Friday, November 15, 2019

Cadaver's Revenge

It's carnivals, crypts, corpses, and cadavers this week here at THOIA, and today we have another tale from the April 1953 issue of Strange Fantasy #5. Like every story in this issue, it also received the Eerie Pub remake / reworkin' over, and was reprinted no less than 5 times in the decades to come. And you can certainly see why, as it's hilariously off beat with a great splash, ruthless grave spittin', slimy rats, and a tombstone that is apparently more deadly than any actual cadaver! *Insert squashed melon sound FX here*













7 comments:

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brian Barnes said...

There is some really striking panels in this one. The splash would be OK but the giant blazing laser-eyed skull is awesome and looks like it was traced from an anatomy book. The walking with the skeleton is a clever image, and last page panel 3 is staged really well, and the glow on the tombstone (done so you can see the head) actually adds to the suspense of the panel. It really gives the idea of the shifting being in motion.

The rat on page 6 is also very good. This is a real change from the usually 6 legged spiders or other wacky bits we see.

The story is a lot of fun, the ending is pretty much set by the time he sinks into the grave but the entertainment comes from waiting out the grisly end. I suspect in the Eerie pubs one there was an entire lake of blood coming out from under the tombstone!

JBM said...

Thank you Mr.K. that certainly is a fun splash. I love the footsteps panel. The green spit was well done. I thought for a second that our hero was going to be forgiven.

JMR777 said...

The splash! That splash! A skull with lightning eyes and a macabre yellow glow, it deserves to be an emblem for a rock band or Ghost Rider!

I hereby nominate lightning skull to be an horrorary mascot of THOIA, or one of several mascots since there are so many memorable horror icons found in the archives of THOIA.

Todd said...

This might be the dumbest way I've seen somebody die in one of these. Impossible to feel sorry for him, but he could've been trying to blow his head off and ended up better than this.

I love the idiosyncracies of lesser known pre-Code horror titles.

Mr. Cavin said...

Uh, yeah, I believe Stephen Kind probably did read this one. His own story only incorporates the visuals here of course, and does away with the trim moralizing. It's also more mean-spirited.

Of course I loved all the same stuff everybody else did: Lightning sockets, bats-n-owls, the allegorical footsteps panel. I'll add the really impressive character art here, too (I really dig that Jack Davisish caretaker). I would love to see the Eerie Pubs version if it's easy to dig that one up.

Mr. Karswell said...

>This was better than any episode of the recent Creepshow TV show

Forgot to address this in the previous post (sorry!), but I'm right there with ya... I stuck with it and watched them all, but my overall impression is that while I found it mildly entertaining enough, it felt about as well made and scary as "horror" shows created for kids, like Goosebumps. Certainly hoping they can amp up the quality in stories, acting, and FX in season two.