Our awesome All Atlas August Fest continues now, and as mentioned I have quite a line-up of THOIA fan favorites coming up! If names like Russ Heath, Robert Q. Sale, Marty Elkin, etc sound exciting-- then you are definitely tombed to the right blog! And of course you can't have an Atlas Fest without some really good dick, --aka Ayers that is-- and saaaay, here he comes now, creepy crawlin' atcha from the joltin' June 1952 issue of Journey into Unknown Worlds #11.
6 comments:
I love how twisted and deformed everybody is in this! Hell, spider-man was actually the most honest person there; Mr. Green was a horrible person but spider-man just wanted to make a deal -- assuming of course he wasn't eating people!
I have a special love for tales where there really isn't evil; its the hero of our tale that decides to renege on the deal and is much deserved of his fate regardless how monstrous the killer is.
I don't know if I'm a fan of the coloring on page 2 but I adore the art. The tall shadow, the cramped alleyway, and panel 5 is really high art composition wise; and panel 7 is just fun and clever take where the artist was probably entertaining himself.
Got to love the sweat on the last page, that's Eerie Pubs level sweat!
Mr. Green looks like a freakish Marlon Brando!
"Of course you'll come with me! With people like you, greed always overcomes fear!"
I have a feeling this mystery silk seller has dealt with the likes of Green before, it would explain all of the skeletons he has lying around his place.
The only thing that might have made this story flow a little better is as follows, if the silk seller sent Green a sample of his silk. A golden silk handkerchief for example, along with a note informing Green he could buy more of this magnificent silk, if he agreed to meet the buyer in secret. Again, a minor detail, but it would have intrigued Green enough to seek out the seller instead of the other way around.
The last panel, where Mr. Green is about to become spider chow, it predates the horror Classic "The Fly" by six years. You could almost hear Green's desperate cry "Help me! Help me!"
Life lesson for followers of THOIA, don't, and I mean Don't cheat mysterious people you encounter. It is not only bad manners, bad ethics and bad business, it can lead to bad consequences down the road.
More than his evil, Green deserved to be eaten because of his sheer mind boggling stupidity. Here he had an assured, possibly infinite, supply of the best silks anyone had ever seen, and all he had to do was pay his supplier. Instead by holding out on paying, at the least he guaranteed that the supply would stop as suddenly as it had begun. How did this mouth breathing imbecile ever manage to start a business in the first place?
One question that strikes me is why Spiderman chose Green in the first place, instead of an honest businessman: did he know or expect that Green would try to cheat and therefore give him an excuse to eat the latter? Is that why he took Green to his slum basement instead of turning up at his office with fabric samples - because he didn't want anyone else to see him since he knew that he'd end up consuming Green?
Gorgeous. The subtleties in coloring must have looked a lot different originally, before age and yellowing paper mitigated the greens and the blues together so much. I like the way the strategy for coloring page two seems to have been to carve characters out the light blue nighttime using yellow. But of course that's been muted a lot through the years, turning two kinds of grey. But look at the same sort of combo in the face on the last page (panel five). It's beautiful and oh so subtle now, but I'll bet that panel was a real shocker back when this thing was still young.
More on page two for a second: The art and progression is so excellent (especially that stairs panel at the bottom!) that I didn't even notice at first that it was all padding. It creates excellent pacing and mood for sure, but it was probably not in the story's best interest to repeat dialog from page one at the top of page three. It closes a loop, making that second page feel tacked-on in retrospect. I know that Sunday newspaper strips often had a conditional panel or two, art that could be cut to reformat the strip into different shapes and sizes depending on page space. If Ayers felt like this story was made to shorten into a four-pager for reprints, I'd like to think he fought back by making that extra page the very best one.
Though that splash is a really contender, too. I love the giant black shadow that falls over half the frame. It can accommodate all the words it wants. Another made-to-order band flyer.
Pretty much perfect. Enjoyed this one very much.
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