Time to watch another undeserving, murderous jackass meet his not-so-awful fate at the hands of the gorgeous gals he's destroyed. And hey, I don't know about you, but [SPOILER ALERT] eternal life with two sexy red head spooks might not actually be that bad-- know what I'm sayin'? From the joltin' January 1954 issue of Mysteries Weird and Strange #5.
I like the Scooby Doo nature of the story! For once, our "victim" is right that it's not a real ghost -- until he makes it one! I mean, I don't know why Ethel's ghost waited but it makes the story work so she was a convenient ghost!
ReplyDeleteThe artwork in this is great fun -- on page 3 we get a gooey crazy blood face but then on page 6 we get the least bloody axe murder of all time!
If Bill isn't a cad for ... well, murder! ... then honestly he really married up in the rankings! Ethel's like a 9 and Bill's like a 3 at best!
Now there's a twist on Blithe Spirit for you.
ReplyDeleteAh, the good old days before seatbelts when you could jump out of your murder weapon car at the last moment before it went off a cliff, hoping to land on grass soft enough to not break every bone in your body! What has progress robbed us of :(
Helen doesn't seem to have thought out her ghost act through. What would a ghost need money for? Maybe there are stock markets, real estate deals, and Amazon in the hereafter?
Gotta love the era's attitude to drunk driving. Here, it's Bill's "defense"; now it would be grounds for Bill to be charged with manslaughter or worse. Some plan, Bill. Some plan.
ReplyDeleteAlthough at least the SUBJECT of wrecks from drunk driving comes up. Earlier entertainment doesn't even get credit for doing that very often.
ReplyDeleteAs risky as it must be to pretend to be thrown from a CAR in order to murder someone, in a famous COLUMBO a man uses a PLANE CRASH to murder his wife that way.
Meet Helen, who's lived most everywhere,
ReplyDeleteFrom Zanzibar to Berkeley Square
But Ethel's only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights -
What a crazy pair!
But they're cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.
You know, I never really imagined the Patty Duke Show as the prequel to a dismal multiple murder, but here's the scoop hot off the four-color news presses.
I love the middle panels of page two so much--the colors, the art, the dialog. I'm with Eric, above, the idea of using drunk driving as an alibi seems so strange to my modern sensibilities I could almost imagine the opposite story being more likely: "My god, they mustn't ever find out I was drunk! I'll be ruined! Have to scrape some evidence together and make it look like I killed my wife for her money!"
"So that's it! The oldest trick in the world--trying to scare me with a phony ghost!" It's early days yet, but I suspect that when elections roll around, this will still get my vote for the best dialog of the year.
Wow. I am surprised at just how gruesome death can be when your iron lung stops.
ReplyDelete