A ferocious Bob Powell story from the May 1952 issue of Fawcett's Beware! Terror Tales #1 kicks off our November 2023 series of posts, and features 12 pages of truly amazing artwork. So impressive, in fact, Charlton reprinted it a mere 2 years later in the November 1954 issue of The Thing #17, for some reason re-titling it as, "Weird Legend of Trelawney."
A real stand-out of Powell's artwork... he obviously loved crafting the animals, such fluid motions... great stuff!
ReplyDeleteArt is good. Story was different, too. Enjoyed that one.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I can't take a kilt wearing ghost with that facial hair plus a tartan cape seriously, even if he's a psychopath who murders innocent horses and train drivers. Pity Marchand never thought of laughing in his ghostly face and telling him how ridiculous he looked.
ReplyDeleteOne thing Powell doesn't get enough credit for is his awesome ability to just spin up single panel or side characters, and give each one a pretty cool look.
ReplyDeleteSure, our hero is a pretty plain nobody (he's a stand in for the reader, so it should be), and the squires are really fun ghosts ... but look at all the side characters. Look at the guy that explains the legend -- he's fully modeled and has a great, memorable look, and he disappears after a page and a half!
The legend never exactly explained why only one squire seemed to walk the area -- was the town built on his land and he stumbled upon the other land chasing the guy? Regardless it still works.
Powell really loved drawing those dogs. There was a lot of great detail in them. You can see why they reprinted this, it's a really banger of a pre-code story.
Sweet Powell art for sure. I love the scary dogs and Highland ghosts. There is so much to look at here, but I want to single out the first panel of page two, which packs more Halloween magic per square inch into a comic illustration than about anything I've seen in a while. The splash is, of course, an irresistible stunner, too. I can't imagine seeing that and not wanting to immediately read the rest of the story right there in the sundries aisle.
ReplyDeleteGreat all round. Happy November.
Ndrodart says
ReplyDeleteAnother thing about this site. The number of unmistakable artists, the unique styles Bob Powsel is a fine showing of this, All I can say is congrats
The art is stunning all the way through... except that splash page. It is a striking design, but the drawing itself is not that great. Is it Powell or was it done by some in-house person or one of Powell's assistants perhaps?
ReplyDeleteI love all the borderless panels here. It lets the whole breathe and gives you the feeling of the open spaces. The big panels with the ghosts are very effectively employed, too. Powell draws a mean blasted heath as well.
Oh, yeah, 'Th-they've killed the engineer to stop the train and get me.' doesn't make any sense, but it does lead to that cool panel of him leaping off the train, not that he couldn't have leaped without it. Maybe they didn't kill the engineer and his panicked mind just jumped to that conclusion ? Sure, that's it. Problem solved.
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