We've been looking at old time stage magic over at AEET this month HERE, so how about we bring a little bit of the 'ol slight of head-- errr, HAND-- over here to THOIA as well, eh? This is a fun, Atlas quickie from the June 1952 issue of Journey into Unknown Worlds #11, with Harry Lazarus and George Klein teaming up on art duties... and fyi: there's nothing up my sleeve (or inside my collar), but we might just lose our heads in the next post as well, so stay tombed for that coming up next-- I swear, it's gonna be a seriously wild weekend Double Header that you know you won't wanna miss out on!
7 comments:
Harry's head now matches what he had between his ears.
Lokar's revenge reminded me of the tale "Levitation" by Joseph Payne Brennan, recreated in the anthology series Tales From the Darkside.
Lokar's appearance of a pointed beard, large eyebrows and slicked hairstyle made me wonder if he might have been old scratch in disguise, especially on the third page, upper left panel.
Ol' headless Harry's troubles could only get worse if Lokar gave him a slip of paper with Runes on them, claiming Harry will get whats coming to him in three days (que the squeaky bicycle sound in the background).
What do you call Bogan? The Headless Heckler? The Decapitated Dunderhead? I don't understand how he "made a fool" of the magician at the start, though. Good art, better than a short like this would ever get today.
Oh man, I'm trying that out right now. Next time you see me, I'll be flinging pumpkins from horseback.
I do kind of want to know what the rest of Harry Bogan's life looks like. This would be one heck of a great super hero origin story.
I like the first page. I'm not used to seeing the splash panel be a part of the story, just a regular frame plucked from the sequence and enlarged. That was the way Watchmen worked, too (even the front covers were a story panel there), and I always dug it. I dig it here, too.
Now I remember where I had seen Lokar's face before, he is the twin to Jon Gnagy, the Bob Ross of the fifties. Look up Jon Gnagy and see for yourself.
I'm late to the party so let's talk about the colorist. There's a lot of neat bits here and there and this is a really good job.
The yellow-white on the first page is good for making Harry seem actually scared; and it continue through the page and the coloring is brought in with the stage light, and a pretty neat effect at that, changing color as it passes behind things in the scene.
We get a repeat of panels with brightly colored lights on the next two page, and I love the last panel on page 3; that panel looks like art that would come out of a 70s Marvel monster mag.
Ah, you love to see the tales that are basically a bully getting his, it's refreshing at this point in time since bullies are now running everything, it seems.
It's a real coincidence seeing this story today, since I just saw again the movie DOCTOR FAUSTUS, from the Elizabethan play. One scene of it shows that heckling a magician goes back at least as far as the 16th Century, and just like in this story, can get the person in big trouble!
(Unlike this story, the trouble that the heckler gets into isn't permanent, so it's played for laughs.)
Love this one! Wonderfully abrupt ending.
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