Saturday, November 23, 2024

Hemlock Shomes and Dr. Potsam in "The Morgue Moider Mystery", and "The Case of Tintype's Will", and finally (whew!) Spookington Castle!

After the mention of "comedy gold" in our previous post comments, I thought that it was finally time to maybe put together a "Funny Friday Frolic of Frights" here at THOIA. But then I ran out of time yesterday, and decided that "Spoofy Slapstick Silly Saturdays" had a better ring to it (but does it?) So here we go with 3 highly hysterical Hemlock Shomes and Dr. Potsum Golden Age filler stories from Fox Publications-- because who of course is better to spoof and slap silly than everyone's favorite detective duo-- Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson! The stories (in scrollin' order below) originate from: The Green Mask #2, Mystery Men Comics #1 and #2, and are all funtastically written and illustrated by Fred Schwab.

3 comments:

Brian Barnes said...

The covers of the 3 issues these stories come from are awesome, well worth visiting GCD.

I like these, they are breezy and fun and there's never a real solution just wild nonsense that perfectly fits the tone of the stories. The bat story is a good example of this; they don't even get to the castle until the back half, already mistakingly running into an insane asylum and a on the lam bad guy! Then when they get there the case pretty much solves itself and they are off to Mexico!

Great art, really good facial expressions, and a real eye for the goofy. Very nice stuff, fun reads! Best laugh, I don't know why, but the "I wouldn't do it for a million bucks -- ten bucks, that's different, let's go!"

Mr. Cavin said...

So apparently the one in the Sherlock deerstalker is actually Dr. Potsum. That's like some sorta prank.

I thought the art got a lot better between the first as second stories. Initially it had a Herriman-esque chewiness that maybe cramped things up a little too much for an eight-panel layout. I think the cleaner look of the second and third stories works better. Though I did love the spider.

And that crazy gargoyly bat in the last story.

But the second title was by far my fave story-wise--for whatever the concept of "story" can really signify in these things, which are really only strings of gag sets-ups. I thought the dialog on page two was particularly lively. I also love that first story panel on page one. The fact that Tintype's Castle is on a hill named Skull Valley is a pretty sly sight gag.

Mr. Karswell said...

>that crazy gargoyly bat

When Phantom Blot cosplays go wrong...