And here we go, kickin' off December 2024 with a fantastically fog enshrouded, fiery freak-out, --and seriously, when you need someone to kill off the cast (and even the venue itself) of a really bad theatrical play, there's no one better suited to this terrible task than rockin' Rudy Palais! How he always managed to pack so much master-class, hellish imagery into only a half dozen pages for these Harvey mags is mind bogglin', and today's cuckoo voodoo witch doctor of death post is no exception! Nice uncredited cover and bonus filler in this issue too! From the April 1952 issue of Witches Tales #9.
6 comments:
Damn cats!
This thing is full of way too many awesome panels to even start listing them, but if I had to pick a favorite, it's the head on the tracks. That is just gruesome even though we are milliseconds before anything gross, then repeating it in empty eyes shows a real level of skill as to what works in a horror comic. That entire row -- which finishes with a static newspaper shot -- works really well.
The coloring -- I know I run hot and cold on this. The yellow face in the panel I just mentioned is great, that really works. But the splash? That doesn't, IMHO. Page 2, also, the movement between green and orange is just distracting. I think the colorist let the story down a bit, but others might disagree.
Page 5, last panel, I love the abstract fire.
"Deliverer of darkness and doom" Well there's my next black metal song!
The "vulture stalking its prey" line was laugh out loud funny. But much stalking goes into eating a corpse.
While Maurice is a good villain, the end of the story makes no sense at all. It reads more like a Hays Code movie where the villain has to be punished, in however nonsensical and contrived a way.
This was one of the rare times where Palias only drew one of his characters sweating, on page two middle right panel where the designer met his ancestor.
The designer had a chip on his shoulder by killing anyone he thought his inferior. Had they insulted or treated him with disrespect his revenge would be somewhat justified, but killing off the performers and director for imagined slights makes him the real villain in this one.
Thanks for the voodoo you do so well Karswell.
Wow, Palais really giving it both barrels. I just love page four. If I have any complaint it's that the fiery demise of the theater itself gets such a tiny panel at the end of five. But I suspect it's all to make that last page pop all the more. And boy does it!
This may be the first time I've seen the idea of a black magical backfire done like this, via surrogate model. I've seen the ole voodoo dollhouse burned to make the real house burn before, but I like the idea that the theater in today's story makes one half of a sympathetic magical pairing with its original mock-up back at the villain's studio. That's clever. It's a pretty heady notion that a voodoo doll can be a two-way street.
I do wish the story had given us a reason for the theater to burn, though. I guess I'm still complaining about that panel. As it is, the villain's comeuppance plays like mere happenstance. A mere happenstance comeuppance? We'll there's my next ridiculous polka tune!
Also, maybe it's a small complaint, but why does it mention that stake through the ancestor's heart if it isn't going to somehow happen to Maurice himself at the end? I'm terrible at predicting endings, but that made me THINK that I had.
Also, the stake didn't really do that much good since Ancestor De Karval comes back basically by being asked nicely.
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