The last post of June 2025 delivers a splashy severed head stuck high upon a gory gate! Yes, it's a gorgeously gruesome glimpse into a crime horror theme we'll see much more of in July, meaning a bounty of Bentley of Scotland Yard / "Can You Guess Who The Killer Is?" tales! From the October 1942 issue of Pep Comics #32, and featuring early art work from THOIA fan favorite, Paul Reinman! Hold onto your h-h-h-ats, and everything inside of 'em, --Mr. Karswell promises a weirder, wilder, and a way more violent month of posts as this sinister summer sadistically scorches on...
5 comments:
Cor blimey, squire, a bleedin' 'ead! The denouement is a bit of a cheat, since apart from Karswell mentioning the date of publication nothing in the story until the blackout panel indicated that it was taking place during WWII.
This was a clever whodunnit. I will admit it, I was intrigued by the exclamation "Lord love a duck", so I looked it up and found that it was a real expression that has fallen out of use.
The art is the loose style of the 40's, a bit amateurish in spots but interesting enough to hold a comics fans attention. No complaints, the art shows us how comics styles evolved over time, loose to more formal as time went on.
I could imagine this as a poverty row movie with a bit of dated humor thrown in to keep things lively.
Great find!
Page 5 accidentally calls Katherine Howard "Katherine Grayson," the name of an actual actress, though maybe not well known as early as 1942 (I'm not sure). Either way, it's kind of strange.
(These horror comics have also had a fictional "Stella Stevens," and who knows how many other famous names.)
I always liked the "Have you figured it out? Make your guess and turn the page!" Reminds me of that Ellery Queen TV show (though obviously this comic is much earlier.)
I like the art! Yeah, it's amateurish but at the same time tries really hard to be cool; there's lot of weird angles, the figures move well in action, it keeps the talking head panels interesting, there's a lot of craft in here, and artist certainly spent a good deal of time with that head on a gate!
I did not guess the murderer!
"The calm peace in the Tower of London is rudely shattered by the gruesome discovery of a severed head!"
That's kind of a different angle on the Tower of London than I'm used to, frankly. I mean, the story fooled me at first with its medieval trappings, the "living history" costumes and preserved setting obscuring the real period of the piece. But I'm still amused that the central building that figures in the murders and tortures of pop entertainment from Shakespeare to Roger Corman is played as an innocent bystander in all this. OMG errybody, someone's been killed off in the Tower of London! Can you even imagine?
This early Reinman work is so neat. It feels fresh, loose, and possibly a little hurried compared to his fifties output, and it's really great for all of that. These are not humble beginnings. The storytelling and pace are pitch perfect, and the pages themselves have this wild paneling that looks like it was laid in the sun long enough to melt. Page four is as beautiful as a game board. Looking trough the archives, I see that the weird paneling was dropped along the way, though whether that was owing to a evolving technique or different publishers' editorial tastes is hard to know.
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