Saturday, July 20, 2019
Corpses - Cash and Carry
It's not all fun 'n games here at THE HORRORS OF IT ALL, and occasionally we take it upon ourselves to educate you fine readers with a little bit of TRUE CRIME history. So if for whatever reason you're not already familiar with the Burke and Hare murders that occurred in Scotland in 1828, (click HERE for more) then you my friend are about to learn the gruesomely true tale of sick supply and diabolical demand. From the March - April 1948 issue of Exposed #1.
Ah, but they left out the best part-- Burke was ultimately dissected at the Royal College of Surgeons himself! His skeleton was still on display at the Anatomical Museum of the Edinburgh Medical School as of 2018, and a book reportedly bound in his skin is at the Surgeon's Hall Museum...
ReplyDeleteApparently, both of these chaps were named William.
ReplyDeleteBurke has really hairy arms!
Also, in the first panel of page 6, "A pity...so young... but...after all, business first!" That sounds so wrong, as if Burke was going to do something else with that young lady--alive or dead.
Also, on the sixth page, in panels one and four, we get cleavage shots! Thanks for being pre-code--comic book story!
But.... Where's Sister Hyde....?
ReplyDeleteBurke and Hare are probably up there with the famous "Public Enemy #1s" for the amount of times they've appeared in comic versions of their lives -- and if you think about it -- they've achieved something most people who live good lives never will -- they are immortalized!
ReplyDeleteMaybe Wertham was right! :)
The art is this one is has the same oddity through-out: the headers are always bigger than they should be!
I always enjoy the true crime stories in this blog -- people might say they aren't true horror stories but, in the end, they have the exact same elements just without the supernatural. And horror never required the supernatural.
A very lurid cover. I've got a Burke and Hare episode in my old time radio collection. I believe Crime Classics was the show. The story was sensationalized here by the writer, but the facts were plenty evil. Thank you Mr. K. for this bit of a change of pace.
ReplyDeleteThe way this artist has created mood, by hatching-in the background areas, makes me wonder if he feared his colorist was going to render all the negative space throughout the store a merry yellow. I guess he was right to be worried. But then--because of the hatching, and the way the inks carefully delineate each figure with nice wide outlines, and the addition of that merry yellow--it often looks to me like everybody's being struck by lightning in these panels. And I have to say, that has increased my enjoyment of the art here quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite panel is that last one on page four, in which Hare's disembodied hand surprises a sailor with a very chatty dagger.