Saturday, August 16, 2014
Kermit the Hermit
Told ya we'd be back shortly! One more Atlas classic for Rachel (who made an awesomely generous dollar donation last week-- thank you, dearie!), --and from the same issue as the last few story posts, an uncredited tale with bite from the July 1953 issue of Adventures into Weird Worlds #20. Thanks again to those of you that participate with engaging comments, as well as those that actually contribute something useful and worthwhile to this blog/ger-- you're the ones that keep me going :)
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8 comments:
"If I can dope out the setup, maybe I can figure an angle for pulling this job."
That's a huge amount of crime story slang for one single sentence.
I like the (uncredited) art here -- it's a very clean, very efficient style, and the dog-like look he gives to the hermit is great (and, of course, completely different on the cover where the artist only had the story title to go on.)
One thing that's interesting about these crime/horror stories is the old saw that criminals will always go for easy prey, but in horror stories, they literally move mountains just to get at some weirdo in the woods just because one person mentioned he might have gold! Isn't there any more banks he can rob?
Bit of an anti-climax at the end, but the penultimate image of the hermit is pretty creepy.
Enjoyed the earlier comments
While the story was a neat little Atlas tale, the twist ending could have been more twisted if-
-The pack of dogs were drawn as wolfhounds and they were all a family of werewolves who chose to stay in wolf form to avoid suspicion. Kermit kept his human form because he was the head of the family.
-The dogs were all formerly human but were turned into dogs by Kermit for trying to steal his fortune.
-Kermit turns out to be a wizard and turns Pete into a cat/fox/rabbit for the dogs to have some fun with before the grisly end.
As always, there are so many different twists to be added to a story like this.
Another great find as always, Karswell.
All the art was great, but I thought page one was just flippin' gorgeous. Such a very self-assured use of high-contrast shapes--there's really very little in the way of line work composing the splash--to make nighttime panels. It's a technique that can come off blobby and indistinct (or even fake and designy) when handled by less able illustrators. I wonder what the original art looks like? Some of the reason it works so well visually is that it's all been pretty subtly decoded by the excellent colorist (who wasn't at all lazy--all four colors are used to very subtle effect in the splash). All in all some excellent illustration advice packed into a fun killer hillbilly tale.
Excellent comments from everyone, thanks! Had a request for some Jack Davis-- coming up next!
The art has a hint of Fujitani's work at Crime Doesn't Pay. I don't know if he worked for Atlas in 1953, but it looks like artist one could find.
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