I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of post-code 50's Atlas stories. I mean, yeah, they may contain some nice artwork from bullpen legends, --unfortunately, most of it tends to feel a bit lightweight, pandering, and unbearably bland / repetitive when it comes to the storytelling (especially when compared to the precode stuff!) But give good 'ol bad ass Bob Powell a script to bewitch the reader with, and suddenly now you're talkin' a horse of a whole different, creeptacular color! Take for example this eerie excellent entry via the August 1957 issue of Strange Stories of Suspense #16 (the final issue in this series.) Powell fleshes-out four perfect pages into one heckuva thrilling supernatural quickie-- even reminding me a little bit of Charles Beaumont's masterfully freaky, funeral planet episode, "Elegy", from the first season of the OG Twilight Zone television series. I have an equally good Golden Age Powell tale coming up next too, stay tombed...
13 comments:
Good heavens, man, you could've stopped constantly talking aloud to yourself and you might have kept your energy a bit longer.
First THUMBS DOWN comment of the day. Congrats Bill, you did it again... sigh...
I know it's popular to make fun of New Age people and similar people in comedies, and also in dramas, but a "Yogi fanatic" who makes people "slaves to his yoga system" has a pretty funny ring to it.
I absolutely agree with you on the pre / post code Atlas tales, though, I have some fondness for the giant monsters that followed (and the great art, Ditko, Kirby, etc.) Some of them would go on to be used in Marvel as a whole (Fing Fan Foom, Groot, etc.) And they could turn out a good twilight zone-ish type story every once and a while, but yeah, the stuff is pretty bland.
You can't blame them. They just almost saw the entire industry go up in a pile of smoke and they were a bit gun shy.
That said, this works. It's not bad as a little adventure yarn, and I like the frozen scenes. It's amazingly high-colored, though, almost neon in places!
This stuff has it's place, too, it's comics history, I don't mind seeing more of this. We are 4 years from Fantastic Four #1 so this era didn't last long.
I liked the story and I liked the art. The plot is quite typical of the 'horror', or should I say, 'spooky' tales from the 60's and 70's, found between the pages of Whitman, Gold Key and, of course, Charlton. It is a great concept, time being frozen, and as Brian mentioned, the publishers were gun shy after the comics code came into effect.
One question comes to mind, how would the likes of Ditko or Basil Wolverton illustrate this story? Ah well, what could have been...
I don’t believe either of them would’ve improved on this story. I love Powell and think it’s pretty much a perfect example of 4 pages of locked in visuals and focused storytelling efficiency. But ok, if we do want to think about “what could been”, then I’m guessing Wolverton would’ve made it a lot more cartoony and extra fun ‘n weird (never a bad combo in my opinion.) Meanwhile, Ditko would’ve probably made it way too swirly surreal and mystical for my tastes and thus, defeated the point of what makes this story a real gem to me. Others of course will ponder my analysis quite differently.
You are right, Karswell, Powell was just the right artist for this story, I just wonder out loud sometimes how different artists would handle some stories I see.
Well, there’s really no right or wrong answer. Everyone has their own favorites. Everett would’ve killed it probably. Cameron would’ve likely done a good job with the story too. Gene Colan would’ve delivered some amazing pencils, but it probably would’ve been colored too dark and murky with too much detail getting lost in poor printing, haha
Hah! I think page two already looks like Ditko. I mean, the art is obviously Powell of course, but the layout feels just the way Steve would have done it to me. This whole thing had the vibe and verve of an experimental Charlton story.
I love the city panel on page one (and that snazzy car in the splash). I also love the middle panel of the last page, with its sunbeam entirely defined by the colorist. The whole story is breezy and perfect. It's hard to draw a comic about frozen people, and Bob pulls it off without ever really bothering to differentiate between the figure that can move and those that cannot (except for the one panel on page two of course). And that's pretty neat.
I like post-code Atlas horror about as much as I like most of them: Gold Key, Harvey, the aforementioned Charlton. Sometimes they get really groovy and psychotronic creating mood without the usual monsters or danger, but often they are flat. In most cases they are best appreciated for the art. The only company to keep really innovating horror comics after the stamp was EC, and that didn't last very long.
I may not know enough of them, but judging by the ones I do know, just about any story about someone trapped in a Parallel world could be helped by Basil Wolverton.
Although I'm not so sure about this one. After all, it's a "normal" part of the world where everyone is frozen, so it might not be enough of a challenge for him.
To be fair to the post code comics, it’s the CCA that’s to blame here. No more blood, gore, and monsters, the writers had to come up with something else to keep readers interested. Oftentimes, they switched over to sci-fi. If anyone managed to retain creativity around this era, in my opinion, it was ACG’s comics. This particular tale at least has a Twilight Zone flavor to it with a bit of literal suspense as well. Panels 3 and 4 of the final page of the professor trying to chop the book with an axe and Jim’s glasses falling off within the sunlight are great. Also, that little Yogi Bear bit afterwards made me giggle.
Well thank you! I was wondering if anybody even noticed my little Yogi jokey! :)
It took me a second to get it as I'm actually more familiar with the bear than the meditation practitioner. BTW, there was a novelty song by The Ivy Three called "Yogi" which was about a yogi but the chorus featured an impression of Yogi Bear.
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