A fun terror tale to spook up your Valentine's, and from the early days of precode Atlas horror too, aka the November 1949 issue of Marvel Tales #94 to be exact, (hence the wonderfully old fashionable look and tone to everything here.) Pencils on this one are attributed to the great, Gene Colan, and if the story title rings a little bell deep inside your lovely heads, I'll go ahead and make this a fine time to remind you that even though my 3 issue mini-series of the same name is long out of print, you can still occasionally find used hardcover collection copies online HERE at reasonable prices. Happy Horriday!
Hmm. I never even considered wearing a locket with a picture of my mom inside. But if it'll save my ass from her dead college boyfriends or whatever, well then I guess it's worth a shot.
ReplyDeleteDigging the day-before-yesteryear vibe in this one, just as you said. It sure is amazing how quickly they locked onto the usual format after this. I've grown so familiar with the look of pre-code comics that I forget that all those little standards and formulae had to be be discovered along the way. No matter how underdeveloped a story is, it still feels kinda little fresh, if just for the fact that it predates all the cliches.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
The art is definitely archaic, but at the same time, it's very much approaching the pre-code format, and it's really a hop, skip and jump away.
ReplyDeleteIf that's Colan, I don't see a bit of him in there, but I've never been great at artist spotting. It's got to be a super early work. The ghost is a neat image, but not exactly spooky. More 40s super-villian-ish.
I actually have a soft spot for the 40s writers and artists that transitioned to horror comics but were still doing the same stuff they did with super heroes or westerns, just with horror elements. It's so ... odd at times, but fun to read.
omigod, like a rat in an "extinction experiment" who has long given up pressing the lever, i dreamily clicked by here tonight - it was always my last stop on the train - and you are BACK.
ReplyDeleteThank you thank you thank you