Annnnd hair we go again with another year of classic horror comic madness! It's hard to believe that THOIA is now in its 16th year of petrifyin' posts, and we seriously couldn't have done it without the handful of you that still continue lurking around and commenting, not to mention the occasional wonderful donations of super scans and other assorted scary suggestions. So to those of you out there reading this (and you know who you are) 2024 is deadicated to you for your continued fiendish fellowship and endless, eerie interest! Okay, let's pick things up where we left it all off last year with MORE ATLAS! From the July 1953 issue of Adventures into Terror #21, and fearturing art by the great, Gil Kane!
"More Atlas" has moved from annoyance, to private joke, to a rallying cry. That's what 16 years in the biz will do!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what correction they had to do in the initial caption? Moved this story around so it no longer referred to another story?
Kane hands in some great work here, there's a lot of really easy to read expressions, and our grave robber with his rumpled clothes and kind of gaunt look sells his profession.
There's the old Atlas 4 panel on page 2 but this time it's of joy!
Nice last page, with a whole lot of stabbing going on, and the old 4 panel has a really neat rotation trick (look at our hero, it's back, side, front, side.) That's really clever.
I've never commented however I've frequented your site weekly for years. Please keep it going as it's a great break and I love it when there's a new post and I also double check for a post on andeverythingelse at the same time.
ReplyDeleteStew
This story is surprisingly straight forward until the addition of the spooky-doo ending. I had kind of looked for a little more surprise along the line. I don't know what the shop lady expected from a street weirdo with an endless supply of human hair. Ida been delighted to discover that it was all coming from graveyard corpses. The alternatives are surely worse, though we sort of get there by the end, anyway.
ReplyDeleteLooking at this like a play, the mysterious hair man and in the wig shop is act one, act two is the discovery of his secret, act three is when he is confronted, and well, act four should have been his further development into a serial killer. The classic Burke and Hare escalation plot--why work so hard to find materials you can make yourself? Then, of course, act five would his supernatural comeuppance at the hands of his murder victims. But that would have been at least another page.
Of course the art is marvelous. The usual six-panel layout is subverted in almost every place. I particularly like the three vertical panels on page one, where often we'd have three squares instead.
Mr. Cavin, didn't you mean Burke and Hair?
ReplyDeleteIn the first panel I thought the buyer wanted hair for her severed heads in the background.
That would have been an interesting twist, a graverobber supplying hair for a serial killer to dress up her beheaded trophies. However, such a story would be too much even for the fifties, though Creepy or Eerie could have tackled it in the late sixties.
"Burke and Hair"
ReplyDeleteSnicker. Didn't even occur to me!
>I wonder what correction they had to do in the initial caption?
ReplyDeleteI did that edit, there's no point in a previous issue story reference if I'm not posting it too. Just makes the intro confusing.
More Atlas up next, and probably for the next few posts as well since its been awhile! Stay tombed... and thanks for the comments :)