Who's ready for one of the weirdest vampire stories ever posted around here? From the February 1954 issue of Dark Mysteries #16, and illustrated by none other than fearsome THOIA fan fave, Hy Fleishman! Okay, these ain't the greatest scans though, and I apologize, (they look as if they were also colored by a 4 year old with crayons!) Still, this is a wild one that will likely drive a few of you totally ape!
9 comments:
This one is definitely bizarre as we get no real explanation as to how Rimi became a vampire. Heck, we don’t even know if the Baron was one to begin with. Yet I love how the Baron claims during dinner that it’s all just gossip while a painting that looks very much like a vampire hangs on the wall. 🤣🤣 The image Karl has of his wife as a vampire is pretty unnerving. Also, I noticed in the beginning that Rimi is referred to as “her” when first introduced but afterwards, it’s always male pronouns for the monkey. Those brief images of the monkey as a vampire are pretty cool looking. I’m kind of reminded of a similar story from the Warren Creepy series where a man suspects his wife of being a werewolf- but after killing her, it turns out to be their dog.🤣🤣
A vampire monkey, Bunnicula eat your heart out.
Hy Fleishman's work is great, though we get a bit of tutti-frutti coloring here and there. No complaints, its just part of fifties horror comic charm.
I knew I had seen a version of an ape vampire before, it was hiding in AEET back on October 8, 2021 "Vampire of the Apes"
If a vampire ever put the bite on King Kong, New York would be in a whole lot of hurt.
JMR is correct! You can visit the Vampire of the Apes yourself by clicking here:
https://andeverythingelsetoo.blogspot.com/2021/10/vampire-of-apes.html?m=0
So, are open casket burials a thing?
I'm not sure whether this was ever a big rule in comics (especially pre-Code comics), but Page 2 breaks the famous movie and TV rule that says that even married couples must have separate beds.
But then, many movies and shows break it too.
When it comes to hypothetical actors for these horror comics characters, I can't help adding another one. The host of this story
has a sort of David Warner in a horror film look.
At least a vague one.
Maybe it is a coffin with a glass lid. Perhaps he used it in an escape act or magic trick before the pistol trick finale.
So this one tries to play fair but you have to pay a lot of attention to catch it. The question is, why is Lydia always gone when the vampire attacks (and better yet, how is Rimi still around?). Well, that *is* half explained. You see that Lydia walks in her sleep (shouldn't Karl know that) and she mentions she keeps dreaming of looking for Rimi in her sleep. Of course, Rimi's in the bedroom, and that isn't explained!
Really, they tried!
The art is great. The coloring is a bit technicolor, but it's full of fan favorites: Good girl art, monkey vampires, random splash skeletons and lots of screaming close ups.
Soo purpleish! I guess in the way starlight shifts red through time the farther its source is from our solar system, so too this old comic shifted purple somehow along the way. Probably because the yellow has faded away, making the oranges pink and the browns purple. I think it looks neat. But I still think some of the colors people are responding to here would have been a lot more pronounced originally anyway. I'd like that, too. I mean, my favorite page here is number four, with its grape monkey and two-toned doors. But my favorite frame is actually on the page before, panel four, with the red woman clutching her neck. That's such a great pre-code construction, with the shrieking face and the dude in mod pjs and the bat looking for all the world like some piece of evil detached from the canopy bed.
Post a Comment