Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Bloody Sword
St. John's February 1955 issue of Amazing Ghost Stories #16 was a complete issue reprint of Ziff-Davis's Weird Thrillers #4 from the summer of 1952. With the newer title, we lose a gorgeous Norman Saunders painted cover, replaced by a still superb one from Matt Baker, while the inside art remains the identical "All-Star Who's Who" featuring spooky tales illustrated by Infantino, Kubert, Tuska, Roussos, and Kinstler, as well as todays nicely told, atmospheric ghost yarn from Dan Barry and John Giunta. Queue up some Slayer, kiddies... time to die by the sword!
This was great! I thought for sure that it would be the nephew would would run Uncle Bruce through, but Daddy Ghost did it.
ReplyDeleteJust think of it...a fine castle, a loyal butler, a sure sword, and best of all, hot little Tandy. What more could a young Laird need?
Another great one, I was a little afraid it was heading for Scooby Doo territory but it righted itself. The artwork and coloring are all of high quality (finally, one where the coloring didn't make it worse!)
ReplyDeletePage 4, Panel 3 is something you see a lot in pre-code -- missing cleavage. Yes, I'm embarrassed for bringing it up. Was it erased later by an editor? Never drawn in? Erased in the reprint?
Every time I saw Slayer (a long time ago) they always did Die by the Sword. Tom always announced it as "I heard the pen was mightier than the sword, well, f*** the pen! Die by the sword!" Always the most hilarious part of a Slayer show!
Ye tell a bloody good tale Karswel. a bloody good tale 'tis 'matey.
ReplyDeleteMan, for a strapping young laird, that guy was really concerned that the damn wind was trying to kill him. Paranoid lunacy, I'd say.
ReplyDeleteLoved the colors, especially at the bottoms of pages four and five. The sherbet lighting in the tomb was really wicked.
As for the question of cleavage, I'm not sure that anything is missing here. The then-current chic in décolletage, circa the early fifties, was to lift and separate the breasts as you see in the panel art. This was an aesthetic, if unrealistic, ideal--in reality a woman was usually only able to achieve this look with a bra. But the current, and opposite, aesthetic--to jam the breasts together and force them up toward the throat, making a plump buttock out of the cleavage--is very much a modern invention. It is also usually achieved by padding the lower outside corners of a bra cup. A real woman in a dressing gown wouldn't realistically look like that, either.
(For Mr. Cavin):
ReplyDeleteI'd look through the previous posts to see if I can find cleavage around the same time frame to check your theory, but I don't want to deny Karswell another good "search the archives" contest :)
Haha, I like how no matter what we're talking about around here, the focused usually winds up on boobies... fine by me! Thanks for the comments, I guess you guys and ghouls want to see the rest of this issue, right?
ReplyDeleteAre there boobies in it?
ReplyDelete