Tuesday, April 23, 2019
The Immortal Brain!
Another out of context panel leaving a disturbingly gory trail along the tumblr interwebs lately, comes from this spooky story in the April 1954 issue of Mister Mystery #16, (page 5, panel 2), and if you've seen it, you've never forgotten it, and if you haven't-- you never will forget it-- guaranteed! It's bloody 'n brutal, and it will definitely give you a horrific, splitting headache just by looking at it. Overall nice, creepily concise, easy read art from "Loffredo", who, to be honest, I'm not really sure that I'm at all familiar with... the title treatment makes it look like an ACG story, but this is definitely Stanley Morse material all the way!
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ReplyDeleteRemember kids, "evil" is "live" spelled backwards! So the evil in this case is to live forever, with somebody else's brain. Who's brain is it?
ReplyDeleteI figure I would wear a hat, or something, to keep out dust and such.
ReplyDeleteIt might be a coincidence, but Page 1 looks very much like an image from the beginning and end of the OUTER LIMITS episode "The guests."
ReplyDeleteWow insane! Thank you Mr. K.
ReplyDeletePage 2 bottom left panel, the guide looks like Forelock the Warlock, it looks like he brushed his forelock to the side before speaking to Tad. I never knew Forelock the Warlock made cameos in horror comics.
ReplyDeleteHow did Eerie or Creepy miss this one? I wonder how either of those horror magazines would have handled this tale and if it were possible for them to make it even more menacing.
This horror tale still stands the test of time. It could be made into an episode of a horror anthology, either TV or movie.
Great find Karswell!
Interesting. Two cursed, haunted castle-keeper stories in a row. The eye-popping violence frame is pretty amazing--not many precode illustrators went so far, did they?--but for my money, page four panel four is the real money shot. I want that on a t-shirt. I want to listen to whatever band puts that on the cover of their Halloween album.
ReplyDeleteThe cover mummy looks like he's gonna wrap that lass up in police line.
I don't know why but I got drawn into comparing the splash with page 2, panel 6. The artist actually made sure that the castles were the same, but flubbed some of the peaks. I have no idea why I got obsessed with it. Do not follow me on this path!
ReplyDeleteAnother of the brain swap stories where the person getting the brain remains themselves (there was a mummy brain one a couple years ago.) I'm pretty sure by the 50s they knew this was impossible, but brain swaps were all the rage in b-movies and I'm not surprised they made their way into comics.
Obviously, the gore panel is great but how is that working? Did the Keeper climb up a ladder before doing this? Or did Tad get down on his knees first?
Brian:
ReplyDeleteNo offense, but I've had my brain swapped out, and I'm getting by. ;)
Tracing alert! Compare the second to last panel on the last page with the first panel of the fifth page of "Baby...It's Cold Inside!" from The Vault of Horror 17, which came out three years earlier.
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