The ability to see into the future seems like a good idea to some people, but they have clearly never read Stephen King's "The Dead Zone", or another example is this story from the Dec. 1953 issue of Strange Fantasy 9. Another word to the wise: never take presents from strangers, --no matter what!
13 comments:
Man, thanks for the ring! That was a big help.
I was expecting that the story would go the Daphne du Maurier 'The Blue Glasses' route with the protagonist suddenly able to see people as they *really* are, not the facade they put up to the world. That would have been a gift. This is a punishment. Thaaaanks, Turban Man! Couldn't you see the future coming so you didn't step in the path of the carriage at all?
Great art, though I did chuckle at the modern child's monoplane glider in 1915.
Kind of amusing to call this one "Mirror of Death" I mean technically, there is a part in the story where Luthor sees his reflection in the mirror as a skull but, it's more like "ring of death" if you ask me. I like how the grandson's death isn't prevented at the last moment or anything. I thought maybe Luther would end up sacrificing himself instead (perhaps a post-code comic or something) but no, the child actually dies. Also, I was waiting for the punchline to this one to be that his cruise was on the Titanic. Nope, Lusitania. Close enough.
Oh and of course the Lusitania did not "take with it the lives of everyone abroad", but then eunt saying that there would have been no story.
So Luther does a good deed and THIS is his reward? No good deed goes unpunished ….
As much as I want to, I just can't see the ring as some kind of curse. I mean, yeah, Luther's inability to figure out how to use the thing points to a certain lack of creativity on his part. And his death is brought about by that inability, not the ring itself. I do imagine that wearing this ring would make me sad all the time--or really really gun shy about looking folks in their eyeless faces--but it's totally possible to take the ring off and live life normally while keeping it around for special occasions. I thought perhaps I'd use it when tasting fugu or boarding an aircraft, for example. Had he slipped the thing onto his finger and glanced around before embarking, he surely could have gotten back off the boat.
But warning people also doesn't seem to work. Would little Bobby have died without Luther's interference? Was it fate, or a locked door, or foreknowledge itself that killed the boy? So anyway, look at the other people on the plane, but never, ever, look at your own face in the mirror. If you do, something ironic will happen.
Luther Manning should have known the ring was going to bring him bad luck, any ring featuring a skull with horns and sinister looking eyes is nothing but trouble.
The original Twilight Zone episode "The Purple Testament" featured a Lieutenant who also had the ability to see who in his unit was going to die next.
Did Rod Serling get his inspiration for his story from this comic?
The answer can only be found in...
...you know the rest.
Everybody above has pretty much picked up on the highlights of this story, so let's look at that last page. It's glorious. I picked this one up for a joke a couple years back as it's so striking.
The smoking skull, the happy shuffleboard skull, the lady skull in her fine dress, I love it. I kind of wish the next panel would have been all skulls as the ring was still on.
While more than half died in the sinking, a good number survived, so this horror comic joins the same universe as the not to well researched crime comics!
This was among my first horror comic stories!
But I knew it from a BW reprint in an issue of Witch's Tales by Eerie Publishing.
Wow, lots of comments on this one-- can't remember the last time we had this much action here in the comment section, so thanks to everyone who piped in!
Also, to be fair to the "inaccuracies" of the Lusitania news, when news of the Titanic sinking was first reported, headlines said that "no lives were lost." And we all know how that actually turned out. See:
https://www.openculture.com/2013/10/titanic-sinking-no-lives-lost-and-other-terribly-innacurate-news-reports-from-april-15-1912.html#google_vignette
Wow, Deathlok's backstory is weirder than I thought.
Thank you Karswell, Justa wonderin' second to last panel, What is the yellow thing front right and is that an apendage draped over some flotsam left?
I assumed it was a life raft, or maybe just a piece of the sinking ship?
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