Sunday, September 3, 2017
Crazy
Quickie Atlas story graciously submitted by my buddy Jim --and now don't everybody get all excited, I am not back to posting Atlas stories. For some reason Atlas posts bring out a couple true fucking idiot commenters that I have zero desire in entertaining-- but for the rest of you, please enjoy. From the Oct '52 issue of Uncanny Tales #3, art by Jerry Robinson.
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Urban legend collector/researcher Jan Harold Brunvand mentions this story in his book Curses! Broiled Again when discussing a 1986 Ann Landers account of a drunk driver hitting an 8-year-old girl and driving home with her stuck in the grille. (Snopes link here.) To quote Mr. Brunvand:
"The day after most of the discussion appeared in my column (in late March 1987), Professor Malcolm K. Shuman of the Museum of Geoscience at Louisana in Baton Rouge wrote. He remembers reading a story very similar to the legend while browsing through the comic-book collection of a younger cousin some thirty years ago ('ca. 1953, give or take a couple of years')."
The description of the comic story that follows is definitely "Crazy", although Brunvand does not give the title of the story or the comic it was in. He adds:
"... So the hit-and-run element of the story seems to have existed much earlier than the 1980s, though the ultimate source of all details in "The Body on the Car" is still obscure."
Oh man, that's excellent. I'm surprised to see this over here, sine you usually save these stories for your daily Atlas blog, AHOIA. Excellent stuff as always!
PS, excellent catch, Nequam. I'm going to have to crack open my Brunvand collection again!
Thanks for the background, Nequam! I read the story and was struck by how it seemed like an urban legend, and then I read the comment. Looking at some of the massive bumpers and grills on many of those 1950's battleship sedans, it almost seems plausible that some child could be stuck on the front without some drunk noticing. This little story is quite memorable. Thanks for posting!
Attempted Hit & Run...
Good one, Mr. Karswell !!
Neat, tight, with a perfect punchline panel at the end. Robinsons artwork was great in this tale too
Yeah, I've heard of this urban legend myself, the one in my urban legend collection called "The Body on the Grill" involves a drunk construction worker unknowingly embedding an 8 year old girl from his neighborhood onto the grill of his pick up truck. He has no idea about it until his wife hears on the radio that the 8 year old girl went missing the night before and is going to go to the neighbor's to help her out and comfort her only to find out what happened to the girl after seeing her husband's car in the driveway...
This version of the story seems a bit more outlandish truthfully, with a full grown man as the victim instead of a little girl and an angry mob after the hit and run driver who has absolutely no idea what's going on.
Nequam beat me to the urban legend story, as he said, mostly heard as the drunk driving home and the police finding a little girl embedded in his bumper the next day.
The art is great in this, and Stan's script is super zippy and tight. This is one place where I'm wondering who got there first -- EC did quickies but that was a bit further into the run. Other publishers certainly did shorter stories, and so did Stan. This is a great example of them. It's nearly a perfect little horror story presentation.
The coloring is unusually good on this one. But that was Atlas.
Relevant. Also.
http://jalopnik.com/coyote-survives-a-short-strange-ride-in-this-toyotas-g-1805973219
These Atlas tales are all so good!
A few years ago there was a movie called, Stuck about a woman that drove very drunk and didn't notice she had a person that had crashed through her window shield. She left him to die.
It claimed to be based on a true story.
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