he noticed that I posted two other stories from this issue of Amazing Detective (Hands Off and Drop Dead) and asked if I could post The Weasel... so to further make you issue completists happy I'll have the rest of this issue in our next post-- a story about a couple crazy inventors, and one about a man with girl troubles. Both are coming up, thanks for the comments!
Amazing Detective is a great series, thanks for these posts!
ReplyDeleteKarswell, you're like a comics DJ, you play requests so fast! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThat Sinnott splash panel with the creepy hairy hands holding the Ace of Spades is awesome. Like the others, I love the faces, the coloring, the Sidney Greenstreet visual reference.
I agree with Todd and The Vicar on The Black Shadow. Stupid, but the kind of horror story that would stick with a younger reader. I seem to remember people talking about phantom-like Shadow People on Coast to Coast AM or some such program.
Thanks again Karswell.
Karswell: The Sinnott story is a revelation! Every character etched in pathetic fear, desperation, hate, or repulsive greed! I loved it. I have seen a lot of Sinnott's war stuff, but the great inker tailored things to fit the genre here, for sure!
ReplyDeleteOf course, as always, love those Atlas faces of bright green, blue and red!!
Sinnott's long been a favorite, and I loved his work here. I especially liked the coloring on the Sinnott story. But it's the first story that I thought was today's gem--its everyday strangeness making it dramatically oneiric, as others have already said. That second to last panel is a real stunner, and the weirdo concept here could stand up to even more treatment. I'm pretty sure that burning a shadow voodoo doll with matches would result in vaporizing large see-through holes in the subject. Right? Therefor, a laser pointer would be tantamount to a lightsaber and a disco ball some kind of Cuisinart.
ReplyDeleteToday's word verification: awedurl
Haha! Thanks for the continued comments, seems like the Sinnott story is the big hit winner of this post... thanks again to Mark Borbas for encouraging the post.
ReplyDelete2 more form this issue next!
i falled behind! never seen so much sweat and gritted teeth in one place! nice use of color and...shadow! HAW HAW HAW!!!
ReplyDelete