Time to head to the ball and have ourselves one helluva good time with another lurid tale full of demons and wonky witchcraft, courtesy of the August - September 1953 issue of Out of the Night #10. Really nice art by Hy Eisman too, a name that isn't ringing a lot of bells around here, --I believe this may be the first story I've ever posted featuring his talents. Hy's interesting bio can be found HERE!
Ok now this was a weird one, not because Lorna turned into Wendy the good witch, but because ol' Scratch gives up on Lorna and returns her to life.
ReplyDeleteSince when does the fallen dark one do a good deed? Did he lose a bet or something?
If Lorna's good deed had redeemed her, causing her to get a second chance at life, that would make some kind of sense, but the story as it is just seems like the devil gives up in the end, a rare thing to happen in horror comics.
Great art, weak story, but nice find all the same Karswell.
The devil isn't really up to modern life, is he? If he wants a troublesome media person out of the way, all he had to do is get one of his demons in human shape to buy the media organ and fire the journalist. That's how it's done, Satan!
ReplyDeleteThe opening text caption sort of over-sells this, but boy oh boy do I love the scheming Satan on the splash. It's not even evil looking but more "I love it when a plan comes together!"
ReplyDeleteThere's some fine art in this. Page 2, panel 1 is great (and the B&W coloring works well), and the close up of the evil witch on page 6 is awesome, I like her sly look.
Not sure if panel 2 on the last page was meant to be not colored, that one seems to be a mistake.
I like this one -- it's a little left field and less like a horror story and more like a really off the rails romance story where love conquers all.
I always thought this story was cute. Like Brian, I LOVE that close up panel of the evil witch on page 6. I'm a bit puzzled as to where this copy of this story was acquired as the version I always saw had some muted color on the panels that appear here in black and white (which have to be some sort of printing accident). I also love the panel of Lorna casting a hex on Lon's ginger-ale. Lon certainly didn't waste any time popping the question on Lorna, someone he only met a few days ago! I do enjoy a rare story where the devil actually helps out the main protagonist--no strings or alternative motives attached. Here,Lorna simply proved that there was no spot in Hades for her after risking her unlife to save Lon. I guess the Devil was so impressed, why not let Lorna off the hook. After all, Hell won't freeze over on account of having one less witch.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really sure why Lorna ended up in hell to begin with, frankly. I guess the Devil is just as nosy and puritanical as the poor woman's friends and neighbors. Anyway, without any deadly sin to her name really--beyond "carrying on" that is--it's fitting Ol' Scratch wasted no time trying to corrupt her soul after the fact. The whole scheme to turn Lorna into an evil witch and thereby effect the removal of a heroic local journalist was some kind of diabolical double win for the Devil. Or woulda been. It stands to reason that when she did not allow herself to be corrupted, Satan's game was up. The cool thing about this story is that he turned out to be a pretty good sport about it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the art, I thought it was great too. Especially every part of page two. As for the coloring, well, the clue here is that pre-code comics rarely used a black halftone pattern, which is how you get gray. There is no gray ink. In the rare cases in which they did use a black halftone, it would fade exactly the same as all the other black lines across the page. Therefore, these grey looking dots on page two, beside unfaded black ink, were really blue dots originally. I don't know why they look gray now--something about their aging or the scanning or the monitor--but that's really unlikely to be the way they started life. I do really dig how it looks now, tho.
"Beyond 'carrying on,' that is."
ReplyDeleteThat's all it takes, unfortunately, for people to be puritanical.
"That's all it takes, unfortunately..."
ReplyDeleteAnd it's an echo chamber. So as the recursion intensifies, slighter and slighter infractions qualify as "carrying on." Thanks a lot, Satan.
That art reminds me a lot of Howard Nostrand, with the Jack Davis and Will Eisner influences peaking through, but it also hits a sweet spot writing-wise between the earlier straight ahead horror and the more idiosyncratic fantasy that ACG would later embody. It just needs the goofball humor, that is already there, to be more emphasized. Did Ricard Hughes ever work on Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen comics, because they may be the closest comics equivalents of what he'd get up to post Comics Code, though my outside comics go-to comparison for that stuff is 'the Incredible Mr. Limpet', and no insult intended by that at all.
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