Are the Febru-scary love stories this month ticklin' your lil goose-pimpled fancies so far? If not, here's one that will surely drive you to drink! Ahhh, so how about a toast to true love? May it forever warm the cockles of your blackened, beating libidos. From the September 1974 issue of The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves #47, and terrifically atmospheric art by the always awesome, Tom Sutton (cover art by Joe Staton.)
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If these rotten tales of love gone bad are leaving a bad taste in your mouth, check out the hilarious AppleTV mini series musical, SCHIGADOON starring Keegan Micheal Key and Cecily Strong in a parody of 1940s musicals: backpacking couple Melissa and Josh get trapped in Schmigadoon, a magical town filled with singing and dancing townspeople; there they learn they can't leave without finding true love, which they thought they already had. Very funny stuff.
Sutton is one of those guys I wouldn't have liked when I was young but can really appreciate now. I love how rubbery everybody is; the second panel itself is awesome. The flowing cloak that almost disappears into the ground, the stretched bodies, the otherworldly appearance of everything.
It reads "horror."
The penultimate panel has a great camera angle. This is a really fun piece of work. It's just beautiful, panel after panel.
That 'rubberiness' is exactly what I hated in the Charlton ghost comics when I was a kid (though I personally always thought & think of it as the melting wax look). Sanho Kim's artwork could have it and Rich Larson's had it in spades. But what I once really had a repugnance for I now see as a mark of character and style (though a certain degree of repugnance certainly isn't out of place in a horror comic).
The exaggerated, over the top, completely inhuman way Morton is drawn in practically every panel (check out those shark-like teeth!), you could easily forgive me for thinking he wasn't truly a man but some sort of supernatural fiend in human form rather than just Bluebeard with a sick hoarding problem. Oh but the facial expression are fabulous in this story. Margaret shows some fantastic ones, such as her face in panel 2 of the second page and her face in the 2nd and 5th panels of page 4. Also, I absolutely love that panel of Morton on page 5 longing on his pillow. It's so delightfully creepy!
One of the things that always strikes me about Tom Sutton is that he tended toward a sixties commercial art look, or even animation style, more than whatever was happening in comics at the time. And he dragged that kind of thing along with his, to a greater or lesser degree, well into the eighties. Even compared to the really groovy Argentinian stuff in the black and white mags, Sutton stands out as an illustrator absorbed with shapes and textures and pretty much willing to let the rest go. This story is by no means his most lava lampy work.
I also really like that second panel. It--whattayacallit?--warms the cockles of my blackened, beating libido. And happiness is a warm cockle.
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