Thursday, December 26, 2019
The Sewer Keeper / The Some-Thing
If the stress of the holidays have left you frightfully frazzled and eerily exhausted, then maybe what you need right now is to kick back with a good lurid laugh-- yes, a GET LOST double feature might be just what the horror host ordered! First up, from the April - May 1954 issue of Get Lost #2 is a hilariously gruesome satire of precode horror comics (EC to be exact) guaranteed to satisfy your atrocious little appetites-- followed by a chillingly hysterical parody of John W. Campbell / Howard Hawks, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, from the June - July 1954 issue of Get Lost #3. Not to get too serious, but I'm a bit surprised at myself for having never posted either of these kookball classics here at THOIA over the years until now. Enjoy!
The Sewer Keeper story is just Vault of Horror's "Two of a Kind!" (#26, Aug/Sep 1952) rewritten as farce...
ReplyDeleteYup, "Marsha and Jon" is a direct lift from Vault ... I wonder if that's why the weird caption at the top of the splash is there? The writer (maybe editor) seems to go a long way to point out that this is "not intended in malice." What a weird disclaimer!
ReplyDeleteGCD says this is Ross Andru (!!!!). I would have NEVER guessed that! He's doing kind of a wacky Wood/Davis mash-up, signs with a fake name that's like Ghastly, from a Craig drawn story! He's covered all bases!
I love the cavalcade of horror host taking over when each one gets too sick!
Second story actually has Andru's name on it (sign on the splash) and the art looks super similar to the first tale, so I think it's right. More of a cartoon-y Wood take here. I'm glad they decided to skip filling every panel with a million visual gags and let the art do a bit more of the heavy lifting.
Page 3 of the second story is one great page, panel 5 (the crazy legs) is a great visual gag.
I really enjoy this MAD inspired horror tales!
The second story reads like something straight out of MAD, back when MAD was still funny and had not degenerated into a pathetic shadow of itself as it is now.
ReplyDeleteThe first one is also like "Food For Thought" a couple of pages back. In spite of the farcical comedy, the ending is a little "touching."
ReplyDeleteAnd the ending of "The Some-Thing" manages to anticipate NIGHT OF THE LEPUS in a big way. (Which is fitting, since most people see that film as an UNINTENTIONAL comedy anyway.)
>is just Vault of Horror's "Two of a Kind!" (#26, Aug/Sep 1952) rewritten as farce...
ReplyDelete>reads like something straight out of MAD
Right. That's what GET LOST was, a parody mag. Tons of publishers took a shot at doing the MAD thing there for a few years, just as they aped the horror, sci fi and crime titles too.
'Tons of publishers took a shot at doing the MAD thing there for a few years..'
ReplyDeleteEven frickin' 'Archie' jumped on the bandwagon!
Great shares, Mr.K.
Love it! Love the Andru stuff here. I feel like he's kind of doing a panorama of EC styles in story one (whoo, they went after EC hard with that one. I was already cracking up at "Sewer Keeper"), but that second story is way more specifically targeted at Wally Wood--and not just any Wood, but the stuff designed and roughed-out for him by by Kurtzman. Ross always was a real Mimic, though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for these. Of all the humor mags in the famous wake of Mad, this is one that I've read very little of.
Thank you Mr.K. for these (as the beach boys sang) fun fun fun entries. Never heard of "Get Lost" It certainly is MAD. The ending of the second made me think of the Peter Graves movie.
ReplyDelete