APRIL FOOLS! It's not "House of Wax" at all-- it's "House of Whacks!" hahaha from the December 1953 debut issue of Mad #1! APRIL FOOLS! It's not from the December 1953 issue of Mad #1 at all either, it's actually from the December 1953 issue of Eh! #1 published by EC-- errr, April Fools uhhgain, --from Charlton. Eh! ran 700 issues... April Foo... ehhhh... that's to say, 7 issues total before calling it quits, just like I'm calling it quits with this rather annoyingly foolish gag o'my own! And if you think this intro is full of tired attempts at humor, wait'll you get a load of this vampire story, because it's incredibly funny, and totally unique and oooo boy... April freakin' Fools for probably the last goddamn time ever. Yeesh, even the Sam Spade Wild-Root hair tonic advertisment that I tossed onto the end of this post is somehow way sillier!
Middle panel, middle row, page 4: please tell me you didn't photoshop the bra in. Please tell me that's original!
ReplyDeleteIt always hits me just how cut throat the comic business was in the 50s. EC brings out MAD and the minute the other publishers hear how well it's selling their hundreds of clones out on the market.
ReplyDeleteSome are great! Atlas did good work, for instance, but they always did.
Some tried way too hard. I like house of whacks, it's breezy, you feel for Elmer and it's nice he gets a happy ending, but the "chicken fat" in this at time overwhelms the story and isn't as well integrated. It seems no jokes was left on the cutting room floor, but there's a couple I like, for being four wall breakers, like the hands climbing the panel border or the superhero busting in, or "moving the story forward."
Some good comic art here. Page 3, last panel, is a good comic representation of "city" mayhem, and on the same page the werewolf banging his head against a tree.
The Sam Spade thing is great. The constant working in of the hair cream, but then the missed opportunity to say the killer used a much worse (and smellier) hair cream and that's how he was caught. Come on, hair cream comic writers!
BTW that is *excellent* art on the Sam Spade comic. I guess somebody got paid a lot more than that over the normal comic page rate.
I agree with Brian, just as too many cooks spoil the broth, too many puns spoil the story. They say less is more, in this case less (or fewer) puns would have helped in this story.
DeleteThe art in this one looks a bit amateurish featuring an early 30's/40's style. I am not sure another artist could have saved this tale since it was nothing but puns.
Miss Hips LaRue was the only saving grace for this tale. A story with her as the star would have been a better choice than a valueless vampire.
Weak attempt or not, even a bargain basement tale is worth a look. Fangs, thanks for the post.
I can't help liking it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite as fond of Mad the color comic as Mad the magazine, but I definitely like it, and I can barely tell the difference between it and the competitors.
ACK, I BEEN PRANKED! Lordy, this thing is all chicken fat and not much chicken meat. I did laugh at the stool pigeon, though. Also at the intro--that was some pretty great blogging!
ReplyDeleteI like the Eh! cover much better than the story.
I really dig the old Sam Spade hair tonic ads. I read a whole collection of them somewhere online. Supposedly, most of them are by Lou Fine in some kind of hard boiled mode. The one here looks like it was laid out and dressed-up by Kirby, with somebody else doing faces. I don't mean that as a legitimate guess; just that's what it looks like to me. I'm sure it's just Fine.
Haha thanks for the compliment, as well as the additional Fine info :)
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