Continuing now with another monsterously macabre look at mannequin madness, and as a collector of said related subject matter myself, I'll go ahead and tell you this: DO NOT ABUSE YOUR MANNEQUINS! Because it's all true I tell ya, --TRUE!! From the August 1952 issue of This Magazine is Haunted #6, featuring some interestingly weird art by Leonard Frank.
3 comments:
This is bound to remind people of the famous TWILGHT ZONE "The After Hours."
Except with a human character actually trading places with a mannequin.
Tod is one more horror story example of a "jerk" who still doesn't really deserve half of what happens to him.
It looks like the artist was told to "draw like Ghastly" by his editors.
Page 6, panel 2, you can really see it. The stringy hair, the lips, there's a lot of Ghastly hallmarks here. It's kind of sad, I know a lot of artist at the time made careers out of aping EC artists but I'd like to see this guy's own style.
Next page with the "trail of blood" is kind of a puzzler; was it left out intentionally to say "it could all be in his mind?" The story itself is definitely not all in his mind; others participate so it's reality. Just kind of weird.
Here's the thing with the jerk gets it story -- one wonders if he knew it was "alive" would he still have tortured it? I'm with Grant on this that the fate doesn't necessarily reflect the crime!
Pretty neat nightmare logic story. At no point is it possible to know how much time is passing. Whether it's day or night. Whether the people in the frames are characters or unknown bystanders. It throws an urgent surreality over everything from the beginning. We're told Tod's a raging jerk--but mostly we see him worried over his performance and attuned to the suggestions of others. He's concerned about his own behavior: His psychologist is always just a panel away. He vents his emotions in a ways that seem harmless, even productive; that seem to satisfy the needs of his clients and employers. This tale is like his stress dream. Everything should work out fine in a world of daytime logic. But tonight it does not. I have to feel for him. Throughout the whole story he comes off as frightened, anxious. Here wears this expression in his last moment of life, and indeed it's the expression that is immortalized on the face of his mannequin hereafter, frozen in a state of high, uncomprehending distress. I identify with this far too keenly, I'm afraid.
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