Monday, September 22, 2014
The Wax Witch vs. From the Graves of the Unholy
Here's a wonderfully typical Eerie Pub slop-job of a brilliant Lou Cameron golden age Ace classic, originally featured in the February 1953 issue of Web of Mystery #17, and this time re-drawn by Mariana Cerchiara for the April 1971 issue of Weird Vol. 5 #2, among other Eerie issue reprintings. Compare the two, and see if there's any actual comparison! :P Also, enjoy the infantile art scribblings on my poor cover :( We'll take a look at Devil Statues in our next post, since someone asked nicely...
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10 comments:
Thanks for the synopsis Mestiere, this/these stories sound like an Italian giallo that Dario Argento or Mario Bava would direct, though maybe not since the plot makes some kind of weird, bizarre sense.
Oddly, I feel as if I have read this story three times in the last half hour.
Obviously I found the Lou Cameron art to be far superior, but I know that was just a rhetorical question. Also, the colors on this one were very sophisticated--the witch's face at the bottom of page three is spectacular, as is every panel of page six. How can that fail to be superior to those crappy gray smudges that were all the rave in the sixties and seventies horror mags? Please.
Still, I have to give some kind of credit to Mariana Cerchiara for sticking with conventional paneling (even if this is a side-effect of her slavish recreation of the original pages), and I do like some of the panels she produced even if they are examples of lucky failing. The third panel of page three--where Vern suddenly looks skinned and Carla has donned one of those Topstone Vampire Girl Mask--is one favorite. For some reason I also like that panel--page five number two--with the egregious art deco spiderweb failure. It should be colored like Tiffany glass. If that was a seventies paperback book cover, I'd probably read it.
I love these comparison posts! Thanks a lot Karswell.
Sheesh, Mestiere there's nothing wrong with your comment. My comment is also long. If anyone needs to apologize it's Myron Fass.
I'm glad I'm not allergic to exposition, could you imagine this as a movie? It'd stop every minute to spill stuff. The exposition dumps in this thing reach their dizzying conclusion with a diary entry that starts "tonight, I, Madam Moselle, Owner of the Wax Museum.."
It's a diary, for you, you know this information!
From now on, I'll comment with "Right now, I, Brian Barnes, internet blog and video guy with band who likes to comment on my favorite sites, am commenting here!"
There is no doubt who did the better art (Cameron), but this kind of caused a problem for Cerchiara, because she was trying to come up with camera angles of her own, and Lou basically nailed almost every panel, leaving Cerchiara with very little other options, only improving in a few small places (I like page 2, panel 3 better than the original, it's more cinematic.)
Mestiere's review is perfect! I prefer the original version because I grew up with the "warren style" and I think the fifties were somewhat "fresher" (is this a weird word?).
I didnt'know the infamous Myron Fass (Split!) was behind this. Cool!
"Every hour, every day, I'm learning more..."
Just left shaking my head...
Even though I liked it already, that comparison to an Italian horror film clinched it for me (I'm incredibly biased about them, from the ones considered masterpieces all the way to the other extreme).
Even though I'm not afraid of them myself, there's just something about a carnival in a weird story that gives it a real head start. (Evidently Charles Beaumont had a real fear of them, which is how he wrote the famous TWILIGHT ZONE story PERCHANCE TO DREAM.)
The old one is obviously the only 'good' one. It would have been more satisfying if Carla had a skull face in the last panel.
She could be a manifestation of his imagination.
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