Va-Va-Va-Vikki Dougan!
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Terror from the Tomb!
If you couldn't tell, I'm a big fan of these 1940's / 50's detective stories featuring sexy, supernatural overtones, and this oddly written sock 'em shock 'em --also from the same April 1948 issue of Manhunt #7 as our last post HERE --is certainly no exception! Here we find juicy Jim Fallon of the FBI on the case (I say "juicy" because dig the babe checkin' out Jim at the top of page 3!); we also have a potential va-va-va-voom vampire girl on the prowl, brutal thugs turnin' up the horrific heat, and THOIA fan fave artist, Ogden Whitney, signing his freakin' name right in the middle of the harrowing climax! Fun, off-beat stuff that should've been made into a spooky movie or TV show back in the day, and starring Vikki Dougan as the female lead, please...
Va-Va-Va-Vikki Dougan!
Va-Va-Va-Vikki Dougan!
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ReplyDeleteThis is another story where all I can say is "things happen." Many, many things.
ReplyDeleteWho does Jim Fallon think he is, Green Lantern (inside joke for 70s comic readers.)
Page 6, panel 5 is a great piece of framing.
Why did Whitney sign on such a weird panel? Was he was trying to sneak in his name? It's not an especially interesting panel, in a story full of them! Maybe if it was a sneak, he thought it would pass for water?
Whitney certainly gets his fill of girl good art in this one!
BTW, was it a requirement in 48 to wear clown pajamas?
I like these, fun reads. I'm always happy to see this "cross-over" type stories.
Wow! Such fun here. Thank you Mr.K.. So much done right. It brims with caring and pride on every page. Some great bad/good girl art. So many little touches of detail. The butterfly bedsheet. The Life magazine. The last panel of page three. Just terrific all around. What a conclusion. So far out of left field I was dazzeled.
ReplyDeletePage four panel one, what is her right hand doing?
I wanted to comment before reading Mr.M's. I laughed and enjoyed his take very much.
ReplyDeleteThis tale was a winner. The vampire angle was different, and Fallon only told the lab technician his theory and he met the response he expected. "Boy! What an imagination!"
ReplyDeleteMaybe Fallon didn't 100% believe in his vampire theory himself, but he wanted to be sure one way or another before making any accusations.
In spite of the plot holes this was a great tale, thanks Karswell.
This one is fun, and while I somewhat figured that Lorna wasn't actually a vampire despite the fun opening with her emerging from a coffin and complaining of hunger. I really love page 5, panel six where Jim is playing leapfrog over the thugs' heads. To be honest, I wasn't sure how the heck the thugs were going to make it look like Jim had an accident by setting his boat on fire. After all, seeing a rowboat on fire would only look the more suspicious--especially since this wasn't ancient times when a viking funeral wouldn't have been out of the ordinary. Then I realized that it wasn't so much an accident as purposely setting everything on fire. Obviously, Lorna wasn't a vampire because she actually showed up on camera, yet what exactly was she doing hovering over Bill in the middle of the night? Oh well, I do love that Bill and Lorna legitimately loved one another rather than ending on the cliche "My wife is a vampire" note that I was half expecting.
ReplyDeleteFor the reprint of this story in A-1 #98 (1953), the GCD indexer guesses the writer was Gardner Fox (as with all the stories in that reprint issue).
ReplyDeleteJim mentions a clue you don't often read about in vampire stories: she smells like a grave.
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ReplyDeleteGlad everyone enjoyed this excursion into eerie crime horror... we'll for sure delve a bit more into these types of tales before the year is out, but for now it's time to have a little fun and in the next story we'll head to the amusement park for a lurid laugh or two! Stay tombed...
ReplyDeleteThat boat burning scene was intense. A whole page-worth of panels (spread over two) is more attention to a comic book trap than I expect to see in this size story. The horror and the pain are stressed more than normal. And that scene--rather than the melee with the thugs--is the climax of the piece rather than an act four diversion. But this whole story was an interesting shape. It starts with three different POVs: first the girl, then Bill, and then lastly Jim. Each change in viewpoint is a misdirection, most of the action takes place offstage. The villain, on the other hand, isn't really ever a character at all, some thug named Biggy has more lines of dialog. And of course the end is an out-of-the-blue exposition dump.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, some of this is not Storytelling 101. But I thought this unexpected shapeliness really kept things fresh this time, at least in an outsider kind of way. And if I haven't made room for a segue here, well, then I don't know what one is! Vikki "the Back" Dougan is certainly one of my very favorite It Girls, but I'm not sure I've ever seen her in a movie before. On the other hand, I just finished all the (classic) Universal Monster series in a maniac binge this October, and I think Virginia Christine from 1944's The Mummy's Curse would play this story's grave-scented protagonist to the hilt.
How the hell exactly do footsteps echo in a wood?
ReplyDeleteI love how vampire girls were buried in high heels, too.