Thursday, April 18, 2019

The Man in Black

Some people are familiar with the December 1944 issue one-shot of Tally-Ho Comics because of the cool Snowman story inked by Frank Frazetta in one of his earliest comic book gigs. Now what most people are not familiar with though is that there's a real spooky corker of a severed hand ghost story in this issue as well (not illustrated by Frazetta)-- and well, here it is! So sit back by the crackling fire... relax... and try not to focus on the subtle "pat pat" you hear somewhere off in a darkened corner of the room, as tonight's shivery little tale of terror unfolds before you...













6 comments:

JMR777 said...

The faces in this story are wild, not as fantastic as those drawn by Fletcher Hanks in Stardust the Super Wizard, but pretty wild in their own right.

I wonder if the one handed ghost is The Man in black or The Mysterious Stranger, that would explain how the man in black and mysterious stranger know so many unusual stories.

Mestiere said...
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Todd said...

Heh, that was fun.

Mestiere said...
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Brian Barnes said...

I adore the art in this. Amateurish? Sure. But very lively. The faces are very expressive, and the missing backgrounds (normally something I'd not like) make the figures stand out better. The grinning specter at the end is well rendered in shadows.

This is a great example of where style -- and maybe just style because of this person's talent level -- can work as well as technical talent.

I love page 3, panel 4.

The story is fun, especially for 44. You'd see a lot of these in the up coming years, but it had to be pretty original in comics at that point.

JBM said...

I'm late, late, late but it was fun fun fun. The top two panels on page five tipped the reveal for me. Old time radio had it's version of the Fredric Brown story on "Dimension One" and elsewhere. The beginning seemed so familiar and that's why. Thank you Mr. K.