Friday, April 15, 2011
Beware the Graveyard Clay
We haven't looked at an ACE comic in awhile, so for all you artists here's an obnoxious one from the March 1953 issue of Baffling Mysteries #14. This issue also contains the super great "The Dead Are Never Lonely" story that I posted about a year ago HERE (check it out after you read today's post!)
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6 comments:
I love how his problems go from having the phantom devils acting out whatever happens to the clay figures, to also being haunted. The frame with the two devils and the patron/father taunting him is so fun. Thanks for posting, as always! :)
Reemeber, kiddies! Stay out of graveyards; (unless you've got business there!). And don't play with any strange clay you find there!
Seriously; what if it wasn't witches? Suppose everyone here was, (Hmmm!), let's say, just for the heck of it, *Japanese* and it was (more or less; at least since the earthquake/typhoon/nuclear accidents); now? And suppose "Wiseguy the Sculptor" was an excessive giant monster or robot fan of the kind that back home would be called an "otaru"; so he decided, (at least innocently; let's give him that instead of making him the male version of a "golddigger"!); to make a statue of his favorite giant monster or robor? Hmmm?
Just to put a little 21 Century into this thing; although the original "Gojira" ("Godzilla" to us "Yanks"! came out in 1954!)
DBurch7670
I think the tag-team of devils in luchador shorts tipped this one into brilliance.
And, looking at the balance of fifties horror, it seems like there is no more demon haunted, unlucky, and amoral diabolical menace to society than the talented fine arts sculptor. I mean, every one of these guys are just magnets of doom and villainy eager to cast their evil shadow across the unsuspecting. Is there something to this? I mean, I don't think I've ever met an actual fine arts sculptor before. Did they all die by their own evil creations back in the golden age, then?
This one had me off balance from the first panel. The sculptor is drawn as if he's blind, he's staring blankly straight ahead, he's not focusing on his patron or his sculpture.The second panel indicates he can see the patron's mansion. Then the third panel shows the patron's daughter staring three feet to the right of the sculptor when they are introduced. Is she blind?
So all this made me think of Alicia Masters the blind sculptor appearing in The Fantastic Four. Naw, they can see, the artist just can't draw people talking to each other.
Then the "special clay" with voodoo-like powers is introduced and that made me think of The Puppet Master, also from The Fantastic Four comic.
Mr. Cavin mentioned the other sculptor-as-doom-magnet stories in pre-code comics. There were also all those sculptor horror movies over the last 70 years or so, like Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933).
I also liked those demons in the swimming trunks.
Mr. Cavin; I agree with you! But, I don't know if the "fine-arts" sculptor was worse than the "Ugly Laws" (Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law) victim! (Sorry I couldn't make this a clickable Link!)
Also; in my last post I was thinking that the clay would have come from where ever that damaged reactor is in Japan! (or maybe Hiroshima or Nagasaki while I'm at it!
DBurch7670
They are places where some people finally find – in Earth’s welcoming bosom – the peace and solitude they craved for their entire lives. Is there really an afterlife? No one really can tell for sure.
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