Sunday, January 21, 2024

The Witch Hunter

The wicked 'ol witchery continues with another ACG tale of the supernatural, this time from the May 1954 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #55! You barely even have to glance down to see that this is one of those cool, but very short-lived "TrueVision" stories by Harry Lazarus. I've posted nearly a half dozen of these in the past, so if you're hungry for more of this "thrilling 3D process", CLICK HERE afterwards!





5 comments:

Glowworm said...

Nothing more fun than a hypocritical, perverted old witch hunter, huh? This dude even turns to witchcraft in the end to find what he's looking for.

JMR777 said...

I wonder if Truevision will ever be used in comics again, it has an interesting look to it.

Mr. Cavin said...

Gosh he got off easy, too. I mean, I was all amped for whatever super-tortures a witchfinder general must endure when he's caught sampling the product--but instant death? After burning people alive in a snit? What kind of half-assed revenge is this? I mean, if I were Angela's dead parents I'd be pretty damn miffed she stole my righteous thunder.

The art on these is always so fun. I like all the ways Lazarus methodically constructs his diorama-like panels. The foregrounds over thick black borders is flashy, but the converging floor lines and mid-range coloring the half-tone deep fields are probably more important to the look. I especially like all the environmental grandeur at the top of page three.

When I read this I thought, boy, Mr. Barnes is gonna have something to say about that spider! I mean look at him!

Brian Barnes said...

Yup, that spider is great! After so many stories with really well drawn animals we get the a spider straight out of mad scientist lab. All sorts of weird insect parts slapped together, but you know what these badly drawn spiders always have? A charm. They look so happy just to be whatever guess the artist had about what a spider looks like!

There's also some weird anachronisms in here like Angela's clutch and jacket.

The construction of these panels is always interesting; so many panels deal with looking down a really long room so you can make the figures in the foreground pop. There's got to be a lot of planning in this.

And the most fun -- nobody that drew this would have ever expected The Horrors of It All -- when presented here, the page borders disappear and it looks like one long vertical comic!

JMR777 said...

Look on the bright side, Mr. Cavin, the witchfinder may have died a quick death, but what is his punishment in the hereafter?

All of the innocents who perished due to his false claims of guilt will punish him for centuries - repeated drownings, burned at the stake repeatedly, drawn and quartered daily, etc.

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, I think Angela's afterlife punishment will coin a new phrase- hell hath no fury like a woman's revenge.