Terror team time from Bill Benulis and Jack Abel, taking us out with a hysterically ratty finale from the August 1953 issue of Adventures into Terror #22, --hope everyone enjoyed our Atlas 2024 Fest! I'll try to add more Atlas tales in the coming months, but up next some long awaited requests from other various publications and eras. Stay tombed...
FYI If anyone from the Atlas Tales website reads this blog, you may want to correct the title of this story on your entry... you have it listed as "Built Another Rat-Trap!"
ReplyDeleteFantastic old school art! The ending had a very “Willard” type feel to it….
ReplyDeleteAnd so our Atlas/Animal tales come to an end.
ReplyDeleteAgain, and maybe this is just Atlas vs other publishers, but there's some really accurate animals in here, from the owls to the rhinos to the rats. Then a great haunted house, a great "hero" who could have come out of a corpse stealing comic, the art is on point here.
The rats getting caught in the trapes are pretty brutal, BTW, as is the last panel. I love the repetition of all the tails around the hand, the original tails being the bait.
These are the kind of stories where the ending is obvious -- the surprise is how the rats will accomplish trapping our "great hunter." Lots of fun!
Colonies of rats that think as a group are a real tradition, which is another interesting thing in this story.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how they give Hugo such a dramatic Edwardian or Victorian look. In a Hammer film, he'd definitely have to be played by Thorley Walters.
@Grant:
ReplyDeleteMrs Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH comes to mind.
What I can't get over is the amazing detail in the art, even when it's relatively superfluous - like the leaning one at an angle decrepit mansion in the first panel. Especially as, when this was fine, everything would have to be drawn by hand.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of decrepit, nice to see that this place without electricity still had such bright illumination indoors, and at night too!
I think the splash is excellent, love the house, love the panel depth, love the half-moon hatching on the ground. Less thrilled about how the letterer doodled "hoot" on the actual moon, though. That's some pretty lazy sound effectin'--but things got better by page two.
ReplyDeleteHugo's character work is all over the map, but that's a lot of fun. He goes from Joe Spinell to Lay Leno in a Wolfman Jack wig across the top of page three alone. By page five he's settled into a maniacal kind of Captain Kangaroo. That's my fave.
I have really enjoyed this Atlasfest! Excelsior!
What a brilliant conclusion to the Atlas fest. This is one of those Atlas tales that gives all but the best of EC a run for its money.
ReplyDeleteIt also had the feel of an old Weird Tales (or should that be Weird Tails) story, such as 'The Graveyard Rats' by Henry Kuttner.