Friday, July 1, 2016
I Chopped Her Head Off!
If you've picked up the latest issue of HAUNTED HORROR, (#22 in stores now!) then by now you've already read the assortment of gruesome precode golden hits as chosen by special guest host Mike "The Howler" Howlett for our one of a kind HH Eerie Publications issue! And in honor of this release, THOIA revisits the Eerie Pub remake / redraw of "I Killed Mary" (first posted here back in 2010, and also featured in Mike's awesome The Worst of Eerie Publications book still available HERE), --and OMG comparing the two again is always a mind bender-- that's quite a gory upgrade from the original Weird Mysteries #8 version from 1954, isn't it? And to those of you who haven't picked up the latest issue of HH yet-- what're you waiting for?!
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6 comments:
Great post, good Sir !! We have not seen this tale since early childhood... And we still remembered Some of these "panels" (Their imagery has been with us for years) these older tales seem to make use of Gore and "Shocking" images... unlike the "tamer" horror comics most of us grew up with...
.. a great Holiday weekend to you and yours...
Howdy,
Apparently Syd Shores (?) was a great fan of gore when he drew the upgraded (or is that upchucked?) stories. Great fun!
Brian Riedel
Whether it's "I chopped her head off!" or "I killed Mary," both tell the same rather depressing tale--although the former is a heck of a lot more gory. I actually see it as less of a horror tale and more of a sad cry for attention that's never fulfilled--even when the main character commits a gory murder suited to a sociopath.
Also, "I Chopped Her Head Off!" is well illustrated--but what's up with Frank's pornstache in the splash page? He obviously doesn't have one in the actual story.
Comparing the two is interesting; it's a bit better staged in the Eerie pub version (and of course more visual) but the text and captions are nearly the same (the only memorable change is Susan/Mary and Frank dialog right before the murder.
The artist also decided to give Frank glasses, to make him that much more dweeb-y.
Note that in the splash I think it's shadowing that gives the illusion of a mustache; what it does not give is an explanation as to how an ax strike that's across the face somehow pops the head off like a PEZ with a broken spring!
Pretty sure Frank had just had a great big glass of chocolate milk before the splash panel, and, well, why bother with a napkin if you're just going to go and get all spattered again killing Susan's head off?
I love the art in I Killed Mary. Eerie Pubs re-versions of these precode stories--charmingly overheated as they usually became--rarely come close to the sheer greatness of the original work. In this case, Trapani's fifties line work--those great thick outlines judiciously completed by much smaller hatching--and the slight nostalgic tinge to the Rockwell-esque figures, strike me as a much more emotionally ripe environment for this kind of horror than the seventies patina of lurid seediness fostered in Myron Fass' magazine.
Yeah, I thought that maybe it was just the shadowing--but it still looks like Frank has a mustache.
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