Friday, April 24, 2020
The Hypnotist! / Never Trust a Woman!
We'll never know if Stan had a thing against the men of the stage back in the 50's, but we do now know that he felt the need to bump off two of them in two separate stories found in the Jan '53 issue of Spellbound #11. And if that wasn't enough, both meet their wonderful ends under a very edgy, similarly sharp bit o'f circumstance-- hold on to your hats!
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8 comments:
Two great tales today.
I love the villain in the first story. He kills his assistant for no other reason than to show how evil he is, and his comeuppance is wholly his own fault due to his ego. Combined with his over the top character design, and you've got a perfect horror comic
Two guillotine deaths in one issue? Stan really milked that one!
The splash on the hypnotist is great, but the art is kind of uneven in places. The woman page 1, panel 3 is odd, but Francois is a great image, every time he's on panel he's just menacing and even comical at times. Page 2, panel 7 is a great image. The story is one of the great "gets too cocky" stories. The man literally controlled the army at one point, yet he had to be a showman!
Alright, throughout his career I don't think there was anything to call Stan a misogynist, and it's really an expression and he's just using it for the gag ending, "never trust a woman" reads a little badly here in 2020. She had every right to chop that jerks head off ... and made more weird by the statement coming from the very guy who claims to love her!
The art is great, DiPreta fills up some boring panels with dark shadows (pretty much the entire story) and Stan gives us a number of chances for Eric to loose his head but keeps holding it off, building the suspense. And Clara bending the rubber blade in front of his face at the end is a great panel.
Two winners!
In both stories, it's the male characters who are the villains. In the first story, the villian is an over-the-top sadistic sociopath and in the second story, he is a major jerk with sociopathic tendencies. In both stories, the villains get exactly what they deserve.
What's odd is that "Never trust a woman" is said by the "nice guy" who wants to take her away from Eric. Sort of like "guy talk," I guess.
Francois in "The Hypnotist" reminds me of the David Wayne character in the TWILIGHT ZONE episode "Escape Clause." Instead of using his powers to do something good, or at least something profitable, each character uses his powers in POINTLESS ways that also get him in big trouble.
"Never Trust a Woman" is exactly the moral I get out of the second story.
Best bit: "Yes… but I would have to pay a servant wages! Clara works for me free!"
I really like the wonky art in the first story. There's a oddly mosaic quality to the people, cobbled together from mismatched shapes and outlined planes. I dig it; they all look a bit askew, like dolls stitched together from remnants, or folded from sheets of used up paper.
But I love DiPreta's work in the second story. All those fleeing shadows Brian mentions are aces, but it's the character art that really gets me. I love all those panels where Eric's a mugging, barely-polled Satan under the bright red precode lighting. And the harrowing panel on the last page, in which Clara lets all pretense drop away, and we can finally see the dispassionate homicide plainly on her face.
STEP ONE: Get yourself convicted of capital crime and hypnotize the executioner into releasing you from the guillotine during the execution.
STEP THREE: Profit!
And yet it still isn't the stupidest plan I've seen lately.
Thank you so much Mr.K. for the fantastic double-header!
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