Jungle Jitters time again, and this creepy crawlin' Bob Forgione entry from the January 1953 issue of The Thing #6 is so unexpectedly bonkers, it might even make a few of you lose your heads! And then this happens! And then this happens! And then this happens! Ah, Charlton comics, always a'callin' my shrunken, black, short attention span heart!
7 comments:
This was a wild one, perfect for THOIA. I think they meant Jivaro instead of Jibaro, or the writer read the name wrong. Comics writers did have a habit of getting their facts confused.
I like the idea of the narrator changing forms to fit the tale being told. That was a unique idea, though most of the time 'The Thing' was just a disembodied voice . Too bad Charlton's 'The Thing' lost popularity, though he had real competition up against Winne the Witch and Countess Von Bludd.
A mysterious voice versus two slices of cheesecake, it was no contest, Charlton knew what readers wanted.
The movie Dr. Cyclops (1940) might have been the idea behind this tale of shrinking people, with Attack of the Puppet People released in 1958.
Shrinking people was the plot in a couple of TV shows, namely the Sid and Marty Kroftt show "Dr. Shrinker" and 1983 comedy "Small and Frye".
I know I have probably forgotten some other movies and shows that featured shrinking people, but I will let other followers of THOIA remind us of what they are.
Horror adventure, one more sub genre in the realm of horror comics. Thanks for this wild adventure horror tale.
This was hilarious. I even liked the fact that for once the obligatory pretty young woman was not the daughter of the professor and she and the obligatory young man weren't in love with each other.
Bottom left panel, Page 3: what about those beads? Did she put them on like a bikini?
By the way, re JMR777's comment, the "Jibaro" may not have been a mistake, just a way of claiming that the comic was not about the Shuar ("Jivaro") but about the completely different *Jibaro*, so any differences from reality can be explained away. In any case, the "secret" of shrinking heads is pretty well known. Briefly: they first boiled the head, then peeled the skin off the skull, then buried it in hot sand until it was dehydrated.
Aside from the grisly ending, this reads exactly like a 50s b-movie and is all the better for it, or maybe some off beat super-hero tale.
This one is kind of a bit more sad, though, because these 3 beat many, many dangers only to be put down by a bunch of spiders, who also seem to be piranhas as they strip the flesh from skulls!
There's a lot to like in this. High adventure, dangerous situations, some cheesecake (was I tricked with an edit?), spiders, head chopping, it's packed full of about everything you'd want in your adventure tale.
Half way decent spiders, too, aside from the 2 eyes. They tried!
"Wild" is right.
It's funny that the story doesn't exactly give you anyone to root for, except Ralph, who cashes in on the shrunken heads but doesn't really do anything worse. And the caution he practices doesn't pay off for him.
Whereas Professor Wayne is out to steal the heads, with the others going along with it.
Maximo isn't exactly the most lecherous horror story villain - you'd think he'd at least keep Phyllis full-sized, and do his best to keep her there.
It's nice that someone else here likes those Charlton hosts.
Once again I remember a key detail well after my original post-
Karswell owns The Vincent Price Shrunken Head Kit. Professor Wayne should have just asked Karswell the secret of making shrunken heads and skipped the trip to South America.
Ha! I am certainly onboard for delivering shrunken heads, —whether made from apples, or the real thing!
See, they can't have a sentence like "I've seen full-sized people bring in shrunken heads..." etc., without my immediately assuming the line came first, the whole story concocted later just to support it. Two pages earlier I was scratching my head over why the heck naked four-inch scientists, in mortal danger to boot, would bother carting somebody's head back down the Orinoco to safety. Oh right, for the joke.
Still. If it had been me, I'd have taken the gun. Course, I'm not a scientist.
This art jibes nicely with the latest post over at AEET. The weird bugs, the half naked folks (luckily in this case, head shrinking serum also effects Fruit of the Loom), the weird gadgetry. I mean, that's a pretty wild guillotine design if you ask me. I like the way the extreme perspective on those gourdes act as foreshadowing--our trio look like they can fit into them even before they've been shrunk. Lastly, I'm a big fan of all those alarming red backgrounds during the spider attack at the end. Kinda works the classic Creepshow feel.
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