Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Blood for the Vampire!

A nicely illustrated Nodel and Alascia vampire yarn for you today from Avon Periodicals June-July 1952 issue of Eerie #7 (and fyi: you'll enjoy this one alot more if you read the crazy narrative in Bela Lugosi's voice.) Also dig that Wood / Orlando (?) cover, it contains an interesting visual idea of a vampire returning to his coffin to find a young couple about to stake his-- ghost?!











And speaking of vampires, enjoy this fantastic illustration that Drazen Kozjan created for my son, Zander!

8 comments:

Brian Barnes said...

The wild hair and hand positions on the splash make me think the vampire is about to play us a rousing concerto on the piano!

I tried the Lugosi voice, but eventually fell into adding "blah, blah!" at the end of every sentence.

Page 7, panel 3 has great staging.

This one suffers from the one thing I always hated about some of these stories, the "as it turns out". "Did you stake him more than once?" Hunh? "Did you eat strawberry ice cream, have exactly 27 cents in change in your left pocket, and wear only one sock when staking him?"

Trevor M said...

That cover is really interesting -- it's got a whole mysterious story in itself.

I'm much more forgiving of the "as it turns out" thing if it is followed by something spectacular because of the mistake and then the mistake is corrected at the end to once again spectacular effect. Like in DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE where you're supposed to pray once the stake is driven through the vampire's heart. So there's that spectacular scene with Dracula pulling the stake from his own chest because the atheist hero and the defrocked priest won't/can't pray, and the eerie end on the cross with the echoing prayer as the priest redeems himself.

This story doesn't use it to any great effect like those, so it's a groaner. Love the splash, though, and nice illustration. Thanks for posting!

Dr. Theda said...

I did Not know of this "Eerie" comic series... As always love your posts And do often make mention of your Blog...
Hope to begin posting Scans of my old Horror comics from the 70's here at the "Crypt" ... Keep up the Great work.... Your "fiend" and follower ...the Doctor

SpaceLord said...

I like very much that the vampire is sporting a red bow tie!
But he really could do something about his hair.

Mr. Karswell said...

>I tried the Lugosi voice, but eventually fell into adding "blah, blah!" at the end of every sentence.

That's the point-- blah, blah!

>That cover is really interesting -- it's got a whole mysterious story in itself.

Yeah, I had an idea about possibly having a contest around the cover, (best story behind the cover wins something) but then I came up with a better idea for a contest-- STAY TUNED for details!

>Hope to begin posting Scans of my old Horror comics from the 70's here at the "Crypt"

Your blog is alot of fun, Doc. Keep up the good work too!

>I like very much that the vampire is sporting a red bow tie!

You should see the cute lil pink bats on his underpants!

Got a couple more from this issue coming up next, stay creepy peeples!

Drazen said...

You should see the cute lil pink bats on his underpants!

hehe

yeah that cover is really cool, it is a really great idea/image..
the art of the story is great but this might seem strange , but the writing/dialogue is really stilted.. everyone speaks in the same voice.. I've just read a bunch of Witch's Tales and this seem o really pop out how little effort was put into dialogue.

Well Zander gets all the credit for a wicked title and and cool pose and you get some credit for being fun to behead.

d

Mr. Karswell said...

Haha, Drazen you kill me-- literally!

Mr. Cavin said...

Just catching up, so I know I'm kind of late to the conversation. But I disagree with the general tenor about the moments in this story, like the "as it turns out" moment cited above, where the rules governing the fiction start to get somewhat thin. I agree that this is often when the writers start to cheat. In this story, however, it seemed very much like this was being used as a literary method of illustrating how broad and convenient mythology actually is. These scenes illustrate plainly how traditional stories tend to exist and mutate somewhere between the tellers and the listeners. And while this isn't always the case when it comes to comics, I feel like a literary device was entirely premeditated here. When I read this story, I thought it was one of the most mature and interesting takes on small town superstition and the tragedy of a supernatural reality--look the villagers are the ones actually making up the rules governing the vampires who plague them--and, as it turns out, I think it is much, much better than average because of it.