Monday, July 20, 2015
IT!!!
Another terrific tale from the Nov. '52 issue of Chamber of Chills #14 --see our last post for another one-- featuring Vic Donahue art (his eerie undead remind me of Joe Maneely's a bit), plus a spooky story with tons of atmosphere. Maybe we'll take a look at this entire issue, cuz OMG it's all pretty freakin' insane...
I really like some of the captions in this one "gnawed rotten by the teeth of time" is a fun one.
ReplyDeleteZombies have absolutely NO respect for their work! What sloppy trowel work!
Nice art, but the artist forgot that they were ghosts are times (for instance, they are transparent in the splash, but not elsewhere.) Page 5/Panel 5 is a great pre-code panel! Really good job on the spooky ghosts/zombies (not well defined in pre-code it seems at time.)
Fun tale. Lesson learned: When you see something mysterious and you get "jumpy" the first thing to do is get some sleep!
I love this story and its one presumably completely made-up vocabulary word. I also love the decision to leave the line art on the Sinister Masons uncolored (and really dig the sympathetic effect of rendering their structure that way in the splash). The idea here--of unknown, paranormal people acting mysteriously, unknowably creative--is decidedly spooky. Like Richard Dreyfuss helplessly building Devils Tower out of clay on his dining room table. I wish they'd elongated middle of the story a little to capitalize on this eerie tone. The end, with its explanation, would have been an anticlimax even if it had been more surprising.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more Harvey!
Speaking of the made-up vocabulary, is "pallic" on the last page a misprint of "pallid," or another word? I don't think of Freud every time I see a misprint, but that one really throws itself out at you.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to assume, I would say that the word "pallic" was an attempt to turn the funereal noun "pall" into an adjective: "pall-like". And if English was a perfect system of roots and -fixes this would probably be okay. Of course, my mind immediately went right where yours did, because English is actually a system of gutter-minded puns.
ReplyDeleteHaha, we all go there...
ReplyDeleteGREAT story, creepy artwork, n' a wicked sense of dread throughout....I loved it! ....just picked up the HC editions, of Chamber of Chills! what a twisted title!
ReplyDelete