Time once again to turn up the heat of our fiendish February love fest with another precode tale of vicious Valentinery! Okay, I really like ACG stories sometimes, especially when they set-up two ding-dong knuckleheads in a scenario where they just can't manage to do anything correctly. Every single decision made is a bad one, and in the case of these two lovebirds, simply taking a trip to the old haunted family estate to search for a hidden fortune is only the start of their bad streak beginning. Love that wonderfully bleak ending as well... from the Oct - Nov. 1954 issue of Forbidden Worlds #34.
Was hoping to get a story posted on my birthday! And an ACG one at that. I love ACG's comics. They even knew how to get creative after the Comic Code took effect. Of course, this one is before that occurred. Honestly, Fran's not the one making the wrong decisions here, Vic is. The only reason Fran's doing it is because she thought she loved Vic. The image of Aunt Edna hidden inside the wall is great. Although Vic seemed far too excited to find a crypt hidden inside the wall., if you ask me. Also, Edna really wasn't a miser, she just knew how that Uncle Otto was a greedy jerk. The ending's only bleak for Fran. She didn't deserve being killed. Vic on the other hand--well, a fool and his money are soon parted. Unless you're Uncle Otto!
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday!
DeleteThank you!
DeleteJeepers girl on page 1, always a good sign!
ReplyDeleteThis one has a lot of moving parts; dueling ghosts, greedy lovers, haunted houses, hidden loot, revenge, betrayal, etc, and it all works pretty well together. It's a tight, well paced story with a good ending.
I have to disagree that Fran didn't make a mistake; not that she deserved the fate she got but at one point Vic was going to go to the police and that would have ended the entire situation, yet she said no, and for a pretty poor reason.
Full of great art; Edna in the wall, poor Fran getting shot, and the fight in the fire. I like how the ghost is choking Vic but -- at least from my read -- the choking is doing nothing, it's the smoke and fire that is causing him to not breathe. That's really clever!
The final House of Usher image is great. This is a really good one.
>Fran's not the one making the wrong decisions here, Vic is
ReplyDeleteWell, Vic's the king of shit moves for sure, but as Brian already pointed out, Fran's the one who believes it's a better idea to find a walled-up murdered relative and instead of calling the cops it should just be buried in the garden to not upset anyone. That there, my birthday friend, is clearly a a wrong decision, haha.
First: hippy hoppy barkday, Glowworm! May you glow long and prosper.
ReplyDeleteIn all these tales, nobody seems to be genre savvy enough to
1. Not go to the crumbling old Manor.
2. Not go there at the dead of night.
3. Consider the possibility that, if there *is* a fortune hidden somewhere, it might by now have been ruined by damp or insects.
Which leads me to Auntt Edna's singularly stupid choice of hiding place. Oh well, maybe that money was half rotten anyway, and Fran just didn't see it out in the garden at night. She'll have all eternity to complain to Aunt Edna, in any case.
And nobody lived happily ever after.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, nobody lived after this ordeal.
This tale is giving off vibes from Edgar Allen Poe's tale The Black Cat, and the previous posts 'Secret in the Wall' and 'The Mummies'.
I do feel sorry for Frances, but she should have realized Vic was no better than Otto.
Frances should have asked Vic for the keys to the car claiming she felt cold and the car's heater would help warm her up, and while Vic was searching she should have driven away without looking back.
I wonder if Aunt Edna's farewell was a warning, 'till we meet again in the next world!'
And before I forget, Happy Birthday Glowworm, that Dorian Gray portrait of yours was a better investment than Apple stock.
Happy Birthday, Glowworm.
ReplyDeleteI know I always say this, but I expected a different ending for one character, but I'm sure I'm not alone. From Page 6 onwards, everything seems to shout "Aunt Edna comes to Fran's rescue."
ReplyDeleteOh, well.
Happy belated birthday, Glowworm!
ReplyDeleteI'm very late to the comments here, but I found a lot to love about the art in this one. I would really like to see the original art for page one, which seems to be in pretty dire shape after poor printing and the ravages of time. But the bottom row of panels still stands out in a gritty and noirish sort of way. I also love the final panel of page three, with its gnarly tree and the couple's shadows pointing them away from the shallow grave they are headed for.
But mostly I like that last page. Seeing comics illustrators handle fire--often without the time, the training, or the leeway to produce lighting effects (many comics printers limited the amount of ink that could be put on each side of the page, for reasons both frugal and mechanical)--is always interesting. How are they going to finesse this? Landau's solution, vaporous stripes, is fanciful and interesting looking. The fire is more of an ephemeral environment than a source of light and heat, and that sort of speaks to the way in which the ghost views what's happening. But my favorite thing about this page is the way in which Vic transitions from being more solid than his environment--and his adversary--at the top of the page, to being as ghostly as everything else by the time of his strangulation. That's a pretty clever way to articulate his death.