Can't have an Atlas Fest without the good old, piss poor dental hygiene horror of weird ass Al Luster! And if you thought Mr. Snake Fingers was over the top in our previous post, wait'll you get a load of this bird-brained Adventure into Terror (#23, from September 1953.) Plus, Carl Burgos cover art!
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Ah man, I love Al Luster. Always so energetic and emotional--his art always reminds me more of Kurtzman than what other people were doing. That last page is wonderful: I love the pecilling and inking on the third and fourth panels especially. And the coloring, too--the red distribution on that page is dynamite.
This post-The Fly mad science vulture story is a bit of a psychological tell. I imagine somebody watched the movie and thought, shoot, what an existential rip-off! I mean sure, he gets to eat like a bug and see like a bug. But even though the title of the movie is "fly," it's the one thing the poor schmuck can't even do! What comic bookable irony!
I'm delighted at the Luster touch even here, though. At least this landlocked vulture man still has terrible teeth in his beak.
I love the well drawn vultures (getting lots of animal based horror lately) with their drooling mouths, and a great look of surprise when the rock whizzes past.
Making our mad scientist ugly is kind of a strange story element, it actually makes the ending have a bit less of a sting ... and he has a pretty wife and money, too!
I'm with Mr. Cavin here, the yellow/reds are striking on the last page, it goes from mostly yellow slowly into mostly red, before the punch ending panel. Poor sap didn't even get wings, but he got a lot of great shadow work on that last page. This page is one of those ones you can show to people to explain what pre-code horror comics were like!
I also like the animal skull, last panel, page 3, and then the desert mountains in the next panel. Nobody had to do that much work for a 10 cent comic, but they did.
Page two, bottom left corner, he looks like the type of supervillain sent by the axis to fight Captain America.
"I know the formula will work so I will use it on myself without testing it first, what could go wrong?" What indeed? Truth be told he looks better as Buzzardman.
Speaking of that, you get used to men with "character actor" looks having hot wives and girlfriends (in all kinds of stories), but Henry and Elaine practically takes the prize for it. Especially that shot of her on Page 4.
(So when she mentions how he has other things going for him without this experiment, she's a little modest about one of them.)
Given that Atlas would become Marvel within the decade, I wonder if this story in any way provided a bit of inspiration for Spiderman's old adversary the Vulture? Does it predate cover artist Carl Burgos and Joe Gill's Human Torch villain (also 1953)?
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