Friday, April 13, 2012

The Vampire's Bane

Another ACG vampire tale points its bloodless, agelessly beautiful, flapping winged, boney finger of doom at you today, this time from the May 1951 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #19 (inks by Art Gates and pencils from Frank Siminski.)










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And for more wartime era vampire thrills, Kim Newman's inventive follow-up fantasy ANNO DRACULA: The Bloody Red Baron is now available! Click HERE!
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5 comments:

  1. Trevor M4/13/2012

    This is a pretty fascinating piece of work if you put it in context of the era when it was published. It is clearly a Korean War vet's posttraumatic stress disorder story, almost certainly written by somebody back from that and dealing with his issues in a pop culture format. I thought it was very compelling. The vampire woman seems to represent perhaps a prostitute the vet was involved with overseas? Who can say. Thank you VERY MUCH for posting this unique piece.

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  2. Mr. Cavin4/13/2012

    "Don't be absurd, Bob. That's just one of those leather-clad S&M nurses that're all the rage these days!" That might not seem perfectly normal to us in this modern era, but remember: this was back in the days when a doctor might send your next of kin a gore-smeared murder weapon to remember you by.

    I like all the parts where Bob socks a vampire Ho Slave in the face. Especially in the splash, where the flying monkeys are depicted as actually glowing in the dark. And I am especially thrilled with the sound effect "YAAAK!" in the second-to-last panel. You can clearly see the lady's even holding her own hair back....

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  3. Tim Whitcher4/13/2012

    That got right talky real fast!

    Vampire in a Superhero outfit, green freaky grinning bat fiends, square jawed hero
    and a hot blonde. What more could a ten year old boy need?

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  4. Brian Barnes4/14/2012

    I think we've found the definition of "contrived"!

    Did I miss it, or how was our hero supposed to save the vampire lady? What *is* the vampires bane? What happens when it's fixed? Did this story have an editor? All important questions!

    BTW, she doesn't make a sexy vampire (the cape is just too bizarre), but does make one sexy nurse. I might be willing to re-injury myself! Trudy who? I think I'll stick around the hospital!

    "Hello, I'm your doctor. Yes, your nurse is bone white, that doesn't ring any alarms for me, nothing to worry about!"

    Did you notice the one odd thing about this story -- all the sound effects are just lettered in, instead of being balloon letters. I hardly ever see that.

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  5. Mr. Karswell4/17/2012

    Yeah I like this one quite a bit too... hope to get another story up from this issue next, if I ever get a day off from work! Stay tombed...

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