Speaking of black angels, let's take a look at another type of angel, the dirty, vicious, 70's motorcyclin' type monikered after someone who, it seems, is actually not too fond of their particular brand of pointless evil. At all. Yep, a story like this could have only come from a time era such as this, and I was seven years old when it first hit newsstands, I remember reading it and crushing hard on Amy, (the hapless redhead victim of this story.) Cutely drawn as only Tom Sutton could-- and having grown up in a house surrounded by similar chopper buildin', bad ass biker types, I also remember thinking this was just about the coolest comic book story I had ever read at that point in my life, haha... from the November 1974 issue of The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves #48.
The art has a real rushed feel to it, but that's kind of Sutton's style, and it fits the kinetic nature of the story really well, especially the kind of dirt and oil and nasty biker tale. The title font is cool! I'm pretty sure the host picture is Ditko.
ReplyDeleteI do like how Sutton makes each of the bikers almost giants, and each of the victims smaller and thinner.
Story wise, this one could have used some editing, were the old couple satanist? Did they pray to god and that brought satan, or vice versa? The old man was wounded, looked like he was dying, and then later on he seemed ok!
I absolutely adore super-villain satan!
Well, Amy's the one to crush on, seeing as everyone else has deformed faces,...especially Gramps. Interesting art style.
ReplyDeleteI'm still not entirely sure what happened to the dog. Like, grampa was shot point-blank with a glue gun, gotcha; but then the dog was sprayed with talcum powder or something? Whatever it was, he sure spaced out on it! Ha ha, look at that dog!
ReplyDeleteI also like the gnarly, warped way these characters were designed. Total mutants.
This really reads like a reaction to Al Adamson's 1969 delinquent bikesploitation picture Satan's Sadists. Anybody else get "Highway to Hell" in their heads at the top of that last page?
Amy is a cutie, no doubt, but she was asking for trouble in that outfit.
ReplyDeleteThis is the odd thing about these horror stories, the prince of evil ends up serving on the side of good. Maybe ol' scratch was offered a reward from up above in return for leading the bikers down the highway to Hell. Horror comics have their own rules and logic, I guess.
Sutton and Ditko are about the only reason to collect Charlton's "mystery" titles. Like a lot of Tom Sutton's work for Charlton this is fairly loose, but still fun and easy to follow. He'll always be a favorite of mine because I saw his EC-influenced stories in Creepy and Eerie years before I saw reprints of EC's books. (I still consider the Warren period to be his finest work.) At the time he drew "Satan's Angels" I think he was usually throwing in a hot babe just to keep himself interested while drudging away for that puny Charlton dollar. The panels featuring Amy remind me of later X-rated stuff he did under the name Dimentia. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
ReplyDeleteLots more Sutton stories in the THOIA Archive, as well as other Charlton horror hit makers like Sanho Kim who I would say is definitely one of the many other reasons to collect Charlton.
ReplyDeleteBack to WW2 up next... thanks for the comments :)