Did you come to THOIA today looking for something hilariously grim to totally grime up your Saturday afternoon with? Well good, cuz here's a perfect example of how precode horror occasionally went to batty bat with a truly preposterous concept, and with the help of some very uneven, but totally likable Sokoli art, still manages to hit an oddly surreal home run like no other. Actually, pop culture took this "carry the corpse" concept and went wild with it over the last century, --you've all seen Weekend At Bernies for example by now, right? From the October 1952 issue of Beware #12.
Forgot the story, that art is aces!
ReplyDeleteIt's wild, it's full of stretched faces and some that look almost dummy like (the dead woman on the splash.). I love the ghost orchestra!
I really like that the victim puts up a fight, normally women are just victims here but that ol' gal almost beat the tar out of our villain! Not only that, she never tried to escape but just kept trying to capture him, eventually doing just that, in death.
The last panel is great. The sly smile, the screaming fear. This is one of the great things about pre-code, even if the story is questionable, good art can save the entire thing. A cool monster, wild faces, etc.
Whoa. I really love that woman. I'm not sure I've seen a character like her in horror comics before: Attractive, put together, morally correct--as well as physical and athletically effective. I was sorry to see her go.
ReplyDeleteI do like any comic that looks like it was inked by somebody holding the brush in his fist like Mrs. Bates cradles her chef's knife in the shower. The drawing here is pretty florid and interesting, a kind of gnarly and deformed emotional anatomy that reminds me of Peter Chung's work.
More surreal weirdness up next, stay tombed...
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