Sunday, July 17, 2016
Last Express!
Another wonderfully atmospheric, and lengthy horror tale from the May 1953 issue of Beware! Terror Tales #7, featuring super spooktacular art from fan fave Sheldon Moldoff. And for anyone keeping track, this wraps up another COMPLETE issue posted here at THOIA! Check the archives for Dripping Terror, The Walking Cadaver, and our previous post, The Man Who Defeated Death!
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5 comments:
"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!"
Well, no denying it, this guy was a jerk and deserved his comeuppance--but did everybody on the train the guy was originally hired for have to die so that he could die for his new job? That seems a bit unfair.
At least Death was nice enough to give a little warning.
Ah, another train to the after life story, we certainly got a lot of these in pre-code, it's really a modern take on the boat across the river Styx. Though, if the conductor would have turned out to be Dennis DeYoung, that would have been even more shocking!
Lots of great art, and the pacing is good. Page 3, panel 2 is a huge Ghastly lift. Many editors of the day either picked up artists or told artists to draw like the folks at EC.
The cover is actually pretty cool, GCD has no penciler, and it's super clean and looks like somebody who might have done advertising work. It's got some odd composition, but I like it!
Man, awesome splash! I think a good story detail might have been that chilling moment at which Ormesbee finally realizes he's punching the tickets for the same passengers who were on his last train. I don't really see why Death would try to fill the conductor job with a dead guy--that's pretty transient labor, right?, and not particularly cost-effective when it comes to the time and energy it takes to recruit and sign new talent. But I do think that customers and coworkers from the crashed train might get a little aggravated at Fred's vocational opportunism and drag him out of the train with them when they finally get wherever they're going.
Trains do seem to play a huge part in horror, there seems to be an endless supply of movies with this setting, possibly second only to ship bound horror on the high seas.
Thanks for the comments :)
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