Those darn Dames of Doom keep slithering out of the woodwork around here, as our month of Vicious Valentine Vamps continues! And just like the previous post, this story also comes from the September 1950 issue of Challenge of the Unknown #6 (which was in fact, the one and only issue of this title.) It is also fantastically illustrated by Frank Giusto who, I believe, is finally making his THOIA debut here! I may have to do a deep dive and see what else we can find by him for a future artist spotlight. Collectors of our Chilling Archives of Horror Comics hardcover collections may remember this gem from Mike Howlett's super awesome, and weirdly underrated Snake Tales book from 2016...
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"The instant I entered the tiny Swiss tobacco shop, I was seized by a strange and unexplainable sense of danger. Was it because of the burning look in the old woman's eyes, or was it the choking smell of decay and age that brought fright to my heart? Here, in this shop, the first link in the chain of terror was forged--to transplant me into a world of such loathsome horror, of such unforgettable and sinister forces, that death itself would have been a better fate than its living memory."
Whoever the writer was he must have been a fan of Lovecraft or Howard.
Substitute serpents with tentacles and you have the makings of a tale of the old ones.
This was a great tale to slither its way into THOIA.
This one is fun. I love the knowledgeable old man who suddenly comes into the story as the deus ex machina to save Michael. Also, the image of his scales son drinking the cure from a cup is pretty amusing to me.
Wasn't there a label for "sexy snake ladies?" It was a thing, and now it's back!
Last panel on page 1 has a bit of Eisner there, that's a good piece of good girl art.
Here we have a hero -- who I don't think we get his name until at least 3 pages in -- doing absolutely nothing. At all! First he's lead around by the snake lady; then he misses the biggest red flag of all (snake -> mother wound), then he's lead around by the father and it's the father that actually finishes off the cult.
Sure, he catches the mother at the end and burns her (yikes, how do you know she wasn't a victim, too?) but other than that he is completely useless! This isn't a complaint, I like this one, it's a real "man's adventure" type of tale just without the man doing anything adventurous ... it's a template you see a lot in these tales. It has its moments, you get the feeling of being swept up in events you can't control, which is it's own type of horror.
The old man's son should legitimately ask his dad why, since he knew how to destroy the snake cult and cute him, he didn't do so right at the outset. After all it's not as though Michael lifted a scale to help.
I really enjoy the art in this one, especially the closeup of Gilda atop page four.
The art here is pretty super. Dashing and sophisticated. It reminds me as much of the work in the Sunday newspaper as it does early fifties comics, though some of that may be due to the colorist, who is definitely using honest-to-god Ben Day screens instead of the usual CrafTint dots. The colors on this thing are great (I'll cite the same panel Todd mentions), looking more like Prince Valiant or even a comic book cover than what I'm used to seeing on the interior pages of these mags.
That said, it's a real shame this had to be about snakes. Must totally be Giusto's kryptonite. As well as he draws everything else, the snakes kind of look like... eels? With otter faces? It's strange how awkward and off-model they seem to me.
But I love the eyelash viper in that last Valentine.
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