Ahhh, the 'ol fake my death / bury me / then dig me up later so we can spend the insurance money routine has never sounded so good, as yessss, it's yet another in a long line of variations on said tacky tactic that once again fails miserably for the pea-brained person who stupidly thunk'd it up. Is that a spoiler? Nahhh, you longtime followers of this blog already know this rotten routine frontwards and back asswards, so do what the story title says, --just try not to run out of air too fast, ya dang ding-a-lings! From the March 1952 issue of Spellbound #1.
GCD says art by Martin Rosenthall, which I don't remember a seeing a lot of art on (I'll have to check your links.). I have to say, it's incredibly cool.
ReplyDeleteThere are places it looks amateurish but it's actually just really elongated angles, like the splash. There's film-like panels, like the panel right after the splash, and a lot of neat foreground/background stuff, like page 2 panel 4.
The ol' Atlas 4 panel at the ending is incredibly chilling. They are kissing WHILE it's ringing, knowing full well he is suffocating while they make out! And the final panel with the dripping black?
There's a lot to love in the art on this one. Story is, yeah, a bit bog-standard but the art is stellar.
It's interesting the way they've handled a story that was already pretty hoary at the time. They've spent quite a lot of energy on the characters and events leading up to the scheme, but then the reversal of Steven's fortune feels utterly tacked on. The phone ringing really *is* chilling, and I feel like a fifth page punctuated by that ringing would have been worth the trouble. Just a page of silent scenes: Harriet doing the laundry while the phone rings. Getting married while the phone rings. Having children while the phone rings. Opening Christmas presents while the phone rings.... Like, the phone goes on ringing for the rest of her life, all the time, everywhere she goes.
ReplyDeleteI thought the doctor looked a whole lot like a young Hank Hill in many frames.