At THOIA, we prefer our detective mysteries laced with a dripping, double dose of horror, --and here are two that fit the frightening bill nicely. First up, King O'Leary and his frisky sidekick Kitty are on the chiller-diller case of murder at a midnight monster movie, via the December 1945 issue of Zoom Comics #1! Followed by a 3-page, not-so-perfect quickie crime, utilizing a bloodthirsty bat as a murder weapon (ummm, the flying mammal kind, not a baseball bat!), from the April 1950 issue of The Perfect Crime #2. George Appel's art on the first story is quite nice though, and loaded with atmosphere, even reminding me of King Ward in a few places, most notably the freakish faces, and interesting angles. So get ready! Match wits with the coppers, and see how quickly you can solve these crazy crimes!
6 comments:
I really love the art in that first one. It's dripping and oozy and full of great motion and figures. Page 3, panel 3 I love the expression on the old lady, I love the running Kitty on the next page, and then all the he-man battle action on the last couple.
Lots of great movement, clever angles. It's really nice work.
I think the coloring is a bit dull, but that might be age. I also like how the script just doesn't care but gets right to nonsense; why is this theater rigged with an elevator balcony? Who cares! It's fun!
The whole "film triggers needle" is also pretty clever.
The 3 pager is a bit silly but I do like the out of nowhere boomerang gimmick. I suspect this is something Myth Busters should have covered :) I swear I've seen a razor boomerang in films here and there. There's probably an obvious one I'm forgetting, not counting Odd Job but that was a hat!
> I've seen a razor boomerang in films here and there. There's probably an obvious one I'm forgetting
Road Warrior
The plot in the first one gets a little fuzzy. I'm not quite sure if the nephew had anything to do with the murder of his aunt or not--although my guess is that the two set this up together-the movie man wanted the fortune in return though. I didn't even notice that the chandelier falls on the nephew near the end of this story. It's pretty fast paced there. I also love the panel of the aunt on the third page in the third panel. Also, I LOVE Kitty. Kitty figures most of this one out and figures out that the flames were fake. Also, I loved her remark about being a working girl and shooting a photo of the dead woman. 🤣🤣The second story really has a odd method of killing the uncle. I never would have guessed a boomerang with razorblades on it. I hope the bats went to a nice home afterwards. Also, somebody CANNOT draw a proper bat face in the splash and it's giving me medievil animal painting vibes.
> Also, somebody CANNOT draw a proper bat face in the splash
Hahahaha
Are you familiar with the Two Monks Discover Things series? It's like something out of that.
NUTS, BROTHER!
Man, I just love this breed of plucky, intrepid blond reporters that they had back in the golden ages of both Hollywood and comics. This lady is is so tough! I'd definitely like to read a whole series of her cases... er, stories. She reminds me of Glenda Ferrell in the Mystery of the Wax Museum.
I really dig Appel's art, too. My favorite frame is the last one on page six. I love that gangly and energetic moment of their struggle, the handgun frozen in time between them. Dude knows how to effectively break the panel border, too. He does it exactly twice and they're both perfect.
I'm really enchanted with the murder plot in story two. "I'll kill the guy with a boomerang; and let's see... to do that I'll obviously need a brace of pet bats....". I feel like the idea that someone can kill something with a boomerang that will then return to the killer is a recurring myth, yeah? It does come around again and again. The myth, I mean. Clearly real boomerangs only return if one misses the target. If one hits it, they then pick the weapon up when they retrieve the quarry. Plus I see there were trees everywhere in that march. So nah. This would have never worked. This guy would have done better with one of those beach kites. Jesus, do I have to think of everything?
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