Earlier this month we took a stairway to madness, now it's time to open an epic doorway to horror! From the November 1951 one-shot issue of World's Beyond #1, and featuring loads of atmospheric Sheldon Moldoff artwork, --this one's lengthy, but frightfully fun. We have a few more horror doors to still open before the big night comes down on the 31st, so what's everyone got planned this year? Something terrifying, I hope!
7 comments:
"Pendulous Doorknocker" ... paging Mel Brooks!
This is a really interesting one. Person sweep back in time because of a curse to relive a murder is done a lot in the 50s horror comics but I don't think I've seen one this long and detailed.
The captions are very Poe like, overly descriptive and flowery. Again, you see that a lot in horror comics but that's usually within the opening blurb or the first pages. Here it basically continues on until the action gets started.
I like Chekhov's literal gun here but I wish they would have showed the picture earlier.
This is a nice one. It jumps around, gives time for stuff to soak in, is pretty atmospheric, and the art work well, and page 7 with the people of the madhouse is a great and pretty spooky image.
This sort of feels like one of those stories that involves being isekaied (transported or reincarnated into a different world) as one of the characters in it. The only difference here is that Lyle remains looking like himself despite being referred to as "Rene" by Tucos and "Master" by her servant. It's weird too because the first part of the story when he comes into the house doesn't really look like he's gone that far into the past until he ends up outside and is taken for a madman (also weird as Tucos sees him as her husband and never once mentions the strangeness of his garments like the others do.) I love the part where the servant insists on removing his rings before dinner--and suddenly he just so happens to have rings to remove! I also really love the little skeleton hand holding one of the narration boxes in the panel where Tucos is kissing him. I do love that he still has his gun on himself to get out though!
This one was well drawn and well written, even the coloring was the right fit in this one. It is one more tale that would have made a great B movie or memorable anthology story for TV.
Thanks to this blog I have had the chance to see the works of Moldoff, and I can see he is one of the greats of horror comics.
I know somebody's always saying this, but it's a crazy kind of curse that targets a bunch of strangers rather than the person you're mad at. Damn you! I will kill every fan of this painting throughout the ages. That'll show ya!
Glowworm collects several of the little inconsistencies of this story: Why do the clothes stand out for some people, in some settings, but not others? Why do rings appear, while the gun remains? What equation governs what would change and what would not?
But okay, what I like about this story is that it progresses like the protagonist's own dream. First he finds himself in a mysterious part of town, in possession of something he's longed for. I've had this dream myself. Then things begin to stress the process, get in the way of his achieving his goal. This is anxiety talking. Of course the rules reconfigure themselves to the mood of the moment; in a way, he's telling the tale himself, making it up as he goes with a series of "what ifs," and whatever is most nightmarish at the time drives the shape of his narrative experience.
I love the art here--can't go wrong with Moldoff--but I do rather wish the splash had been an image from the curio shop--setting up the dreamlike mood and perhaps teasing the painting itself--rather than a picture from the ending. Even still, I must say the splash itself is pretty mighty, what with its kaleidoscopic shifts in perspective acting as panel intensifiers.
Even if it "reunites" Tucos and Rene, I hate that it's done with something as non-supernatural as a gun.
This to me was a perfect Halloween treat, thank you Karswell! It had everything and maintained a nice plot mystery for me. The art was fitting and at times superb. I enjoyed this one a lot.
I really liked this one. I knew once I saw the word "conducive," this wasn't going to be typical!
I disagree about the gun: ordinary or not, it was out of sync with the era and an ideal way to bring things back to the present.
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