Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The Moth / Ghastly Awards

The July 1952 issue of Black Cat Mystery #37 contains this ghastly tale of buggy wuggy horror, awesomely illustrated by the great Warren Kremer... could've swore I posted this in the past, thanks to JT for reminding me that I actually had not. And Happy 2012, (whether its been happy or not so far.)




















NEWS! What's the Ghastly Awards, you ask? Click HERE to find out the ghastly details!








7 comments:

SpaceLord said...

I love Kremer's horror work.
He did way too little.
Just that handful for Harvey.
Shame, really. Let's cherish it.

Trevor M said...

Yes, nice art here. Love the moth dream, it's pretty disturbing. Could this story be the original source for the infamous Mothman sightings? He was seen by two young couples in the mid '60's. Did they read an old copy of this comic and experiment with some LSD that night? Or maybe old Martin really did come to life?

Gumba said...

The art was great but the story really suffered from the kitchen sink approach -- why the death in disguise ending? Wasn't "moths ate his brains" a gruesome enough ending?

And what was the scientific breakthrough? Did that have anything to do with the moths? The dynamos got a lot of mention but didn't go anywhere!

This seemed like a much larger idea for a story that either didn't translate well or wasn't edited well.

Some great work on the lettering, though, especially where it wraps around people.

FrankFay said...

Reminds me somewhat of H. P. Lovecraft's "Winged Death"

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/wd.asp

Anonymous said...

Put a pipe in the narrator's mouth and he looks a lot like Bob Dobbs (now that is a scary thought.)

Martin as a monster moth was pretty impressive in a night terror kind of way.

Great find as always Karswell!

Mr. Karswell said...

>I love Kremer's horror work

Me too, check out his cover art on this issue too-- STUNNING!

>Could this story be the original source for the infamous Mothman sightings?

If you find any connections Trev, let us know!

>This seemed like a much larger idea for a story that either didn't translate well or wasn't edited well

Agreed Gumba, I think Trevor hit it on the head with the LSD connection though to answer all your questions. Hey, at least we got some killer Kremer art out of it!

>Reminds me somewhat of H. P. Lovecraft's "Winged Death"

We can thank HPL for inspiring alot of precode horror.

>Martin as a monster moth was pretty impressive in a night terror kind of way

And in 30 years he changed his named to Arthur and became The Tick's sidekick! Awesome how things come full circle, eh?

More Black Cat Mystery madness coming right up!

Mykal Banta said...

This is fantastic stuff. I've always felt Kremer was one of the finest draftsman that ever worked in comics, and I certainly feel well supported in that view with this post! The panels of the lab on page two boggle the mind. What easy, naturally perfect perspective. WOW!