Tuesday, October 31, 2017
He Waits in the Dark
In just a few more hours, I too will be waiting in the dark to spring out on the unsuspecting trick 'r treaters in my neighborhood (pictures of my creepy costume in our next post!) In the meantime, let's check in on someone else who is notorious for creepin' around in the shadows-- you know it-- SATAN! It's certainly a perfect night to pay 'ol Scratch a visit, and this devilish little tale from the March 1954 issue of Spellbound #20 should fit pretty well in your little plastic jack o'lantern buckets on this Halloween of evil! Everyone have a great holiday, and we'll see you in a few-- hope you guys 'n gals enjoyed this spellbinding trip down Atlas Lane all this month too! Stay tombed for more...
Happy Halloween (my X-mas) to everyone, with HUGE props to Mr.K!
ReplyDeleteWoops - Satan made a major boo-boo. Can tell this was sci-fi, thought. This is set 8 years from now and we are supposed to be a Utopian society in that short amount of time? Not looking good.
ReplyDelete🎃👻🦇 Happy Halloween! 🎃👻🦇
It's a weird little story, but gets more clever the more I think about it. Starts out sci-fi then turns into a Jack Chick evangelical comic then does a twist at the end that throws evangelical "logic" into a death spiral it can't escape from. See how easy it was to stop Satan? Now people don't do evil anymore. Now there's no more "sin" -- and some guy's quick thinking created paradise on Earth.
ReplyDeleteThat is an awesome cover!
ReplyDeleteI hope this ins't too political, but that includes a particular panel on Page 3. Just take away the hammer and sickle, because the overwrought lines could've been written this year by someone like Bill Maher.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great little yarn. There's the philosophical problem with satan, though, as god -- who is supposed to be perfect -- created satan, who's anything but (the guy started a war with an omnipotent being, that's just plan dumb.) And of course he makes the ultimate mistake here. Why one of his many other fallen angels didn't take over, I'll never know.
ReplyDeleteCrack-pot philosophy aside, I love the art. It's a little dark and heavy in places, but otherwise almost every expression on satan is gold. I even love the super happy Hitler!
The cover is great (wacky ICBM breasts aside) -- it's got good positioning of the elements. A Russ Heath job.
Oh this is a weird little tale but I love it. Earth is a good place to live now because the Devil made a pact with the wrong man.
ReplyDeleteHalloween got gruesome in my neck of the woods--someone actually killed his wife a few streets down from where I live.
Happy Halloween! Man, I've really enjoyed all the material from (ahem) that other pre-code horror publisher this month. Nobody else had such a stable of cartoonists churning out inky, textured, woodcut-looking pages. This has been way more of a treat than a trick. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is nitpicking, but having him CAPTURE Satan would've worked also. That way it would've become a sort of cliffhanger, and looked ahead to that TWILGHT ZONE story "The Howling Man."
ReplyDeleteAs Brian Barnes had pointed out, with Satan out of the way, the rest of the devils would have chosen a new to devil dog to run hades. But then again, with Satan out of the way, the rest of the devils would have fought one another to become emperor of the underworld and would be so busy for centuries that they wouldn't have time to corrupt anyone on earth.
ReplyDeleteI think I am over analyzing this, comic logic operates on its own set of rules which have nothing to do with boring reality.
A really twisted twist ending would be if the priest had wished all devils to do only good and not evil forever, now that would really be twisted!
Thanks for this wacky but fun comic, Karswell!