(Cover courtesy of GCD)
Monday, November 18, 2019
The Monster of Zollmort Castle
There's nothing too earth shatteringly unique about today's story from the August - Sept '52 issue of Eerie #8, it's just a super fun, man vs. over-sized monster romp in a haunted castle (where no one listens to the warnings either!), plus, terrific art from the consistently cool, Harry Lazarus.
(Cover courtesy of GCD)
(Cover courtesy of GCD)
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ReplyDelete"An unfortunate victim commits suicide to save our trust fund bacon from the monster? WHO CARES AS LONG AS WE'RE BOTH ALIVE!"
ReplyDeleteI love a happy ending....
So I know the authors of these tales were hired for their imaginations, but the wildest idea they ever came up with was that writers get paid enough to outright purchase giant castles in foreign lands!
ReplyDeleteOK the monster is a great design. I'm always a sucker for a skull-like face mixed with the old sci-fi BEM. Also, Peter is so manly he survives a 12 foot monster swinging his head into a pile of ... green rocks?
The cover is a lot of fun. I bet Peter regrets that the cover doesn't match the interior story, sure, he's downgraded to buying a cave but he's got two babes to rescue on the cover!
The green guy looks like the inspiration for The Green Goblin, could Ditko have swiped this?
ReplyDeleteJust another wacky, what the heck tale from the fifties, and we love 'em.
I just realized this after the first post-is he the ancestor of The Mask?
ReplyDeleteI also couldn't help seeing a scary version of Gumby, at least in the first panel. Even with, as Brian Barnes says, a "B.E.M." type head.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that Peter would be at least as solemn about Quadro as Alice, considering the way he'd chased him off earlier. Instead, it's "Not entirely, darling."
Which isn't incorrect, but still.
Thank you Mr.K. this is so very well done. For me it has movie like qualities. Young couple driving towards the old castle. Their extreme naivete. His blind recklessness. I enjoyed the great coloring and nice detail work. The monster's leering grin. His dripping ooziness. The very last panel had a pop art feel.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, for people who have been married at least one year already, they don't seem to know each other very well. Apparently, Alice just isn't the type to dig into a moldering and distant old ruin, basement littered with chained-up human remains. It may be weird, but she's just not turned on by that sort of thing. And I doubt she'd ever sent mixed signals in the past, either. Basically, this anniversary present was a "golden rule" mistake: Peter blithely doing unto Alice what he himself desires get done for him. She, on the other hand, continually seems surprised that he'd ignore her input, dismiss her concerns, etc.--all in the interest of buying himself an experience for their anniversary. So the fallout costs one life, one kidnapping, some bondage terrorism in the torture chamber--and a lot of failed heroic posturing. I love the second panel of page five, in which Pete is still pompously dictating to his unconscious wife while just at the brink of hideous death by the very talons his heedless, self-centered foolishness has concocted. His concern for her is no apology--it's not even a realization that he's been such a shit--but it is so painfully buffoonish that I feel like everybody is finally on the same page about who the villain here is.
ReplyDeleteLove the gnarly, hairy old hands the artist gave all the men. They are really quite weird; I started getting a little hypnotized by their appearance, sometimes more than once in the same frame. It became a distracting game. How many gnarly old hands can you find on page five alone?
I'd ask why she's still attracted to him, but her closing comment clears it up: they are in fact equally vapid.
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