And the midnight toker! Just jokin'-- it's "Super Blood-Soaked Saturday Shocker" time again, with a deadly double header of gagging gore and blood thirsty, brutal betrayals! Yes, just in case anyone thought THOIA was turnin' soft over our expansive 18-year run here on the 'ol interwebs, well, --think again! Two terror-packed tales full of dismemberment, dickish dames, and dumb dudes a'danglin', and despite some less than stellar scan quality here, both are from the rather awesome August 1954 issue of Mysterious Adventures #21. The savage illustrations in the first story are by bad boy Bill Savage himself, and followed by the always radical Ross Andru on our rockin' second tale. Plus! A real crowd-pleaser of a cover by Hy Fleishman! Have a gory great weekend everyone, with lots lots morgue to come-- so stay tombed!
Now those are some great splash panels! Semi-splash I guess, lol.
ReplyDeleteThe first story tries to out EC EC, but it’s no Foul Play. The second story I like better. It’s a favorite trope of mine to have an lifeless object that has sentience narrate its own story often with a touch of morality.
ReplyDeleteIt's closer to "'Tai'nt the Meat-- It's the Humanity!" if anything.
Delete"The Choker" fills lifted; I swear there is another pre-code about a pair of pearls that has the same general plot, but where I read it (maybe here!) I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteAndru's art is absolutely great, for the space he has, man is that thing text heavy. I know that is something I say every once in a while but here the art just can not breathe ... but, when the gruesome panels appear, they wisely get giant panels (Pauls hanging, Nora getting choked, and finally Bart's hanging.). Excellent set of panels for each, there's a lot of raw shock and emotion in them, but Andru was always that good.
Andru was the penciller on Amazing Spider-man right around when I started reading it (at 151, I'll always remember that issue) so I always associate his art with that. He was one of the guys that I thought "this is how you do super-hero art." He was a favorite of mine back in the 70s. He had a really long important career.
I have to mention The Coward, though, that is another fun stacking the deck one. Victor really, really, really deserved his fate!
Maybe there are many others, but this story reminds me of an entire novel by Richard Matheson called "Now You See Him."
ReplyDeleteIt's about a completely disabled man who has to see and hear his daughter-in-law and her boyfriend plot to murder his son. He ends up having a completely recovery, but (I think) not in time to prevent the murder. Like the choker in this story.
The "Please don't tell anyone!" part of the plan is pretty clever too.
There's something really cinematic about the opening of the Coward, what with its foreshadowing splash leading immediately to the beheaded chicken. That would be a great jump cut in a movie. And maybe I think it might have worked better here if the caption had been at the top of the next panel instead.
ReplyDeleteBut whoa, it's getting harder and harder to ignore the creepy gender politics of fifties pop media. Considering that these stories could not help but introduce--or reinforce--cultural expectations in its readership, what was the moral of this story? It certainly wasn't the benefits of vegetarianism. For my money, its good Robin found out about his fickle and behaviorally prescriptive girlfriend before they made it to the altar.
Ross Andru's art on the Choker is just as thoroughly overheated as I could ever want it to be; all of the lurid hanging panels--and there are so many!--satisfy, but it's that lolling blue tongue on page five that really goes the extra mile. Nora's final panel is pretty wonderful, too.
I'm interested in the choker's alien moral code, though. I guess I get why a righteous and upstanding piece of jewelry might not assassinate its wearer simply on hearsay, but I find it strange that it would allow the villains to all the way kill Paul. I mean, Nora wears that choker in every panel after she receives it as a gift--and it grows to hate her later the very same night! It could have killed her at any time, but chose to allow her plans to succeed--so far as the murder went--guaranteeing the greatest possible body count. I have to question that necklace's ulterior motive, frankly. One wants a peek at the will, to see where that murderous accessory's custody lands next.