I had this witchcrafty Black Angel story saved for later in the week, but since it also contains some wonderfully weird lycanthropy war action, I figured we might as well howl up an extra wild 'n rollickin' edition for Werewolf Wednesday! And like our previous Black Angel post, John Cassone really shines on art duty, deliverin' fistfuls of awesome, pummelingly pretty, sexy Sylvia Manners poses, as she turns up the heat and pounds her way across the foul faces of WW2 evil. From the February 1943 issue of Air Fighters Comics #5.
So the witch was a old lady riding the outside of a flaming plane, but the werewolves were ... REAL? I love how it's all explained in a panel at the very end ... and ... story over! Go home!
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated with the artist here, especially how he draws Black Angel (that's enough from the peanut gallery!) I have to wonder if there was some model at the time -- she's drawn very muscular and very different then the normal pin-ups of the day and I'd bet there's some woman back in the 40 she's modelled from. I love page 6, panel 2, very art like.
The artist is very good at planes, monsters, buildings .. all around great work.
Didn't think I would enjoy any other golden age artists as much as Lou Fine & Jack Cole, but Cassone has a crudely smooth (or smoothly crude) quality I really dig.
ReplyDeletePage twp, panel two reminds me of a Mexican mural. Notice the balanced composition.
The hat brims jut toward the hag, seeming to make her lean back leftward, while her flames are driving the background character wielding a cudgel back to the right.
If the Nazis could resort to creating werewolves simply by drugging the villagers food, then why not use it to create a werewolf army than play "Scooby Doo" with a curse slinging witch? Also, some of the dialog is unintentionally hilarious. My favorite is Black Angel declaring that "Judging from the noise, this is a slight (only slight?!) case of murder!" A shame we never did find out where exactly she intended to stick her knife in that werewolf before that villager cut her off. Also, laughed like crazy at the Nazis jumping to their deaths screaming "Heil Hitler!"
ReplyDeleteLooking at Cassone's GCD art credits, the only other thing of his that I may have read is possibly some Dollman and Hangman stories... I guess I need to dig out some of these and check out more as I really love his work as well. Thanks for the comments :)
ReplyDeleteNow this is exactly the kind of Scooby Doo ending that I can get behind: The realistic explanation is wildly stranger than any of the paranormal stuff they were pretending to. I mean, she survives on the outside of a wee little burning plane she flies around indoors? I mean, she cant just curse a man and turn him into a werewolf, gosh, grow up! She has to actually feed that man cursed food instead.
ReplyDeleteI continue to love it. Yet again the character illustrations here are excellent. And the actual air battle art is notably better than the Airboy pages that anchor the book. I'm really sent by the background architecture this time. Like the top of page six, where we get from ancient Grecian columns (Tuscan) to the futuristic post-WWII Yugoslavian brutalist monuments (spomenik) just from one panel to the next. Cassone deserves a round of applause for how well he predicted Tito's Cold War art scene. Kudos!
TGIF! Wait a minute! How come it took me three days to find this?