Saturday, April 2, 2022

The Bloodless Killer

We ended March with some macabre madness from the May 1953 issue of Fight Against Crime #13, so let's kick off the new month with another story from the same old rotten rag! And like the other tale, this one also includes an "axe-citing" climax of creeptacular choppery! Some fun art by A.C. Hollingsworth too, he's usually real hit / miss with me, but he honestly delivers some pretty good visuals this time around, even if most of them feel like swipes from other comics.

3 comments:

Mr. Cavin said...

Sweet. It's basically a tightened-up version of Let the Right One In.

Hollingsworth is an odd duck for sure, but you got to admit he tries. It's neat to see him experiment with deep, blobby shadows and concentric circles and freakin' pointillism in odd spots here and there across these pages. He seems to have very little in the way of a guiding strategy as to how he wants to use these mix-matched techniques, but at least he's testing the waters. I really love the bottom of page two. Not only does the color go full cartoon for two panels, but what a brilliant visual image that first one is. It's like A.C. framed Paul and Lilia within a catty-corner Space Invader!

Brian Barnes said...

I like Hollingsworth, especially as he has this kind of has real fun with these stories. Where others had a style, he seemed to have whatever he wanted to try, from panel to panel. It's kind of like the jazz version of comic art!

Page 2, panel 6, why? It's neat! I like it, but it comes out of nowhere. The stabbing panel on page 5 has a great expression, and the dark shadows really work there. It's kind of wacky, I like it!

Last page, panel 3 is a really good use of shadows. Honestly, this story is pretty standard for pre-code horror comics (the ol' who's the vampire) but I think the art really makes it interesting.

Charon Badmann said...

I like Hollingsworth for his sublimated fetishism. The women are always variations of the same cupie doll but, ah, here he sinks his love into the representation of the guy. Probably the only gay, black, pre-code artist I know of.

Oh, and welcome back! I thrilled when I discovered new content after such a long hiatus. Cheers!!