Halloween is so close now you can almost smell it! And oooo doggy, can someone crack open a window or something, because seriously now, wow-- WTF is this?! From the February 1953 issue of Chilling Tales #14 comes a story so magically messed-up and downright disturbing, that I almost can't blame Wertham for trying. Maybe some of you thanatophiles can relate, --and ohhh, I'm not forgetting the olfactory obsessors out there as well! So hold on to your hairy scary nostrils, cuz this one might just reek up your week something fierce! Boy, I do believe I just ruined Halloween, hahaha...
Page 5, Panel 1: I love how pre code comics always put so much effort into giving the villains extraordinarily shabby lodgings. This one is an exceptionally good example: peeling plaster, askew pictures, and all.
ReplyDeleteThe story is good. If one takes death to be akin to a drug, it takes the addiction to its logical culmination: bigger and bigger doses to achieve the same high.
The art is *very* good. I'm always impressed by the asking of effort underpaid, often uncredited artists put in into background details the intended audience, that is, children, would never notice, let alone appreciate.
This reads like an unauthorized (and slightly bowdlerized) adaptation of CM Eddy's "The Loved Dead".
ReplyDeletePretty much, yeah
DeleteWhat I was coming to post. I knew it seemed familiar.
Delete"Oh, John's uncle Ted died. Honey, was that your brother or mine?"
ReplyDeleteI love the art here. It's not perfect, it's a bit wild in places, but the deep dark shadows, the graveyards, the war stuff (that explosion panel is grisly) all work wonderfully for the story. The artist does a good job of darkening the shadows on John's face as he goes more and more extreme.
ReplyDeleteI also like the equating the "smell of death" with drugs, and especially the chase of greater and greater highs.
Your Wertham comment makes a lot of sense here because this is a really, really dark story, and focuses in on the kind of sensationalism that Wertham would be upset with, and he worked with a lot of kids with drug problems.
That said: Pet Peeve: I do not like the giant out of panel captions. That really breaks up the flow of the page for no good reason.
Before the war he found his true calling, namely mortician.
ReplyDeleteThis tale works as both horror and crime thriller. With a little reworking it could have told John's story in a series of flashbacks as the police searched for him as a serial killer. It even could have been reworked as the origin of Jack the Ripper as he thinks to himself of his origin, aal the while eluding the police.
This was a real thriller for THOIA, featuring man as the ultimate monster.