Saturday, March 1, 2014
The Curse of the Fool Moon
Back in January I posted a freaky Frank Robbins vampire tale (click HERE if you missed it), and now today I have another great one illustrated by him as we kick off March 2014 with a Week of Werewolf posts! Today's terrifically illustrated howler comes from the Feb - March 1975 issue of Weird Mystery Tales Vol. 4 #16, and David Michelinie's story is a bit reminiscent of I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) --a horror film classic that's a favorite here in Karswell's Kastle!
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ReplyDeleteWertham High, huh?
ReplyDeleteRobbins was (as I've said before) one of those guys who talent was best served by being put on the right stories, and this is one of them. His elongated and wire-y figures work well in supernatural horror stories.
ReplyDeleteThis might be the first actual horror story I remember from Michelinie, who did one of the best runs of Iron Man anybody has done.
Robbins drew one sexy teacher on page 7!
This story has the same ending I find sort of odd; yes, I would never want to kill anybody, even bullies, but at the same time, if my curse it to become a werewolf 3 nights (sometimes 4) out of the month, but I get immortality out of it? I think I can find a way to deal with it. It doesn't seem like the worse curse ever.
The next story post is also written by Michelinie.
DeleteMore werewolf madness coming up-- thanks for the comments!
Yeah, that was certainly a clever way to make sure all the characters were branded with a W throughout the story. Kind of a riff on Fritz Lang's chalk M too, right?
ReplyDeleteA whole week of werewolf stories! Not only is that excellent, but it sounds like a farmer's almanac clichés about time being protracted or foreshortened or just passing in long increments between events. Like "many moons" or "a month of Sundays." Man, it's been a week of werewolf stories since the last time we had a good cheerleader death!
I had to look again, but Brian Barnes is right about the teacher. The rest of her definitely clashes with the stereotyped glasses and hairstyle. (I wonder if she had any "Tea and Sympathy" type scenes with any of the male students?)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of that subject, Marcie at the beginning really resembles that one particular hostess of THE WITCHING HOUR. Was this drawn by the same artist as a lot of those?
I'd be a bad reader/werewolf fan/werewolf if I didn't speak up in support of Week of Werewolves. Some nice new stuff here! I was surprised Courtney was established as the werewolf so early on, instead of someone else very coincidentally shadowing him. And as others have said, at least he gets to live forever, and avenge his mother's idiocy sooner or later. Although in the comics, most "immortal" werewolves don't survive six pages.
ReplyDeleteone of my all time favorite comic book covers and one of my all time favorite horror comic stories. i love the art work by the late, great frank robbins. this story made a big impression upon when it was first published and i was in 7th grade. thank you.
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