Sunday, September 29, 2019
The Invisible Curse
Let's wrap up this month with a wild tale of witchcraft gone terrible wrong, from the Sept. '52 issue of Weird Terror #1. Todays entry takes off from the start like a possessed race horse and seriously just gets more maniacally delirious with each page. A dynamite Don Perlin and Abe Simon story definitely worthy of the multiple Eerie Pub reprint / re-makes in the 70's-- it even found its way down under into the Australian Gredown, Satan's Corpse, one-shot in 1981.
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7 comments:
I love how Lucille can just conjure up her undead grandmother to speak to her about things. Apparently Grandma Tanya is the ultimate troll though. First she reassures Lucille that she will get the part of Juliet when she clearly doesn't and then she encourages Lucille to use a dangerous family curse to get revenge that she clearly knows that Lucille won't be able to control.
I assumed the "role of Juliet" meant that Lucille dies in the same manner. So technically Tanya was correct....
In the 70s I was a huge fan of Don Perlin. I don't know if it's Simon or what, but this is unrecognizable to me (my artist picking skills are poor, anyway) and it's more the interesting for it.
The heavy shadows, especially around the eyes in 90% of Lucille's panels (except when they do the good girl art) is a real interesting choice, and I like it. The colorist is really good here, too, especially on page 5 panel 1. It's over dramatic but great for a horror comic.
I'm not sure about the "invisibility" curse, it seems to be the turn into smoke curse (I assume that's why they are choking.)
I wonder how people who were actually gypsies felt about this kind of treatment? It's all over 50% horror comics -- gypsy women are hot but magically evil. It's no less racist than a lot of other things at the time.
Last page, panel 3 is awesome! This is a great tale, it's just a rolling boulder of crazy, picking up speed.
I'm glad I'm not the first to point out this is bat-guano insane. Pointing out inconsistencies is like saying Dr. Kevorkian lost some of his patients.
Don Perlin sure had a way with the crazy eyes. I love this one. The glee it takes in lovingly rendering the slow fate of the two victims is as palpable as any eighties slasher movie. It felt like somebody was projecting. One more kill, and this story would have felt like a soap opera version of Mortal Kombat. That way overheated last page was pretty great too. For the record, I agree with BTX's read of the story. But even if that's giving the wicked grandmother the benefit of the doubt, so what? Look at her--she's clearly a lunetic. The exact sort of permissive fantasy conspirator a nutjob like Lucille Alessandro would conjure out of her imagination to enable her psychotic plan.
Now I sound like Mestiere usually does.
Love the Don Heck cover on this one, by the way. It's been an excellent September! Bring on October!
Crazy man, just crazy. Wonderful art. Thank you Mr.K.
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