As long as we're fishin' it up in this wicked sector of the weird, wooded wild (see our previous post HERE), we may as well get in a little hunting too! And now, not to be confused with the same named horror classic by the awesome great, Arthur Machen, but this time around the Great God Pan has to share his vengeful, shirtless tale via the January 1947 issue of Four Favorites #27 with some oddly intrusive narrative pop-ins from "The Unknown", a cloaked, Death-like horror host figure who would eventually get his own Ace Magazines comic series in 1951, (aka The Hand of Fate.) Paul Parker's artwork doesn't seem as tightly streamlined here as it is on his awesome Kirk of Scotland Yard tales (check the THOIA archives!) but its still pretty fun none the less. And, if you did come here looking for something Machen related, I went ahead and added a one page "Phantom Bowman" quickie from the December 1952 issue of Weird Horrors #5 at the end. If you're not hip to how or why it's related to Mr. Machen, well CLICK HERE for the full scoop-- it's a very interesting WW1 story. And finally, if anyone needs more sinister Satyr action, CLICK HERE as well-- whew!
6 comments:
Every time I hear "dead as a doornail" I can only think of this great bit from Christmas Carol:
"Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.”
Just wanted to post that :) This is kind of an interesting early horror story as it doesn't end with the deserved death but has a sort of ghost story coda (i.e., he goes back the next day and finds his jacket on the grave, so it *was* a ghost kind of ending.)
The bad buys faces and Pan's eyes on the first page remind me of manga, exaggeratedly big eyes and facial features that seem more cartoony than realistic.
I seem to recall seeing a version of this, cleaned up for the comics code, where the hermit is just tied up and the bad guys were caught alive. It might have been from the comic 'Adventures Into the Unknown' but I can't be 100% sure.
The tale itself , killers punished via the forest, is a new twist on revenge from the grave genre.
Both were neat tales, thanks as always for the post.
I really appreciate that final page. It's a pretty frequent experience for me to wonder what has happened to this or that through-line once I've finished a story, but this time we actually get a procedural conclusion to the cabin hermit part. Oh, I know it's just there to "prove" the hermit himself was maybe the Great God Pan ("see, he looks just like this here autographed pin-up photo!"), but it plays as a nice little denouement, too. One that has a rather sobering effect on the vengeful trip we've taken: Yeah, woo-hoo, these jerks all got what they deserved; but this nice guy is still dead.
Speaking of getting what they deserved (and speaking of speaking), hoo boy but the end can't come fast enough for these gangland types who talk like Bodē lizards.
Man, the cover of this issue is amazing! I don't want to ding Paul Parker's workmanlike art in the story, but the related cover illustration is super duper. Good Lord Pan! Rudy Palais (question mark) channeling Arthur Rackham! Now that's what I call a curse! I dodged a big disappointment checking out the cover last. I can only imagine what kids of the forties thought after they plucked this thing off the newsstand and peeped inside.
Okay, that was huge failure on my part to forget to add the freakin' Palais cover of this issue-- now rectified! Thanks for the reminder, Mr C!
Those caps (and the face of one of them) make half the men look like Chinese soldiers, so at first I expected some Atlas-Marvel type Cold War horror story.
The artwork really really reminded me of Marti's The Cabbie.
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