From one terrifying transformation tale beyond the stars (see our previous post), to another right here on Earth, let us now follow one man's ill-fated attraction to some bad pussy. From the Spring 1945 issue of All-New Comics #11, and with some ferociously fun art by Jerry Robinson, not to mention a funny little foreign sleuth of the supernatural, Professor Augustus Bonnard, who I'm not sure ever made another comic book appearance, (I didn't find anything related on GCD anyway, so please correct me if I'm wrong.) Yep, love is all around here at THOIA this entire month of February, it's even in the trees, and gasp! --here it comes now for your throat!
6 comments:
There's a lot of disbelief to suspend on this one! It's interesting they didn't go with the were-panther explanation (it is 45 so this is before the horror boom) and went with "she went mad and thought she was a panther" and also in her madness somehow made a panther costume and somehow killed a horse with her teeth and somehow had the actual form of a cat etc etc etc.
I love the hand drawn fonts on the splash. Great art, very nice looking panther, I love the comical look of some character (can do without the fake french speech, though), there's really good staging on even the talking head parts.
Story, eh. Art, excellent. Some great moody night shots, too.
It's a little strange to imagine that anyone--after the police witness a giant cat mauling their own patrolmen--would call a criminologist, rather than an animal control professional, in to take care of the problem. Of course, that zoo keeper is so incredibly sketchy that I can see why the cops wouldn't want him around. Also, of course, it's not a giant cat but a lunatic blonde in a costume, so in retrospect that also tracks.
I think it's funny that the great criminologist can tell right away, via field inspection of a horse carcass by moonlight, that this isn't a regular animal. What, did he not bother to examine the two dead cops? I also think it's funny that the homicide chief immediately assumes the perp is really a panther because it (yeah, I said "it") is able to break into the zoo cages. Some police work, buddy. Speaking of funny, I'm half convinced that Anders and Bonnard are actually Abbott and Costello in disguise, and that this whole thing was rewritten over a comical story from another title. The art supports this here and there. So do some of the balloons, frankly.
I dearly love that eighties high school heavy metal panther panel at the bottom of page six. Grrrrr! I need that on a satin karate dojo membership jacket.
I'm chalking this one up to Annette being a furry and that's that. Got a bit of a false beginning where we think Steve will be the main character. Nope! Not even a full 2 pages in and he's dead. So many unintentionally funny things in this story though, such as Annette's stepfather threatening Steve that he'll "fill you fool of buckshot!" ( I don't think that was meant to be an accent either, just a case of someone needing a better editor), one of the dead cops, Joe being up for retirement next month and the zookeeper having a rather kinky sounding relationship with his panthers. I have no idea how the heck Annette was going around tearing people's (and a horse!) throats out in that costume. Other stories provide better explanations for these things, such as special poison tipped claws or something. Nope, we get the explanation that Annette's simply gone mad and thinks she's a panther. So every night, she dons a costume and murders people--and a horse! The stepfather apparently knew Annette secretly wanted to be a panther, but he didn't seem to know that she was the panther unless his warning about her being killed out there was meant that she'd wind up dead if she kept up with this bizarre game of pretend.
I have a feeling the comic scriptwriter saw the movie Cat People back in 1942, half remembered it, then tried to turn it into a crime comic.
This is a throwback to the good old days where the preceding comments are better than anything in the story!
The Professor seems like an obvious knock-off on the pulp character Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn. He appeared in a LOT of Weird Tales stories at the time. I wonder if Professor Bonnard didn't appear again because someone told them to cut it out with the copying.
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