Sunday, January 18, 2015
The Zombie's Doom
Here's another one from the August 1952 issue of Forbidden Worlds #8, (see our last post too), art this time by Harry Lazarus who we have featured here at THOIA many many times over the years. And yeah, if anyone is curious, it was indeed a zombie that took a giant bite out of my cover,--thus forever sealing this issue's DOOM! More from this crazy issue in our next post too!
![]()
Geez, this was kind of touching. Some nice art in places, lots of melodrama. It almost seemed to be a metaphor for the woman who loves the hopeless alcoholic or drug addict or something -- except in this case it's some kind of weird necrophilia zombie-master thing. It's a shame he doesn't get to dance around with all those rotting corpses he wanted to raise, and get the girl, too. Poor zombie-master. A tear in my eye.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI knew a Living Vampire, but never heard of a living Zombie!
ReplyDelete"Dr. Esproc"...
"What a fine looking CORPSE she'd make!"...
There's a mexican mariachi with a mandolino in the "small haitian village", what's he doing there?
Yes, the story is somehow melodramatic and touching, but also incredibly funny.
No, I wouldn't say the writer is "mentally ill"... I'd say he's Ed Wood... could well be.
Aw,I liked it despite its many faults. The ending surprised me. I was expecting one of two endings: she had zombie connections herself, maybe Mistress of the Zombie Hordes, or alternatively the power of her love and innocence would save the guy. The actual resolution took me by surprise and I found it quite touching, although I still half-expected a zombie to spring from the shadows and tear her to pieces!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletegood lord...
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"I say she hallucinated the whole thing and I look forward to more stories about her and her next imaginary boyfriend, perhaps a mummy!"
ReplyDeleteNoo, not a mummy's boy!
I am always left stunned when I glance over all the analysis Mestiere does critiquing these stories! Probably this story was written in a half-hour while downing a few bourbons.
ReplyDeleteBut nonetheless, somebody who spends as much time and effort as Mestiere does critiquing these things so thoroughly, must have written a few themselves. Have you? If you have any, or one in mind (6 to 7 pages) packed full of the stuff we all really like here on THOIA, maybe you might share it with me and be interested in my drawing it up just for fun? I'm drawing an adaptation of a short story by Aleister Crowley right now, but that's a lot different than drawing a story actually written for comics by somebody else. I am eager for the experience. My email is on the top of the first page of TRIPLE THREAT! below.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like what J D La Rue 67 said, if this was made into a movie, it could only have been made by Ed Wood and ended up as a disaterpiece as only he could create.
ReplyDeleteA few holes in the logic-
If the corpses had a hard time of digging themselves out of the ground, why didn't the good doctor help them by digging them up?
Why couldn't Dr. Esproc take a trip to New Orleans Louisiana where the cemeteries are all above ground? If he had money to take a trip to Haiti he could have more easily traveled to the big easy and rise some Gumbo zombos before the eclipse. Better yet, why didn't he just bump off the girl and rise her as a zombie? He kept thinking what a good looking corpse she would have made, so why not go through with it?
This is one more comic tale where the idea had great promise, but a rewrite or two would have made for a more sensible tale.
Still, it was a good tale, grade B horror that it was.
Hey @Morbid, I tried my hand at writing a couple EC-style horror stories, if you want some, I'll drop you a line.
ReplyDeleteOK, this story: Yes, the Macguffin is silly; but it's there to drive the story. For every part of this story that is bonkers, I kept being drawn back that I *wanted* the relationship to work. They were characters -- even though their motivations were constantly suspect and turn-of-heel -- that I actually cared about.
And the ending made me sad.
Not as sad as the coloring!
I especially enjoyed the split personality being shown as two being tearing away from each other.
@Karswell; Strangely, the cover is torn right where the woman's bust would be. Have you gone all puritan on us?
Would a Puritan bite the 2D boobs off the cover? I think not!
ReplyDeleteI love how this post sent everyone on a high speed descent into Crazy Town... hopefully the next post produces the same affect.
A quick look through past postings on this great blog led me to the story "Cabinet of the Living Death" posted back on January 6, 2014. While this story isn't as bizzaro as Cabinet was, it had more than its share of logic holes and plot potholes. At least the art is much better in this tale than Cabinet had.
ReplyDeleteOh, Mestiere, I don't want to put you on the spot, I just thought you were so into these things (more than the writers were, sometimes!) that maybe you might be working away on something. Don't have any contact info for you, so I left a message here. Please, keep critique! Don't let me critique you, critiquing!
ReplyDeleteBrian, by all means. Send me whatever you think is your best. Take your time, polish it if you want, a fully scripted comic book story, page for page, even panel for panel if you do it that way, and then I can draw it up just as you wrote it. That would be a great experience for me.
I'm looking forward to this collaboration :)
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I am pretty sure this is the best story I have ever read or seen in my entire life. Seriously. Also, I would pay *good money* for a hardback coffee table volume wherein thirty different artists illustrated this one story over and over. Sergio? Bernie? Corben? Watterson? Bode? I can't imagine any interpretation being a waste of my time. Morbid, I do not understand why you need to cast your net any further than this very post. This is the story for you! Hell, even I want to take a crack at it myself. Pages from this story should be in those art school ads in the back of magazines: "draw this scene and blah blah blah." This should be the litmus by which all publishing companies measure interviewing prospects. Every professional since the fifties should have a unique copy of this very story in their portfolios.
ReplyDeletehaha
ReplyDeleteEven though it isn't literally a vampire story, in a way it looks ahead to those "vampire as a tragic figure" stories, like DARK SHADOWS (and obviously countless current ones).
ReplyDelete