THOIA delivers our Valentine's Massacre post one day early because hey-- it's also Friday the 13th! And like we do on most holidays, it's a double fab fear-ture. Let's start off the festivities with a grave tale by Angelo Torres from the November 1959 issue of Eerie Tales #1, and featuring a really gorgeous cover painting from good 'ol George Tuska, too! Then we crack open another rare debut #1 issue, the May 1952 issue of Voodoo #1, in fact! It's a leggy crime horror reworking of a Bomber Comic's Grimm Ghost Detective story-- they simply changed Grimm's name to "Trimm!" Ha, hope everyone gets a little trim as well on Valentine's Day-- and stay tombed, cuz this February freak-out is far from over!
"Greyble to the Grave" is a wordier, possibly unauthorized remake of "The Prude!" from the final issue of Haunt of Fear (#28, Nov/Dec 1954). Well-done enough, but the original gives you some great Ghastly Ingels art and has a pretty funny punchline for its final panel...
ReplyDeleteFrom the Eerie tale the naked dead rising from the grave, sort of like Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead in comic book form, but not as drawn out and boring.
ReplyDeleteThe Haunted One, a better than average plot worthy of a Poverty Row picture. Now the question remains as to who would play the uncle, Lugosi or Zucco?
Who is the artist West who created the Valentines day cards?
Thanks for the post, it took most of the bad luck away from this 13th Friday of the month.
I still don't understand why the "ghost" had to be manufactured at all for story number two.
ReplyDelete> From the Grenoble to the Grave
ReplyDeleteThanks Nequam, when I read this I knew I recognized the plot, but that certainly helped me find and re-read it. I can't think this is anything else but a lift from that; the plot is basically the same with minor alterations and I think the EC ending works a bit better, and you can't fault the Ghastly art.
This, though, is certainly a fine version of the story, but the square balloons make me think I'm reading Cracked! I love the art and I like our pun-y horror host.
> The Haunted One
What's with ghost detectives using victims for bait?
This makes a good adventure story, and the plot has some twists in it that make it a little better than your standard Scooby-doo ghost story. And Trimm and Ellen get married at the end!
How was Shrigg planning on explaining how a ghost killed a woman with a gun? Trimm was lucky these guys were morons!
Flint coming to the rescue at the end comes out of left field, but in a good way, I guess.
ReplyDelete"Trimm was lucky these guys were morons."
But also unlucky, since one of the villains does the heroics in his place.
Either way, he gets his happy ending with Ellen.
It's probably just me, but something seems up with that first story. I mean, yeah, it's somewhat of a swipe--surprise!--but it also feels like it was initially a page or more longer, and it was ultimately cut up, swapped around, and re-jiggered to the length we have now. Maybe that's why there's blank space on the splash (where the title was originally to be?). Maybe it explains why the first panel of page two looks to be pasted over another panel (one has the narration, the other the dialog). It also seems to be out of order, crushed in beneath two separate crammed-in blocks of narration. The rest of that page looks normal enough, but the bottom panel of page three seems pasted-in again. The first panel of page four is amazing: Runaway dialog balloons cover both the characters' heads! And all of the narration on this page seems typeset and slapped-in sideways. All this added up to a pretty surreal reading experience for me. I kept trying to back-engineer what the story might have originally looked like.
ReplyDeleteI took a little walk around the internet to see if I could dig up this West who drew the zombie Valentines; I came up with nothing. Then again, all search engines are a didactic bummer now--who knew Al was gonna be so simultaneously smug and riddled with mistakes--so this artist may be right under my nose.
The last story was fun, and I'm as confused as the Butcher about all the bells and whistles of their nefarious scheme. I like the gracefully thick-lined forties art a lot, though. The splash is great! Give me a story about a peeping tom with a ghost-detecting flashlight any day of the week!