If you've somehow never read Wally Wood's "The Curse" which first appeared in the January 1971 issue of Vampirella #9, then you are in for an eye-poppingly visual, horror adventure treat. I had a big intro I was working on for this but then ultimately just deleted it so you can simply take it all in for yourself and instead let the incredible illustrations do the talking. I've also rounded out the post with a funny little 3 page quickie from the April 1972 issue of Vampirella #16, highlighted by even more great cartoony art by Joan Nebot.
8 comments:
Interesting that the horse and rider skeletons in "The Curse" have a pose cribbed straight from the sculpture The End of the Trail
It’s not unusual for any artist of any caliber to use reference material like this, and using something that is even somewhat identifiable is sometimes even the point.
Well, fuck! When it comes down to it, I'll agree getting gang-raped is better than getting burned to death, but still!
Yeah, yeah,'The Curse' is great. Was it Pacific or Eclipse that reprinted this and other Wally Wood Warren stories in color? Either way my oldest brother picked them up back in the eighties and I read 'em, too. Too bad about Pacific going out of business back in the day. They certainly had their hearts in the right place publishing-wise.
You can always click on the GCD link in my intro to see every where it was reprinted in the past
So The Curse is probably the 2nd most famous Warren story outside of Jennifer, and Wood really works this one. The story was kind of formed around things Wood wanted to draw (Good girls, skeletons, zombies, spiders, monsters, etc.) A lot of the monsters they just walk by or avoid.
There's some famous stuff from Wood about dealing with talking head parts of stories, and the top of page 3 is master class in that. It's a lore dump but Wood keeps it super interesting.
Purification feels like Kurtzman ghost wrote it. Last page, 3rd panel (look at the guy loosing his teeth on the ground) looks like it could have come out of 50s MAD (and probably did!) It's a really funny little story.
Such a great Wood joint!
The Wood story is incredible with quite the twist ending--the first being that Zara was the one who cursed Zorg, the second being that Zorg was originally a lizard. That part got me the first time I read this one as I did not see that coming. I just figured Zorg was originally a human warrior but nope, he's a lizard. Also, I love the designs of the monsters, especially the brain monster with tentacles on the very top of page 4. Also, if everything for the most part is an illusion, just the idea of the old witch crawling around on her hands and knees pretending to be a giant spider greatly amuses me. Also, that second story is practically a porno masquerading as a witch story and it's hilarious. Horniness apparently does beat superstition and fear.
What always interested me about the Curse is how Wood chose to sort of minimize all those panels of witchy delusion. It happens here and there, but page five is the most concentrated example--imagine the meal Lee Elias or Joe Maneely or Ditko might have made of those monstrous panels! But Wally turns them into wee portholes, the visual main course relegated to the peripheries or backgrounds. I'm noting this without complaint. I think it's pretty rare to see a story in which the big visuals feel subordinated to the forward momentum of the plot.
Speaking of big visuals: I've always wanted to see what a Richard Corben version of this story would look like.
For the record, the cover of Vampirella nine may be my favorite Boris painting. I love this Gothic romance novel mode way more than the stultified sunny SoCal verisimilitude of his usual barbarians. I wish the image was the size of the whole mag.
(My two cents on Pacific: It was the best! That whole early push toward creator-owned publishing, along with Eclipse and Vanguard and some others, was such fertile ground that it changed the status quo. The eighties were a special time when the lines between the mainstream and the underground were blurred quite a lot.)
Post a Comment