Today's story would've been a good one to save for a witchcrafty "Halfway to Halloween" presentation post. Unfortunately, we're still shivering in the first week of a very wintery March-- brrr! Ahh well, just imagine that it's actually Walpurgisnacht, or even Halloween itself, get into costume (don't forget the devil's bane!) and head on over for a party to end all parties properly-- with a black magic powered seance! And slow down a second now, or you'll forget to bring the catnip too! From the Dec. 1954 issue of Dark Mysteries #21.
4 comments:
This one is bananas. I like the abrupt ending.
Even thought the cats did indeed commit murder, (and one more has been added to the group through the witch herself) animal lover that I am, I feel a bit saddened that they're all going to be drowned. Then again, cats have nine lives--and these aren't exactly normal cats. This one's pretty crazy. I love how Brenda just casually tells Janet that she sold her soul to Satan last year for occult powers. It's also odd that the third woman is never addressed by her first name. She's always called "Mrs. Trace". The plot of the dead (most likely murdered) husband out for revenge usually would be the main plot of one of these stories--but it's not here. The main plot is actually the aftermath of this little séance Love panel 6 of page 2. Panel one of page 3 is good too. The part where Janet has scrawled in her blood what caused her death is unintentionally hilarious. She even managed to write down Brenda's address! 🤣🤣
OK Brenda kind of deserved her fate -- I've had to catch cats to take to the vet, etc, and unless you catch them off guard it can be a monumental task, and all she had to do was instantly run the minute the door was open. For a witch, she didn't plan a single thing out very well!
I like the art in this. The cats are wild, the panel where they are jumping is all kinds of goofy and it's much better for it. They look more demonic. I love when they are sitting on her, the artist drew some really angry cats!
Page 3 is actually really good, with all the moving curtains, it's a pretty striking set of images. There might be a little too much story here, but it wraps up in a clean 6 pages and has a pretty funny "oops" ending.
Art-wise, I really like the super formal triptych of panels at the top of page three depicting the curtains attacking the séance. That would make a really nice art deco dressing screen.
But does anybody else feel like this artist did whatever he could to avoid drawing the cats (well, at least as far that was possible in a story like this)? For panel after panel in the top half of this thing, the cats are minimized--sometimes presented so small that I thought they were tchotchkes sitting on the shelves--or they are turned away from the viewer, or they are obscured in some other way. By the middle of the story I was thoroughly convinced this guy couldn't draw a cat and he knew it. And while I appreciate the gusto with which he eventually presented his cats on the last two pages, nothing about that really changed my mind.
Bugs, rodents, snakes--and even cats--I guess these things loomed large in the minds of fifties urbanites as vermin, and therefore we see a lot of their depictions sprung as much from imaginative disgust as any real artistic observation. I think it's neat to see these impressions; and of course it fits super well into any story about cats as bogeymen.
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