So after two short ones in a row, you get two long ones in a row! And if that ain't a "that's what she said" joke, I don' know what is. And I apologize for not remembering who sent these scans to me eons ago, (I believe it was one of the Tommys who used to donate scans for Haunted Horror occasionally), but here we go with another very lengthy, Fawcett fright-fest full of scary Sheldon Moldoff skeletons and, well, --even more skeletons! From the June 1953 issue of Worlds of Fear #10.
6 comments:
Wow, every panel of this thing is dynamite. I especially love the illustrations framed in the car window on pages two and three, and of course all the creepy red skeleton stuff on page five. But even with all this excellence, page nine still stands out. Every panels a winner, from the sweaty hair-pulling anxiety at the top, through the man-hide dressing room in the middle, to the skeletal shrapnel explosion at the bottom. Man, I could really go for a couple packs of Candy Bones right about now.
I guess Peggy learned her lesson about gaslighting, huh?
Well, that's a neat one. The artwork is great enough that I'm almost willing to ignore that one going through the skeletons robe as well as ribs. In any case any tale where the monsters win has my wholehearted approval.
I definitely wanted this one to have a happy ending. It's a long enough story to really start liking Perry and Peggy.
I couldn't help enjoying that line on Page 2. How often is a snake in a horror story practically assumed to be a harmless one, instead of the opposite? Or anyplace else, for that matter?
Let's give Moldoff a lot of credit on this one -- drawing that many skeletons has got to be a real workout. Putting cloaks on them is a decent shortcut, but think of all the line work (not to mention inking) on that splash!
Also, the splash is great; it's well thought out, Perry on the left, the machine on the right, and framed by skeletons and the looming shadow. That's a awesome piece of 50s horror art.
My first thought was they were turning humans into skeletons but instead they were just stealing their flesh to disguise themselves as humans, that's a pretty fun twist.
I might have to start carrying a grenade, that seems to be pretty useful!
Now this is a version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" that could only be made with CGI or Dynamation if Ray Harryhousen had been given hired for the job. Such a film would have equaled the skeleton scene from Jason and the Argonauts.
Substitute skeletons for aliens and this tale goes from horror to sci-fi, though it could still be sci-fi since we don't know where the skeletons come from, earth or space.
It figures, I post and then the idea pops into my head, this tale was a precursor for "Tombs of the Blind Dead." It could still work as a sequel.
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