The putrid past collides with a perplexed present in this oddball tango with terror in a haunted house, via the December 1952 issue of Strange Fantasy #3. Being a Farrell story, the art feels distinctly non-Iger Shopish in a few places, (and GCD lists no credit), so this may have actually been illustrated by a combination of artists. Now the wonderfully clunky story telling / unintentional humor on the other hand...
5 comments:
The art is ... bizarrely interesting. So many face close ups! How many up the nose close ups do you see in comics? There's a bunch here! Some place, like panel 3 on page 1, feel like they are traced.
It is like the artist -- knew they were bad at drawing figures so stuck with faces as much as possible. Look at page 2, the faces are good but the figures (like panel 2) look like children. The second to last panel is even odder; it looks like the artist was trying to do perspective and just ... could not.
It's super fun to look at. It's all over the place! It's fine work in places, and amateur in others but it does feel like the same artist? Maybe?
BTW I don't want to act like I'm crapping on this artist work. It's full of great stuff! It is almost like somebody who did face drawing for a living decided to earn some extra scratch working in comics.
BTW the splash figure is perfectly fine!?!?!
I need to come clean here. I hate splashes that end up having nothing to do with the actual story being told. Much like how some comic covers feature a scene from a story that’s not actually in it. (I think the cover of this comic issue is a guilty contender for this) Needless to say, the splash is the most interesting part of this comic despite is being denied an actual dancing girl ghost. The entire story hints of her haunting the place but in reality, all we get is a rather sick murder story of a man who just couldn’t let go. The closest thing we get to the supernatural is the couple falling asleep due to the sherry and sharing the same origin story behind the rumors.?Heck the couple isn’t even necessary to tell this story but it still works pretty well. Funniest part to me is when John takes the poisoned rose and places it between his teeth as well. That’s a new way to commit suicide.🤣
The last panel is ....... interesting. I can't make up my mind whether whoever drew it couldn't draw teeth (though his rendition of skulls is competent) or whether he intended them to be monsters). I'm a dentist, so this kind of thing draws my attention immediately.
Definitely a mishmash of art styles. It almost looks like one person did the faces, another the bodies, and maybe a third the backgrounds.
Some of the art looks more sixties style than fifties type of work, the images would not be out of place in a romance comic a decade later. As to the plot, it would not have been out of place in a 1960's-1970's Charlton horror comic. Things happen, but they are not over the top scary, it is more of an urban legend type ghost story or a one pager stretched out to tell the tale.
I agree with Glowworm concerning the teaser splash, it wouldn't have been impossible to draw the dancing specter hovering over the two modern day lovers while they slumbered. Today this would be called clickbait, though back then bait and switch would be most accurate.
This was an interesting filler tale, with the artwork as the main star even if it is a bit uneven here and there.
As always, thanks for filling our days with these horror comics from days past, Karswell.
Yes, it would make a good Charlton story.
With a few little opening and closing comments by someone like Mr. Bones" or "Winnie the Witch."
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