Time to carve out another creepy crummy, February themed love connection, this time from the October 1952 issue of Menace #8. Highlighted by some interesting art from Bob Fujitani, --but be warned, the print job here is a little murky in a few spots, so apologies to those who like to gripe about that sort of thing. I mean, I did my best to clean it up, and it's still a fun bit of hopeless doom for yet another smitten goon who gets everything he deserves for being the foolish f*#kin' fanged face freak that he is...
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This was one of my very first horror comic stories, reprinted in "Where Monsters Dwell."
This is basically a twisted version of the Greek myth of Pymalion, the king who sculpts an ivory statue to represent his ideal woman, then falls in love with it. Here, it's an ugly wood carver who is forced to make one for Napoleon himself. I love Gustav's fangs. That witch had a wicked sense of humor though. I could have sworn there's a later reworking of this tale from Atlas/Marvel (and I'm not at all surprised. Many tales were redone with similar themes throughout Atla/Marvel's run) from the post-code comics of the late 50s and early 60s where the carver dons a hat and becomes a figurehead alongside his wooden lover. The difference here though is that he merely cheats the witch out of her pay rather than flat-out killing her, so she purposely supplies the wooden woman with a human potion of her own.
BTW, I found the reworked version, done by Steve Ditko himself in Tales to Astonish#13, "My Friend is...Not Quite Human! from 1960. This issue also introduces us to Groot (as a villainous tree alien invader who would later become the character we're all familiar with from Guardians of the Galaxy) The story runs basically the same except the witch is replaced with a gypsy, who is merely cheated of her pay--not murdered, so she casts a spell to make his wooden lover human. She prays that someday the gypsy will remove her spell and leaves her now wooden lover. Also, Gustav gives himself a makeover to look more like Napoleon) Hence my memory of him putting on a hat!
Alright so normally Atlas has great stories but I don't think Stan wrote this one. It's kind of amazing that they reused it later; the witch part sort of comes out of nowhere. It's not up to the normal great Atlas standards, or the standards of Menace which was, IMHO, far away the best pre-code horror comic from Atlas.
While the art is muddy is still awesome. The first page is great; a 4 panel close up, then all the grotesques and goblins hanging out around his workshop, and our fanged little workman. I love page 4, there's some great emotion in our poor shmucks face and I especially like the panel where he's kissing the wooden woman.
I'm pretty sure the witch knew she was getting killed and faked it. She seemed to know everything that was up and actually put the plan in motion in the first place by letting her become a woman. She's re-emerging alive and well in her cave crackling all night about her good fun!
It's amazing the number of witches and antique dealers (and the like) who were killed offhand by their customers back in pre-code days. Did you help out the main character? Sell him a mirror or a doll? Refuse to sell him a doll or a piece of jewelry? Tell him his fortune? Chances are he's gonna immediately kill you for some reason. Who knows why? These guys had the life expectancy of some midnight mob doctor or the kind of pirates who dig treasure holes for the captain.
Usually bad printing, such as today's case, just look charmingly like woodblock prints. I especially like the fourth panel on the first page.
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