Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Jack Cole's Deadly Horror / Custodian of the Dead (book preview)
The latest blood curdlin' book in the IDW / Yoe Books Chilling Archives series is IN STORES NOW-- it's Jack Cole's Deadly Horror and it's ready to assault your senses with 160 pages of full-color madness and terror! Click HERE to get your copy... in the meantime, check out an amazing selection from the book taken directly from the Nov '52 issue of Web of Evil #1, Cole's fabulous reworking of Henry Kuttner's creepy classic "The Graveyard Rats." And stay tuned for contest information in our next post about your chance to not only win a copy of this great new release, but also an ENTIRE set of Chilling Archives books as well as the new issue of Haunted Horror-- and more!!!
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11 comments:
@Mestiere - for most western societies, the reason is biblical. Not that it makes it any more logical, but that's the reason for the burial practices.
This is a great story; it's very B&W, Horace is just evil through and through and that's enhanced by Cole making him an ugly and deformed man.
I don't know if the author intended this (other than to fill a longer page count), but the bit with the tomb is a great piece of writing: at this point Horace has a huge stash of gems and gold (not counting the bonus ones he just pocketed) and ample evidence that Madison has been re-animated to stop him. Now would be the time to skip town, but his anger, greed, and vengeance force him to his ultimate fate.
Unlike a lot of the "victims" in this story, he had the chance to win, but threw it away.
The coloring is also very good in this one, with the slight misstep of the nearly whited-out rain panels.
This art is predictably wonderful, no need to beat that dead horse. But man the color work on these pages was also super great. Especially page two (and of that, especially the second and third panels). So much time and energy poured into crafting those subtle shifts and overlays. I can't wait to check out the rest of this book when it gets here in the mail.
Just got mine in the mail today - beautiful book. Can't wait for the next one.
I think we should all take our horror hats off to salute Karswell for producing the best horror blog on the internet. He basically spoon feeds us regarding source material. Everything is properly annotated with the proper links to the GCD. I can't say that about other blogs that may only cater part-time to horror.
Having said that, I hope you continue to post Atlas stories. It would be great if you posted one complete issue in installments, including story texts.
I think this was adapted in the second Trilogy of Terror film. Or the filmmakers borrowed a lot inspiration from this tale.
You are completely correct, Alex. The first story in the made-for-cable horror anthology Trilogy of Terror 2 is based on the same Henry Kuttner story, the Graveyard Rats. That particular story has been anthologized, like, hundreds of times in hundreds of formats--including this comment section, now. Happy Halloween, enjoy.
Hey thanks for all the kind words and great comments here... I'll have more for you shortly, been a busy month around here, in the meantime you all might be interested in my OPERATE A HAUNTED HOUSE posts over at my other blog AND EVERYTHING ELSE TOO-- be back soon!
The interesting thing is that this is not on a reworking of "The Graveyard Rats" by Kuttner, but the first part of the story where he gets bitten on the legs, and the mention of the cheap caskets is taken directly from "In The Vault" by H.P. Lovecraft. So we get to enjoy elemnets from two masters in the same tale.
I don't usually recognize those things, but I wondered about "In The Vault" as soon as the cheap caskets part was mentioned, but then I thought I might be wrong, until I got to the part where he tries to escape by piling caskets up to the window.
What's funny is that (as far as I know) this was written when Lovecraft was still supposed to be such a neglected horror writer, so it's nice that at least SOME horror comic writers were noticing his stories.
I have been searching for the his story since I was a kid in the early 50's. My parents took these comics away from me when I kept having nightmares. Thanks for the post.
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