If you haven't heard, Heritage Auctions has a handful of original, full-story Robert Webb / Iger Shop precode horror art becoming available in the next few weeks, (CLICK HERE for more info!) --and today's post is one of them. Annnnd after re-reading the ultra-lurid "Circle of Death" tale from the November 1953 issue of Mysteries Weird and Strange #4 a couple of things occurred to me: 1.) I wish I had added this to my Haunted Love mini series a few years back-- wah! and 2.) it's left me puzzled to why I've never posted it here at THOIA! GAG! Such a wonderfully mean spirited, gruesomely grim, scuzzy story-- why, I didn't even bother to clean up the scans as extensively as I usually do, just cuz! Hahahaha, enjoy?
4 comments:
This is actually quite a laugh to anyone who's done any medical college anatomy dissection. They don't plonk fresh corpses without any provenance or documentation on tables for dissection like that.
The gears that move these stories along are sometimes not as greased as iron railings (what?) -- her genius plan is actually a plan so bad you'd normally have to puzzle over it to make it worse!
... but none of that matters. What matters is how lurid this thing is; how matter of fact the killing is and how absolutely setup the husband is (the only time we see him is when he's telling her how much he loves her and looking over old photos.) Everyone is a straw man, and that makes the stories turn so much better. In a longer story, sure, you might want more nuance but in these short comic stories architypes are sometimes all you ever need.
There is one strange thing about the art -- as the story progresses Irma becomes more and more attractive or "good girl," and switches the most right after she kills him. I guess there is something to the story that marriage is worse for women!
As a Doctor with full knowledge of medicines (and their side effects) couldn't she have given her husband a drug to put him to sleep, permanently?
A trip to the Honeymoon spot with hubby and over the lake's bridge as an accident and its bye bye hubby with no one being the wiser.
Wouldn't someone miss the husband if he went missing via the dissecting table? Comic book killers always come up with the worst ideas.
I love all the horrific violent detail communicated through offhand dialog. "Nobody will ever recognize him now." Shudder.
I do sort of wish this one had been played as a period piece. I'd maybe buy this plan working out--if it weren't for those meddling kids!--had it all happened in the early nineteenth century. Though there really is something much more grody about this taking place in a sanitary modern hospital with shiny tiles and spotless starched scrubs.
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