Saturday, October 19, 2019
The Weirdest Corpse of All Time!
I've posted a lot of stories here over the years about stupid ass slobs getting their well-earned, just rewards. But occasionally I'll find a tale where I have to wonder, with everything truly awful all around him: "Does this guy really deserve his grisly fate?" Maybe the life he was living was worse and his death actually becomes his well-earned escape, who knows... anyway, we're keeping things weird and corpsey around here, in fact, today's tale is about The Weirdest Corpse of all Time! From the December 1951 issue of This Magazine is Haunted #2, art by Sheldon Moldoff and Ed Moline.
For being a nasty old shrew, George's (Or is it Harris? Our horror host continuously calls him Harris, though his wife calls him George. Perhaps it's his last name?)wife at least cares enough about him to have a burial and a funeral ceremony for him. She's even thoughtful enough to have a custom made tiny coffin for him!
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ReplyDeleteI am amused by the concept that Doctor Death is actually hanging around the funereal, behind a tree here and there and obvious to anybody. "Well, there's the top-hated skeleton again. What does he see in all this?"
ReplyDeleteI like the coloring. Normally not a fan of the single color figures, but it's used with a pretty good hand here. I'm sure my take on this is horribly inconsistent and all over the place, I guess it's really a feel if I like this coloring or not.
Page 4 and page 6/7 are great action sequences, there really is a good deal of suspense there. Note that the spider and mice are pretty out of proportion, sure, George is small but that spider should have still only been the size of his head.
I'm with Karswell. I have a hard time with this one! I'd normally love it if we had the predictable guy that killed mice as sadistically with as much pleasure as possible, but George didn't seem to deserve his fate! Hell, it seemed his wife was forcing him to keep the job!
I want to know where George's wife went out shopping at night in 1951 while George was at home in bed trying to sleep! Evidently some city early to adopt 24-hour grocery stores?
ReplyDeleteWow that was totally different. Perhaps the moral of the story is don't go around spreading deadly poison for a living. I enjoyed the coloring too, especially that cover. What wonderful use of the pallet. Thank you Mr.K for posting.
ReplyDeleteIt's also like the ending of WILLARD, except that Willard causes all his trouble with the rats after trying to get rid of them once they've served his purpose. Whereas Harris has at least killed a lot of them as an exterminator, but with a lot of remorse.
ReplyDeleteAlmost everyone knows that spiders have eight eyes, just as everyone knows they have eight legs. So it's strange that that one has two (and in fact it looks more like it has an insect's head in general). It reminds me of that two-eyed prop spider that shows up in countless SF movies.
Oh man, that giant spider page nails the straight-up Halloween vibe. If I had die-cut cardboard versions of those figures I would definitely hang them all over my apartment. I'm also pretty smitten with the brick wall panels at the top of page four. Like everyone else I'm all for that color scheme (and even the bad magenta registration really works for me). So obviously I was totally into this story long before I got to those floating green panic heads on the last page! Aces! George's wife looks like a Looney Toon that got clapped between cymbals. That's my favorite thing all week so far.
ReplyDeleteI love how in these stories when people diminish in size their clothes shrink in proportion.
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