THOIA's February Freak-A-Thon continues with a creature feature science fiction horror classic from the September 1951 issue of Mystic #4! Seriously, is there anything freakier than Basil Wolverton art?! 'Nuff said...
THOIA's February Freak-A-Thon continues with a creature feature science fiction horror classic from the September 1951 issue of Mystic #4! Seriously, is there anything freakier than Basil Wolverton art?! 'Nuff said...
Nothing like a classic horror story on my birthday. I love the design of those devil birds. This one's a wild ride. We instantly get a reason for what the heck is going on--there was an H bomb dropped there 7 years ago and now there are devil birds. Nothing more is needed for explanation. I like how nobody actually dies either, they just become devil birds after being exposed to the elements.
ReplyDeleteNow watch the birdie!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it nice when the good bird wins?
I can have the worst trouble recognizing comics artists, including ones I've seen a hundred times, but Basil Wolverton is a big exception. As you say, he really stands alone.
ReplyDeleteEverything about this is awesome. Wolverton really loved a human transformed into monster story, didn't he?
ReplyDeleteSo, the bird are just great. Their weird snake like body, their bulldog like face (they are cute!), the green wings and the bump surface claws. He must have loved drawing these because he went all out and drawing large numbers of them!
The landscape work is crazy good, too. page 3, panel 6 is incredible. It has a real sense of scale and looks just crazy enough to be something that could be real, but still fantastical.
This could have been a plot in Wolverton's sci fi fantasy Spacehawk.
ReplyDeleteBack in the golden age of comics, only Fletcher Hanks came close to the wild work of Wolverton.
Ugh, Devil Birds look so much like winged space grubs. All the detail in their pale, segmented bodies and their veiny wings is just wonderful. Imagine if Wolverton had made a story about regular-sized maggots that could suddenly fly into your hair from whatever distant roadkill in which they were born. Just imagine the smell. That would have been plenty horror enough. But the idea that I might have to become larva myself, just to rescue my friends? Well, I hope my friends were worth it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of detail: I love the way Basil draws the fog in every panel. That guy definitely did not shirk his responsibilities when it came too manufacturing mood and filling up his frames. Page three totally sends me.
Thank you so much for this one! Wolverton was one of a kind.
ReplyDelete"I like how nobody actually dies either."
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that this story is trying to be very philosophical, but it's one story where radiation turning people into "monsters" is pictured as a kind of evolution, and it's only terrible to a character until it happens to him.
Check the THOIA Archive for lots more Basil badness. I'll dig around the ol long boxes a bit more and see what else I can find on Wolverton for future posts, --thanks for all of the great comments!
ReplyDeleteIs this copy of the story from a later reprint? I only ask because it refers to the H-bomb, but this story came out before the first H-bomb test. Also, the H looks like it may have been altered, presumably from an A?
ReplyDeleteIs anyone is weirdly interesting as Wolverton was?
ReplyDeleteTry Matt Fox.
Michael T Gilbert, from Mr. Monster reprinted a bunch of Wolverton in the late 1980s.
They improved the colouring, I think.
(nowadays they usually wreck the colouring in reprints with gradations taking over the original artist's intentions and colour changes that make no sense).
sometimes he printed Wolverton in b&w and he often looked way better in b&w only.
Our Graveyard is Missing! and the one where people turn into crabs looks especially nice in b&w only.
Only the best art looks great (or better) in b&w.