Vince Napoli was one of those precode artists whose work at first appears weirdly wonky, and even amateurishly flimsy at times. But the more you look at it, the more it begins to take on a brilliantly eerie, otherworldly vibe. It's as lanky and surreal as it is uneven and bizarre, and thus, it's the perfect illustrative style for a nightmarish tale of terror like Wish for the Dead, (from the January 1953 issue of Beware #13.) Faces distort wildly as sinister supernatural forces take over, spectral clawed hands reach out from the black beyond, --and in my favorite panel of the whole story (page 7, panel 2) a partially open door reveals the spookiest set of disembodied eyes ever put to a comic book page! The sloppy coloring and cheap print job on this Trojan comic is typically an unfortunate tragedy, but it also adds an ominous underground zine edge to the freak-out stranglehold of funeral-esque atmosphere. This is the kind of unique soul transference story that THOIA was created for, please enjoy...
The scratchy images of the aunt on pages 3 and 4 gave this tale an extra bit of eerie atmosphere. The Aunt's ghostly images elevate this tale from a run of the mill horror to almost a noir in horror. Yet one more hidden gem in the realm of pre code horror comics.
ReplyDeleteWow, I agree. This was great.
ReplyDeleteThere's totally a plucky outsider art vibe here. Some of the oddity probably comes from collage. I mean, obviously I can't know for sure, but whenever I see pages like three and four--where stacked elements each have a different light source, the foregrounds rendered carefully over hasty or half-assed backgrounds, etc.--I assume the page has been laid out from commercial images and then traced. I know the word "traced" is some kind of damning slander among comics enthusiasts, but I don't mean anything by it. I think collage is a useful commercial art technique, and in comics the very best way to utilize that technique is to mock up the page and then trace it, to make sure the line widths are even across the image. I feel like a lot of this story was done just like that. And it fits the tone really well.
Speaking of page four, I really love that transformation panel. It's wonderful, like a Dave McKean Sandman cover. My appreciation for the color job pretty much begins and ends with that panel. Along with everything I said above, I would really like to see the original art boards for this one just to take a crack at coloring it better. I mean, look at the third panel on page three. Holy cow. That's supposed to be a magical dream of money and ladies and music. As it stands the illustration just looks like his radiator is overheating or something.
It'd be hard to complain about the art, it really fits the tone. The artist is really good at expressions, the first 3 pages have some great sinister vibes to the face.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the coloring too much. I'd say panel 4 on the last page is the real keeper, that's a truly spooky image of the aunt.
Story wise, it could have used some editing, its a bit of a bumpy ride.
Page 3, panel 2 is also a great image!