Tom Sutton was another in the long line of awesome, later era artists to really blow my gradeschooler mind in the 70's. That organically loose, mutated style of his lended just as much to the creepy, high level concepts and monster designs, as to his doomed human characters fighting to stay alive with those beady little petrified pupil'd eyes poppin' outta their freaky faces! So now, enter The Kukulkaton (not to be confused with Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.) You get a murky glimpse of it on the cover of Monster Hunters #2 (Oct. '75), but to see it fully unleashed on the last page in all of its throbbing, Lovecraftian weirdness, well... I guess we all gasp 'n gooseflesh it with the tiny pupils once in a while, as well...
7 comments:
Sutton turns in a real banger here. I didn't think Charlton paid that much, every panel is full of detail, and the wild gnarly panel borders completely fit in with the unearthly menace to come.
Lots of dynamic angles (page 3, panel 1, is nothing new to comics but a lot of artists just forget to do this.). Crazy paneling that is easy to follow, and then the actual treasure becomes the panelling.
Want to hand out some props to the sfx lettering!
This one doesn't do anything interesting story wise (guys look for treasure guarded by monster, find monster) but the art elevates the suspense and really makes it work.
One thing about comics: Good art can save a ok story.
Continued kudos to Sutton’s writing, as I feel the story and dialog are delivered with a bit more menace and attitude than normal Charlton stuff from this era as well…
Charlton horror was part of my childhood so it will always be a favorite of mine. I know Charlton was viewed as the poverty row of horror comics, but they kept turning out horror comics when so many other comic publishers threw in the towel, so we must give them credit for that.
Many Charlton horror tales were hit or miss, but when they were a hit they were a home run, and this tale is a home run. Sutton seems to be a bit restrained in this one, no super over the top wild images that he sometimes drew, but his restraint here enhances the story. The final image in the temple with all of the hearts attached to one another, all beating like unholy drums awaiting one more human sacrifice, Sutton pulled off the image quite effectively.
In the Maya pantheon of deities, Kukulkan was their Feathered Serpent deity, similar to Quetzalcoatl of the Aztecs and Toltecs. I wonder if Kukulkaton was a misspelling of Kukulkan or Sutton's invention.
Lastly, Sutton drew some nice eye candy in this one, too bad the secretary ended up as candy for Kukulkaton.
This is one more great addition to THOIA's archives, thanks for posting this.
The print is terrible with the double images and mismatched colour and detracts a lot from the basic pencils and inks, this would have been perfect as a black and white comic, but the base story is good. The "protagonists" are fine in at every stage by their own greed: I like that very much. That could have got away with gold from the first room; they didn't. The two survivors after Kruger fell into the pit could *still* have stolen what that could carry and run for it, but, no, they had to go down to the next level. Serve them right.
Somehow, I almost knew that Lovecraft's gods would be worked into this, and they are on P. 5.
It might sound very naive, but I almost expected the three of them to survive, then Brandon and Maya, then Maya.
Yes, they plan an "accident" for Kruger, but they're beaten to it. And suspense stories can be forgiving when that happens.
I don't know TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE well, but something similar even happens in that film - the characters get ready to kill a rival for the gold, someone else kills him and instead, they hold a funeral for him!
And no matter how he acts (including a certain line on P. 2), Brandon never actually kills anyone. So, I somehow expected at least one survivor.
For a 70’s Charlton comic, I think the coloring and printing on this one actually looks pretty good
Sooo seventies! I kind of like Sutton best when he's a little restrained, so I was happy to see the panel borders calm down a little by the end of the second page. Pages three through five have a groovy feel, but also settle into telling the story instead of swirling distractedly around the page.
I was a little surprised to discover they were in Mexico at the bottom of page three (apparently I wasn't paying close enough attention during the first sentence of the story). That is not really what the jungles of Yucatán look like. Those trees are straight out of northern California or somewhere. Sutton was a lot more on target with the Mesoamerican treasures and decorations in the temple. They're fanciful but awesome, and he was obviously having a ball making them up. I kind of wish the story had played out like Kruger and Brandon thought it would. I wanted to see their plan for carting an eleven-foot solid gold statue out of the rain forest in their little bitty raft.
I love the heart monster, and I love the painted cover. I need to head off and look up more of Sutton's paintings.
Post a Comment