Goofy lookin' host aside (I can actually think of plenty of names for "The Nameless One"), this is a wonderfully eerie tale from the July 1954 issue of Beware #10 about spooky skeleton pirates guarding their sunken sea booty vs. those who try to take it from them! THOIA art fave, Art Gates, again demonstrates just exactly how underrated he is / was...
7 comments:
Bob and Linda are the textbook definition of "too stupid to live", but the pirates should've let the other three get away.
Ha ha, I like how that one guy never has a name besides "the bum."
In the Romero version of this story, it would have been Bob's own corpse who imprisons Linda, after she has finally managed to wrest him from the skeletal grasp of his new shipmates. That last view of the dead crew, plus new recruits, is really very creepy.
This has, by the way, one of the great pre-code covers. The title logo treatment and trade dress of BEWARE is one of my absolute all-time faves, too.
Bob and Linda absolutely deserved their fate here. Not just the greed, but how completely and utterly unprepared they were! No gear, no weapons, no plans, no nothing. Just dive down -- holding your breath (!!!) and grab the treasure. The ghost pirates just had to be wondering why it seemed so easy to nab these morons.
I love how nihilistic this tale is; the cook and helmsman really didn't do anything but they are shark food; but at least they don't have to join the ghastly crew.
The last two pages have some great art, it's pretty freaky to see them dragged to their death and then eternal torment. I didn't think the host, Orko, had it in 'em!
Yep, I liked the Beware cover so much I made it the cover of my Return of the Zombies book back in 2016! Get yours here:
https://www.amazon.com/Return-Zombies-Chilling-Archives-Horror/dp/1631406302
" The ghost pirates just had to be wondering why it seemed so easy to nab these morons."
There were no pirates. It was all just hypoxia.
Well this was a real downbeat ending. I feel sorry for the cook and helmsman, they realized the danger and wanted to leave the pirates alone, but they were doomed much like almost all of the crew of the Pequod from Moby Dick.
The skeletons on the splash made me think of the 1970's-1980's Pirates of the Carribean models made by MPC.
The same with me.
At least Bob and Linda can't be accused of "white privilege." The cook and helmsman are both ethnic characters, and when Bob offers each of them a share, as far as you can tell he means it.
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