Time to head for the macabre mountains in a simple but classic style "buddy betrayal" tale with a zombie zinger twist, via the October 1954 issue of Dark Mysteries #20. GCD thinks this might be illustrated by the great Doug Wildey, which honestly looks like a pretty guess to me... "AIEEEEEE!"
5 comments:
The top left hand panel on page four… I thought he was gonna say, “I’m sick and tired of being a scarecrow!”
"Say honey, let's have a nice romantic getaway to the very place where your first love tragically died a few months ago! We can gaze dreamily at the mountain where his undiscovered corpse still molders in the spring frost, picked clean by passing animals!"
Yeah, I don't buy it. Sometimes precode stories operate like Poverty Row film productions, where most popular horror and crime stories were made: You know she has to remarry, but there are only two characters left; they must go on vacation--I'm surprised it wasn't their honeymoon!--but budget constraints limit the production to just two sets. On Poverty Row, they craft these plots to work within such constraints, hopefully without it being too obvious. But once that vibe has been appropriated by comics, in which a low budget does not translate into a limited storytelling scope, these set-ups feel a lot less organic. Or possible to ignore.
This one is a bit text heavy! There's some great art to be had, when there's the space for it! I like how the artist gets in some interesting panels in what is mostly a talking head story. Page 1, panel 2 the slanted camera, the hands outside the panel on page 2, and at the bottom of that same page another slanted camera.
I like Alan's weird snowman like skeleton, that's a pretty cool little zombie!
If horror stories teach you anything, it's stay away from the scene of your crime!
Since his murder is partly for money but partly for revenge, Ben is like the actor Jack Cassidy in two of his three COLUMBO episodes. It's actually easy to imagine him playing Ben in a filmed version of this story.
I was a big fan of Carmine Infantino growing up on Flash comics and always enjoyed his unconventional use of panels, the chair being kicked out of panel struck me as fitting. Thank you Karz for posting this gem.
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