Here's another fun Charlton tale from the boiling bowels of doomed inner Earth. And like our previous post, it not only comes from the August 1954 issue of of This Magazine is Haunted #19, but is also illustrated by Sy Moskowitz again.
Here's another fun Charlton tale from the boiling bowels of doomed inner Earth. And like our previous post, it not only comes from the August 1954 issue of of This Magazine is Haunted #19, but is also illustrated by Sy Moskowitz again.
There's some fun Atlas-style but not Atlas 4 panels here. The drowning is pretty intense, actually, all the four page devil on the last page is creepy as all ... eh ... hell. Some really nice work there.
ReplyDeleteThe ending is pretty obvious but it's fun nevertheless.
I wonder when the "hand above water" became universal language for drowning in comics?
The first page is 50s comics 101. A big monster head, violence, and a babe. Dr. Wertham had a point!
The Devil's tightie whities are a hoot. I LOLed when he popped up on page four.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little ambivalent about Moskowitz's reliance on superficial dot textures. It's a process that I tend to think of as lazy. But I have to say that the use of Zip-a-Tone (or whatever) in the near-drowning part, and especially the freakout in the third panel of the last page, is all really effective. Less effective to me is the classic arched pointillism pattern on the first page and here and there through the rest of the story (there was even a little in the last post). It's likely not at all lazy--Sy may have done this work by hand--but it's a very old fashioned shading technique developed, I believe, because of the efficiency with which it could be carved into woodblocks. To me it feels out of place in hatching and technical line environment of the rest of the illustration style here. Otherwise this work seems as strong, or stronger, than what we saw earlier in the week. Moskowitz's excellent character illustrations and engaging sequential storytelling absolutely surpassing the plot framework.
"A big monster head, violence and a babe."
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm wrong, but isn't that bikini surprisingly small for ' 54?