Saturday, November 19, 2011
The Middle Toe
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot is an excellent ghost story written over 100 years ago by the great Ambrose Bierce. Ed Goldfarb's visual attempt at bringing this tale to life in the August 1952 issue of Beware #11 falls a bit flat, (especially the final revelation), but for you issue completists this is the fourth and final story from this one--- yes, another complete issue posted here at THOIA! The other stories in the archive are: Wrestling with Horror, The Horror Heads, and the truly awesome The Murderous Mimics! And if you're interested in checking out the original Bierce tale click HERE!
Really, it would have worked better had she lost all the digits on one hand, save for the middle finger.
ReplyDeleteStill unable to enlarge the pages. :(
ReplyDeleteI have to right click on the pages individually to enlarge them.
ReplyDeleteAn obscure story, made less comprehensible as a comic. It gave Goldfarb a good chance to draw mustaches.
Wow. I think English was a second languaqe to this author! lol
ReplyDelete>would have worked better had she lost all the digits on one hand
ReplyDeleteIt works perfectly fine in the original Bierce story, that's why I said this comic adaptation falls flat.
>An obscure story, made less comprehensible as a comic.
I've never thought of this as one of Bierce's "obscure" stories... in fact, this was probably the very first story of his that I ever read, reprinted in one of those Scholastic books I got from the school library when I was a kid. I've seen it in quit a few other ghost story collections too. But yes, definitely not one of his better tales to try and adapt into an 8 page comic!
>I think English was a second languaqe to this author!
That's why the Beware series is more fun than it should be, hacky writing and flimsy art sometimes translates into 'so bad it's good' entertainment. More of that coming up here shortly too, thanks for the comments.
perhaps Obscure wasn't the best choice, but I meant it more in the manner of telling- there's a lot of obscurity in it instead of laying everything out on a plate.
ReplyDeleteI liked it. Good twist in the end :)
ReplyDeleteIt works perfectly fine in the original Bierce story
ReplyDeleteYes. And it could work fine in a comic book adaptation, but would take someone who could do dust and shadows and appropriately selected odd-angles. Ingles could have done it; Jones could have done it; Steranko could do it; Wrightson could do it.
BTW, I think that this story ended-up being obscure because its twist, in abstract, has been so often imitated as to make the original seem trite. (Cf Kuttner's story “The Time Locker”.)
1842 looks surprisingly modern, eh?
ReplyDelete