How about we finish up this Atlas Fest with another one from the October 1952 issue of Suspense #23. And similar to our previous post, it's another tale about lousy 'ol looks, looks, looks! But a story illustrated by joltin' Joe Maneely is of course anything but "lousy", because not only is this 4-page, mini-masterpiece of mad science also written by Stan Lee, it's got zombies, werewolves, ghosts, plus, a fantastically funny finale! Don't believe me, eh? Wanna bet?
8 comments:
Maneely is the Randy Rhoads of artists; a life cut short that had it continued would have changed and enhanced their fields in ways people can't imagine.
Everything about this is great; Ignatz's look, the zombies, the werewolf, the ghost (nods to the colorist for the glow and the stars that's great work.) Good girl art, lab equipment, city streets, all of it just near perfect work.
Good (and different) cinematic atlas 4 panel at the top of page 3.
Stan turns in another darkly comedic 4-pager. These were always something to look forward to in Atlas. He had the flow of the gag down pat.
Extra points for the colorist. Lots of full color figures but they are never monochromatic; for instance on page 1 the green is outlined by blues and the red is outlined by orange, for shading. Really really high end work.
Atlas Fest comes to a close where every one was a big winner!
Ignatz Nopply, like most mad scientists, lets his arrogance and hubris get the better of him. Bumping off all the men in the world just for a date is, pardon the expression, overkill. As smart as he is, he never thought of hiring a plastic surgeon or asking ghosts how to improve his looks, short sightedness on his part.
While this tale was published in October 1952, Wolverton's tale "Robot Woman" came out in December of 1952. I don't know if Wolverton independently came up with the plot of an ugly genius seeking love, or the idea was 'borrowed' and reworked. Either way, it is fun to compare the two.
The name Ignatz has faded from use over the decades. The last time the name was somewhat popular was as a comic character's name, Ignatz Mouse, in the Krazy Kat comic strip.
The Atlas Fest was fun. Thanks for the posts.
That last panel is perfect! You'd think such a brilliant man would find a way to change his face, but apparently according to the narrator, it was the one thing he couldn't do. The second would probably be taking a hint that no means no, but then we wouldn't have that really morbid yet hilarious ending.
This reminds me of those blackout sketches you’d see on Rod Serling’s Night Gallery with their quick horror punchlines….
Right on, Ignatz! Don't worry about plastic surgery or anything like that, just kill off every male! And then you'll have the....er, pick of all women? Who'll go out with you after knowing that you just rendered the end of the species? OK, man, you do you.
Ho ho ho... 'Turning a man into a werewolf was duck soup for him... ' How droll!
Have you seen Evan Dorkin's take on this situation? I can't remember the exact wording, but it's something like 'Nadine...? You're f*cking a monkey...?' 'Yes, and you better do the same. I keep my word.'
Page one of this thing is one of those pitch perfect Atlas jobs where every element comes together into something greater than the sum of its parts--and something so wholly unique that it could not be mistaken for work from any other publication. This is not some knock-off second banana EC. This is a banana of the first order.
I love the colors (ignoring that little slip-up on the top of that volumetric flask in the second panel), the zombies, the ads on the subway. Everything. No other page quite lives up to number one, but they are all pretty great. In his list, Brian didn't mention the standard Atlas narrated four-panel progression that appears on the final page. It's also non-standard, maybe even less standard than the one on page three, but I think I like it best of all.
Since a lot of these stories have WWIII as their punch lines (!), I thought something like that would be the ending. Then I thought, how on earth could that be worked into a story like THIS one? Then I found out it had a similar enough ending.
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