So far this month we've had mummies, werewolves, and weird graveyard ghouls-- so let's keep the monster mash a'bashin' now with a Saturday Afternoon Vampire Double Feature! First up, Stan Lee and Bill Everett team-up for a freaky, fang-filled tale of futuristic fear, from the April 1953 issue of Menace #2 (and check out that Everett cover too!) Followed by an eerie blood suckin' quickie via Ed Winiarski and the January 1954 issue of Menace #9. Hope everyone's enjoying this menacingly macabre Atlas Fest I've apparently started...
7 comments:
Love these reprints! Just bought and are reading Ghosts and Swamp Monsters, and will buy Mummies next week. Now I need to find an affordable set of the 35 issue run of Haunted Horror. Incidentally, I have always loved Wild Bill's art, especially his inking technique. I think I have a copy of Menace around here somewhere. Thanks for digging up all these treasures!
I love the deranged design for John Burton, the vampire in the first story, especially the green vampire form. It’s great. I love how before the narration explains that John is a vampire, it just looks so bizarre. Kind of like, wait, why is he so happy that everyone around him is dead? The robot twist is weird but fun. Probably best not to think too hard about how the robots took over. The second story is just really really depressing because you hope the cycle will one day be broken but it doesn’t look like it ever will be.
In the first tale, the destruction of Crypts door's lock, it is a key detail showing logical thinking on the vampire's part, something we rarely see in horror comics. In a similar tale, the intact lock would have trapped the vampire in leading to its doom.
In the second tale, it is a variation of the story "Doom of the House of Duryea" by Earl Peirce, Jr. The story is available on Youtube if anyone is interested.
As I've said before, out of the voluminous horror output from Atlas, Menace was the absolute best (at least up to issue 8, where Stan stopped being associated with it.)
Stan's snarky writing, and all the great artists (like Everett here), Menace was one of the truly greatest pre-code books. I think Haunt of Fear was better overall, but they are neck (ha) in neck.
I love the cartoonish vampire; Everett was so good at that. All his wild expressions, page 4 panel 5 and then the next page have some great comical expressions. I love how happy the robot is on the last panels!
Blood Relation is a good use of the repeating cycle troupe. We get some good werewolf-like vampires in this one.
If anybody is looking for a great read, pick up the Atlas masterworks for Menace. Well worth it!
I'd thought and expected that the first tale would have the vampire suffer the effects of drinking radioactive blood.
I also love Everett's green vampire. I love it because it's unique and mutated looking, and because the color is such an unusual choice. I'd love it in any event, though I do wonder if a fifties notion of radioactivity, related to the luminescence of watch dials and the like, contributed to the idea that the vampire should glow green? That'd be cool too.
All the bat transformations in that one are beautiful.
The second story is nicely done (and feels longer than the first to me, what with all that chewy narrative set up). I love the subjective sense that time passes differently for the cursed. I dig the Jekylly-looking monster design, too. But I'm hard pressed to identify that guy as a vampire. First and foremost, he's not dead. His problem is genetic. He doesn't drink blood. He seems to skip over time from milestone to milestone. He's killed by regular ol' bullets.
I'm the last person who ever wants to gate-keep some kind of canonical authenticity vis-à-vis folkloric monsters. But this apple has fallen pretty far from the tree.
"Blood Relation" is very good, but too downbeat for me. You don't expect a happy ending from one of these stories, but still!
Even though the story never throws itself out at you, "Burton's Blood" has kind of a lesson about the vampire simply taking advantage of the world's stupidity - the war, I mean - without actually killing anyone. Too bad for him that it doesn't stay that way.
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