If the horrible little acres of our last post didn't kill ya hard enough, here's a few more deadly acres that'll either put you totally six feet under, --or completely leave ya hangin'! *wink! Good 'ol Bob Powell has a blast-o-frightenin' fun with this ghoulishly haunting Harvey horror classic from the December 1951 issue of Black Cat Mystery #32.
What name? My name!
ReplyDeleteWhat name shall we carve on the tomb? My name!
ReplyDeleteNobody around these parts needs to know what praise we should all heap on Powell. The facial expressions on our poor victim are excellent. Lots of great framing on page 3 (panel 2 and panel 3 are stand outs.) I love, out of nowhere, a cop ghost!
ReplyDeletePowell could draw a skull, couldn't he? I bet he could make a comic completely of skull people and you could tell the difference "face" by skulls alone!
This is one of those pre-codes were the art makes such an impact that the story really doesn't matter, to the point where I'm not going to complain about where he plugged all that stuff in :)
Fantastic Powell artwork! Love that the old bald dude is sentenced TO death BY "Death" for the relatively benign offense of wanting to live in a mausoleum! So many exciting and memorable panels, but the one that should be turned into a sticker, T-shirt, or wallpaper pattern is that unique round panel in the middle of page three: Mausoleum, graveyard, circle of menacing spirits-- NO caption or dialogue to spoil the balance of the image. Timelessly cool!!
ReplyDeleteA skeleton police officer, that must be a first!
ReplyDeleteDalton Draymond should have stated that since he was living in the cemetery, he might as well be the new cemetery caretaker. What could the owner of the cemetery do, refuse free help?
Even the grim reaper would be put in a quandary, why punish someone who is looking after his domain?
This story could be updated with the events taking place in New Orleans with Baron Samedi as the main character. I don't have the artistic skills to pull it off, but any follower of THOIA can try their hand at it.
Did you know that refrigerators predate electricity by, like, a century? I'm sure Dalton Draymond picked out the very best in Victorian iceboxes to appoint his snazzy new artisanal stone garden studio apartment.
ReplyDeleteI love all the character work here (of course). That last panel on page one is a grumpy masterpiece. And I crazy love it anytime they've used the color screens to reproduce line art for effect--as in the ghostly drawings printed in blue here. That represents a tricky extra step in preparation by both the illustrator and the colorist--and then, lastly, by the anonymous and overworked technician down at the presses who was saddled with the task of shooting the CrafTint screens that went together to produce process color. That was already a tedious job of creating dot screens that overlapped in just the right places to fill color into the key art--but it represents a bit of extra hassle to line-up clip art elements in all that, too. Lastly, it can go hugely wrong: Think about all those pages where one offset color is wildly out of registration. That is twice as ruinous when that registration contains some of the art elements. I'm sure it's one of the reasons this effect was so rare in comics before computers came along. I for one really appreciate it when I see it.
I'm glad Mr C stepped in and explained that printing process because it is indeed fascinating AF!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments... I guess we'll keep things a bit ghostly around here for the rest of the month, so wash your sheets and batten down your chains, cuz we'll be rattlin' you again here shortly with another fine as wine spooker-- STAY TOMBED!
This is as goofy as any of these stories I can ever remember; I really thought he was going to wake up at the end and swear off pizza after midnight or something. I, too, love the blue ghost art. Psychedelia before its time!
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