Monday, July 8, 2019
Terror in the Fog / Man on the Road
Two more extremely well illustrated tales from Fleetway's 1976 hardcover collection, The Valiant Book of Mystery & Magic (see previous post too!) Of course these chillers are a bit lighter in story than the usual 50's precode or later Eerie Pub horrors normally featured here, but that shouldn't dampen your enjoyment of the mood and atmosphere superbly created by these fine English artists, especially if you're a fan of 60's / 70's Gold Key or even the supernatural silver age DC series. There's a fun monster quiz in the middle of all this as well...
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ReplyDeleteLike Mestiere my first thought was Believe it or Not. I liked both tales, the second one better as it had more of an urban legend feel. The first story seemed like a decent idea but the execution was lacking.
ReplyDeleteThe monster quiz was incredibly easy but worth it for the art.
Terror in the Fog was the same artist as the previous story, and, again, his feel for architecture is stunning, though page 1, panel 4 has some wonky perspective. Page 4, panel 3 is a great piece of B&W art. That deserves to be framed.
When I was young I went into a lot of abandoned house. They were all farm houses, I've never found an intact gothic mansion!
The artist in the Man on the Road had a real good touch for heavy blacks. I think the previous artist is much better but the second artist has an interesting style. Page 4, last panel is great.
Though I guess the lorry driver didn't have a ghost, and I guess our haunted driver thought it was best to just leave the scene of the accident!
This is a great find, great ghostly, haunted tales 'from across the pond'. Thanks for sharing with us Karswell!
ReplyDeleteI'm loving these! Great B&W art. Classic Silver Age style writing taking me back to my House of Secrets / House of Mystery/ Witching Hour era! The Man on The Road has a nice Twilight Zone feel, but the cosmic justice is a little off. One man's ghost allows him to live at the cost of another life? Karma is a jerk.
ReplyDeleteI've just spent more time than I care to admit looking at Eric Bradbury stuff online today. Sheesh that guy is really good. I'd love to read a whole series about the psycho Victorian cabbie from today's first story. He can have followed the boys back through the haunted painting, taken their keys while they were off at the bobby station, and proceeded to stalk the British motorways each midnight in that ridiculously shiny convertible.
ReplyDeleteI like the Zip-A-Tone work on the quiz page.
That last story is a neat tweak of the usual vanished hitchhiker tale, and I'm delighted by the metaphysical implications of someone's alt-future specter returning to spook himself from before the grave! Nice looking out, dead me! Except that if I see some burned-up poltergeist stagger out of the berm ahead of me--dressed in my very clothes, no less--hell if I'm stopping to pick him up. Sounds too much like something ripped from the pages of Psycho Victorian Cabbie monthly.
Love the three-panel progression at the bottom of the second story's first page. It establishes a really cinematic mood. That art is maybe a little stylized for me, but I do dig the linoleum block print kind of vibe it gives off. That lonesome British byway is pretty creepy.
When the one man said "anything's better than staying out here" I assumed the worse. These two however are bestowed with an unafraid if bewildered righteous purposefulness. Good for them. Well drawn story. The second tale certainly had that Twilight Zone feel. I personally flashbacked to the werewolf hitchhiker post. For me the artistry on the second is superior. I forgot they were British 'til the last page when they were on the left side of the road and a few British words crept in. Thank you Mr. K. old chap.
ReplyDeleteThese are quite typical of comics from this period in the UK. I would have been five or six when these came out. These stories were created in that period between the cancellation the superior Odhams line of comics, from the late 60s, and the dawn of Action and 2000AD, published by IPC in the mid 70s, which changed comics forever in the UK, and brought a more punk, violent attitude to boy's and girl's comics. My abiding memory of stories from this period is that while the stories were anodyne, but often well written, the artwork was genuinely disturbing (for a pre-teen) and very atmospheric, which made up for the generic tales. Eric Bradbury drew lots of great comics through the 70s, Joe Colqhoun drew the excellent 'Charley's War' written by Pat Mills, who later created Marshall Law for Epic. Jack Adrian worked with Mills on Action (an ultra-violent and controversial boy's weekly comic that kids loved and adults eventually had emasculated) and 2000AD, for whom he wrote some early Judge Dredd stories.
ReplyDeletePoor lorry driver, left to burn to death by our "protagonist".
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