I suppose it's been a bit since we traversed the terror trails of the weird west, so let's settle in now for a real dandy from the May 1986 issue of Elvira's House of Mystery #3. Every panel is locked and loaded with blazin' artwork by Angel Trinidad, Jr. And if you're wonderin' how this story fits into our macabre month of vicious Valentine love ballads from the beyond, well then, how about we just let the 'ol singin' bag of bones belt-out a beauty for ya, --you'll be swingin' along in no time.
7 comments:
You could remove Elvira (and even keep the reaper) and this would be a fine western tale on it's own. Start with skinny dipping, then the "low as a snake" villain, gallant hero who spins the revenge plot, an outright excellent collection of fight panels and some frontier justice.
Art is overall just beautiful in this. It feels gritty, it reads the old west (look at the vista on the first panel of the second to last page) and I love the skeleton.
Special shout out to sound fx -- I especially love the "chug chugga" that's written within the steam engine smoke.
Those are very effective last pages. Again, this works more as a western than a horror tale and that might be while it has such impact at the end. Western/revenge is a good genre for that.
This is basically “Weird Western” with Elvira thrown in… quite likely an inventory story from that comic and they used Elvira instead of Cain, Abel or the Three Witches… but that art! From that great era of Filipino artists especially on DC Horror comics…
May be just coincidental, but my boyfriend was watching the Elvira: Mistress of the Dark movie today on Tubi. Kind of surprised they were allowed to get a little naughty with those nudity shots of Fay. Really, less of a horror and more of a Western here. Although the singing skeleton singing about his "date" with Nick Dundee was fun.
Elvira was completely superfluous and I wish they'd kept her out. She's an annoyance in what is otherwise an excellent tale. The art is great, especially the fight in the water panel, the story is self contained without Elvira's input, and the conclusion is good. Which makes me wonder, why is Elvira there at all? Was it some kind of contractual obligation on the part of the writer/artist?
(One nitpick: where's the train engine fireman? Steam engines don't run on only the driver .)
When I saw the title of the post my mind immediately went to the Australian film "Picnic at Hanging Rock", which unlike this tale was totally unsatisfactory in its left hanging (pun intended) conclu.
Well if you read my intro Bill, you’d see this is from Elvira’s House of Mystery series where she is THE HOST of the stories, just as she hosted her own goofy horror hostess movie series back in the 80’s.
I actually love Picnic at Hanging Rock and feel it’s quite underrated tbh
Seeing a skeleton in cowboy garb makes me think of either the song Ghost Riders in the Sky or Dope Rider by Paul Kirchner
There seems to be some consensus here that something can't be both horror and a western at the same time. I can't really get behind that. As a method of categorization, genre is plenty helpful, I guess, when one wants to organize a bookstore or something. But it's just an unnecessarily rigid way to appreciate art otherwise. In this case, there's plenty of murder and an arguably paranormal element to the story, so I'm not sure why that should not be considered horror under any definition? Especially with a singing skeleton. Just reading that song was pretty horrible.
Man, I love this art here. The toothy compositions and gorgeous inks remind of Lee Elias. This colorist is plenty amazing too. I'm gonna have to look up more of Angel Trinidad's stuff. I might even have to track down this title--something I never bought back in the eighties.
I agree that the images of Elvira feel tacked-on--but honestly that's exactly how they should feel. Most horror hosts are entirely unnecessary to the stories they are introducing. And in this case the show they are mimicking cut the host into the material in just the same exact way. All stories can do without a host, and I've often wondered why these hosts became so ubiquitous. Were they aping television from the beginning? Or was it the other way around?
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