Friday, September 30, 2022

The White Bones

Ending out the month of September 2022 with a lurid Al Luster jungle jitter Atlas classic, from the September 1953 issue of Spellbound #17. Lots of great leering faces and terrible pointed teeth always populate a Luster tale, and let's see how the great white hunters fair in today's story, though what they're hunting for this time isn't exactly what you'd expect...

5 comments:

Mr. Cavin said...

Definitely the radiation should give those corpses super powers by the time the sequel starts.

The art here is great. I love the manic and cluttered frames, the claustrophobia, the spiky plants and leering faces. There's so much energy in this work, such breathless magnitude. Man, I love Al Luster. Every time I think the well has run dry you turn up another specimen.

It just turned October here on the east coast a couple of minutes ago. So Happy October!

Brian Barnes said...

The art and the pacing are excellent! We don't even need the "gotcha" geiger counter ending, though it is a nice capstone.

The story gives us a real gradual step into greed and suspicion and then madness; going from being friendly to untrusting to fist fights and finally the deadly end. 5 pages and not a panel wasted.

The art on the two fights is great, last page, panel 4 is a really striking image, and I like how they actually pre-announced the cliff without exactly revealing it.

This is a really great one.

Mr. Karswell said...

I too was waiting for some type of radiation induced superhero schtick twist-- what a relief we escaped that cliche this time around! UP NEXT: OCTOBER!

Grant said...

The native guides might look like stereotypes, but it's at least something that there's a reference to paying them!

Plus, it's one of those earlier jungle stories where the natives are pictured as the only sensible ones. Regardless of what you hear, there are probably many of those.


Todd said...

I think the real horror here is Harry's teeth.