It's been a bit since Noel Fowler's "Zero Ghost Detective" solved a mystery around here, so as per his previous THOIA entries, let's take a look at two of 'em for a quick Double Fear-ture of fun! The first tale materializes from the September 1940 issue of Feature Comics #36, and finds our ghost dick battling a real dick of a ghost! This one has a neat supernatural concept I'm unfamiliar with: moonlight on a silver blade and carved into a cross pattern can dispel an unwanted spirit! And then, since it's Mummy Monday, it's time for our Zero hero to investigate the ancient Rutatutakhmen curse-- or the creepy, murderous hand of the mummy, anyway! From the October 1943 issue of Feature Comics #72, and no, no relation between Rutatutakhmen and King RootinTootin from the Three Stooges classic! (Click the image at the end of the post for some extra knuckleheaded thrills 'n chills!)
9 comments:
Man, the ghost in that first story was a huge dick.
I know— what did I tell you!!
It's not often you see 12 panels on a page, and we get 11-12 on almost every page!
The skull on the right on the splash of the first story is excellent. That is an incredible skull. One thing I love about this older stories is how economical they are; the setup is just somebody barging into Zero's house ... on BOTH stories! Or him just being around at the right time (on the mummy story) and just whatever he needs or whatever gadget being in arm's length.
They were still figuring out comics back then!
Ghost in the first story is a real ass, but I have to say Jane is quite the looker so I don't know how much I can blame him. On the second story, I kind of feel for the mummy. I don't know if you have to outright kill people but I think just smacking them once or twice with the hand would get them to bring it back!
Zero feels a bit ... invincible in these two stories. His only mortal danger was a wild shot which would have been an accident.
Steve really didn't give up, did he? I like how Zero never thinks anyone is insane when they mention ghosts. He's polite and offers his help immediately. The second story though. Wilcox thinks Zero is being childish. Well, Zero isn't the one who decided to take a notorious ancient sorcerer's mummified hand home with him just to prove a point. Also, tying said mummified hand to the bell cord to scare the butler is extremely childish and not at all funny. Herbert deserves a raise after all those shenanigans.
That is a great splash in the first tale, the pair of denizens from beyond looking on at the dancing couple. It set the mood for the tale to come.
For some reason, Jane Darwell looks a little bit like the the type of women Rudy Palais draws, minus the buckets of sweat.
The second tale of the scoffing know-it-all professor, he was lucky Zero was able to stop the mummy's hand in time. In these tales we often see scoffers who laugh at spooks, werewolves, vampires and the supernatural who get taken down a couple of pegs for their arrogance.
Here's to our hero Zero!
It's strange to see a "mummy's revenge" kind of story with everyone surviving. And the mummy being "appeased" instead of stopped in some other way.
You get used to mummies in horror stories having fictional Egyptian names, but "Rutatutakhmen" is a pretty comical one for such a serious story.
It sounds like a play on "Rootie-Tootie" or something similar.
To me it clearly seems inspired by the Three Stooges short that I mentioned in the intro to this post which came out in 1939– a few years before our Zero story was published:
Y'know, they could at least leave some kind of a note with that hand? Scratch that--they are in a pretty weird predicament, frankly. They know that it's really likely that anyone who messes with that bandaged appendage will be throttled to death, and yet they have to leave it in the sarcophagus or the next victims will be themselves. But, like the character in this story, no future scientist is going to believe that malarkey either. So that mummy's hand is a ticking time bomb. Also there's a chaos factor: Wilcox is an asinine prankster with no sense of what's appropriate. Does he have designs on the museum director's job? I'm afraid the sequels(s) to this story are going to be a lot darker than this one unless Zero manages to intervene permanently somehow. As the hero of the story, he actually has an obligation to. The incinerator seems like a good start. Then Q-rays for everybody!
Love the narrative text on that one, by the way. "The night--like some blank-eyed spectre who drags a lightless mantle over the living on measured feet of time--lengthens...." Chef's kiss.
I'm completely thrilled to see twelve-up paneling like in the first story. It feels like it came from a newspaper supplement or a Victorian broadside. I'd love to open the paper and read this at eighteen by twenty-four. Something about the rigid lines of squares (and circles for flashbacks! Clever!) changes the focus of the illustration from draftsmanship to the sequential integrity of the whole page, and I love that. The art here is really clean and neat, too, without any of the claustrophobia I might expect considering these limits to the space.
I also really dig the cover for Feature #36. That's a neat bit of cartooning.
PS, thanks for the Three Stooges link. I hadn't seen that one for a long time. I like it even better than the Abbott and Costello movie.
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