Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Picture of Evil
Time for one last date with the Devil, and once again we're heading to the mysterious 'ol disappearing shop that nobody has ever seen before (nor will ever see again), and we have some really super art by Joe Kubert from the October 1953 one-shot issue of House of Terror #1 3D as well. Annnnd now you know why the scans look so odd, and yes, you're not drunk. I attempted to tweak these a bit, eliminating the 3D process as much as possible so it's easier to read on a computer or phone screen (first page, awesome splash, but not so successfully tweaked-- the rest of the story should be pretty good though!)
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5 comments:
Pretty good doesn't do this justice. It's terrific. Joe could certainly draw. Thank you Mr. K.
The art is uniformly great, but to be expected from Kubert. The bossy over-weight wife is a cliche that really needs to die in horror stories, though.
Kubert use of heavy shadows is excellent here -- the devil's cloak, the wife's skirt in the panel where she dies, etc. Bottom of page 4 is a great sequence.
Last page, panel 4, I have no idea where the dancing lady comes from, unless I missed something! I guess Kubert needed to draw a pretty lady and that's where he was going to work it in!
The one thing that actually caught me off guard in this story is the name that the devil introduces himself as. Rather than the usual Satan, Lucifer, Beelzibab or some sort of backwards anagram or pun name that basically refers to the devil, the devil calls himself "Belial" a name I've actually never heard of before now. Apparently it originally meant "Worthless" in Hebrew, and eventually became a personification of the devil himself. Belial is also referred to as a demon separate from Satan. It's actually a rather nice surprise. Also, I love how Henry addresses him as "Mr. Belial."
I also love how immediately after Henry's blood falls on the devil's face in the painting, the devil literally comes a knocking at his door! Although I wonder, if Henry's blood fell on one of the portraits of the other artists who made a bargain with the devil before him instead of Belial--would it have brought him back to life?
Yeah, this little tale has all of the classic cliches,the struggling artist/henpecked husband,selling one's soul to the devil, the ugly,overbearing, nagging wife, the longing to get rid of said wife, the little shop down the street that wasn't there before and isn't there the next time, using blood to summon a demon or the devil himself, years of promised fame and fortune, and of course, failing to beat the devil and ending up as another victim inside of his painting--with another victim on hand. Yet it does it all rather well and the artwork is fantastic.
Ol' Scratch was quite generous this time around, usually he offers five or seven years of fame and fortune in exchange for a soul. I guess he figured it would take fifteen years for Henry to become famous, and once the time was up, henry would be his forever, so why not be generous?
Strikes me that Henry could have just painted his own face on the painting and given it to Belial. Problem solved!
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