Some of you are aware that Mr. Karswell has a vintage mannequin collection, and todays tale from the December 1970 - January 1971 issue of The Unexpected #122 is a pretty good example of how one form of that macabre level of "mannequin madness" can actually get started. Just saying...
6 comments:
Not every story would throw in the part about the other characters feeling guilty. And this story doesn't even give them a lot of reason, since they're bound to be making up their part in things.
That's a strange one, for sure! The short number of pages makes it feel kind of jumpy (his co-workers were following him? Hunh?)
The panel where he knocks her head off (Karswell, I don't recommend you recreate this, those things can be fragile! :) ) is a fun panel, and I like the dancing panel too.
This is just a weird one in structure!
This one's weird. The reveal that this guy is seeing a mannequin is pretty obvious even before he sees her in the store window decked out like a bride. I mean, I'm not going to knock it, but whose idea of a romance is making out after hours in a department store? Also, note that besides the guy being in love with a mannequin, there's really no other twist. She doesn't come to life after hours and he's not secretly a mannequin himself, so this comes off as rather sad, strange and a bit depraved.
I'm surprised the guy didn't mistake the wedding dress as a sign she did want to marry him. He would sneak into the store, take her away to a near sighted justice of the peace, marry her/it and live...ever after.
This tale could have gone along the lines of the film "A Touch of Venus", or she was really a vampire, victim of Medusa, etc. A twist here and there and we end up with a completely different tale altogether.
I agree with glowworm. The denouement is obvious from Page One. What isn't obvious is the reason for the story not being at least a couple of pages longer to explore the process by which the protagonist ended up where he did. Maybe it's because this was a filler, but it's a pity. It could have been, say, one where the protagonist is rejected by every woman he meets until he sees the mannequin and goes steadily insane. That would be a fairly effective psychological horror story.
Such a gentle little horror tale. I mean, from my perspective, it's just about a somewhat nutso romantic who has lost the object of his affection. But to our unnamed protagonist himself, well, he's become a brutal murderer who, faced with an unknown adversary, butchered the woman he most loved. Will he have to live with that, or will he recognize the truth? Or is this very story just a coping mechanism, one by which he forgives himself for a homicidal past by pretending his victim was only ever a doll after all?
I've always been into the fantasy of spending the night in some closed public place. The art museum From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, or the shopping mall from Dawn of the Dead. I find the idea way more compelling than the notion of marrying a window display dummy.
It's always a pleasure to see early Murphy Anderson. Page three was killer.
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