Some corpses just ain't havin' it! And here are two chilling examples from the September - October 1952 debut issue of ACG's Skeleton Hand #1. Nice 'n reliably chunky artwork from Jon Blummer highlights the first tale about crackpot criminal kooks overplaying their hand with voodoo, --followed by a one page quickie about a haunted rug! AIEEEEE!! Is there anything more terrifyin'?!! Maybe try the vacuum cleaner next time...
6 comments:
I was expecting the senator to be the devil. He looks just like Mephistopheles.
These comics are a lot of fun because they seem as inspired by your 30s-40s serials (like the Phantom Creeps) as much as they are horror comics of the time. It also feels a little more like a 40s comic than a 50s comics; things were evolving so fast a lot of the smaller publishers still felt older and wooden in the 50s.
I love the unknown cat on the splash!
The zombie is a great image, and Gorman and the professor are both fun for being people who just deserve everything that happens to them. So many options to avoid their fate, but nope.
We have another zombie/ghost mix up, where our zombie (obviously the original body, i.e., the coffin switch) suddenly becomes a ghost.
Corpse under the Carpet is interesting -- would a ghost that just struggles under a carpet be that frightening after a while? I wouldn't want to live there, that seems annoying, but not exactly scary.
I need to address the zombified elephant in the room. That zombie hitman loses his creepy factor simply because his name is "Cracker". Probably because he's a "cracker shot" (as in he's good at his job) but of course, "cracker" is also offensive slang for a white person. And since Cracker is quite literally, white as a zombie, I can't help snickering at how ridiculous that name is. It's like they're calling for a pet! 🤣🤣 I also found it highly amusing that Cracker was given a ticket to get in to go shoot the senator. I'm actually surprised that the senator managed to escape thanks to a literal Chekov's gun--one with blanks even!
We actually see that cat again on page 3 panel 5. I actually didn’t catch the cat on the splash but loved the cat in that panel. It just adds something to it. I mean, they are at an old farmhouse so, why not include a curious yet spooked cat?
The professor doing his mumbo jumbo over Cracker's body reminds me of the movie Voodoo Man, Starring Bela Lugosi, George Zucco and a young John Carradine, it was probably the only time those were in a horror movie together.
The image of Cracker as a pale/white zombie was impressive, a refugee from the grave to do his master's bidding.
Had Gorman been smart, he would have mentioned to The Professor that he, Gorman, had to travel to Florida for a few weeks to see a relative. In reality, Gorman would have gone to New Orleans and find a Voodoo Queen to find a way to control of Cracker himself, or learn a Voodoo protective spell to ward off zombies.
Criminals using black magic, that must be one more sub genre of horror comics.
Oh we've got a haunted carpet! It's from Iran, but we bought it in Delhi from the middle of a chest-high stack of exotic weavings for six hundred and sixty-six dollars exactly, converted from rupees. That night, my sweetie woke up very late and terrified me by saying, in the most blase possible voice, "there are people in the corner of the room, so I'm turning on the light, okay?" But it was just the carpet in that corner of the room. Later there were problems with the aircraft when we flew home, luckily minor. Next day, the electrical system in our apartment fried completely, with a loud buzzing from all the walls, and smoke coming out the AC units. That was repaired by the building crew, and I had a long talk with the carpet. I was kind of tackling it like a rescue animal, snapping at people who were trying to help. And so we're all good friends now, seventeen or so years on. It's laying right over there as I type this.
I love the splash of the first story, and totally dig the way the zombie Cracker looks all the way through. It's a little bit of a shame that the details are all so small. This makes the visual language look old fashioned to me, but mostly denies me a good look at that grody undead face. But I can still tell, if I squint, how dedicated Blummer was to making that guy look like a credible corpse.
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