As we've seen on this blog many times over the years, truth can be more terrifying than fiction, and sometimes the human criminal is much more monstrous than any bloody vampire or werewolf. Take for example the brutally inhuman, true case of the "giggling killer" from the May - June 1948 issue of Exposed #2... it certainly doesn't get much more horrific than this, folks. Nice work from Joe Orlando on pencils though.
Hoo boy. Nothing hits quite so hard as lovingly rendered animal cruelty. Not even a point blank shot to the sphenoid bone? Well that's horror for you. It's interesting that they obviously tried to tone the splash down by not coloring-in the gore pumping from that guy's orbit. But it's the bottom of page two that's really terrorizing.
ReplyDeleteHey, I dig this gloriously unsophisticated early Orlando look. The man was always good at big, marked-up, energetic panels--and that really works with the more emotional and less perfected figure drawing here in these early days. I really dig every single thing about the prison cafeteria mayhem on page six.
I like seeing these early works by artists which would go onto much fame. I don't see a lot of later period Orlando here but I certainly see an artist who is getting his sea legs. Page 4, panel 4 is Eerie pubs work 25 years early!
ReplyDeleteHe's got some good composition, even this early, page 5, panel 4 has a lot of motion to it. BTW, how the heck did that kid not just get murdered by the prison guards?
Of course this "true" tale offers no way to match the story back to a real person to verify anything, and if it wasn't made up out of whole cloth, I'd be a little worried about the author!
"I really dig every single thing about the prison cafeteria mayhem on page six."
ReplyDeleteWhoops! I meant page five! I'll bet that confused the heck out of every singe last one of you!
Something way less serious for our next post-- and I promise to return the brutal cruelty away from animals and back to where it actually belongs-- towards ::shudder:: humans! Thanks for the comments
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