One of us! One of us! Yes, it's time to get freaky cuz the circus just pulled into town-- and there's trouble brewin' with the sideshow! This is another one that'll bring to mind a certain EC vibe, though continually saying so is a bit unfair as this superbly sickening Story Comics series definitely had a vicious vibe all its own! Okay now, someone at GCD has taken a wild guess at the art here and believes it's by Jay Disbrow! I cannot even begin to tell you how much I disagree with that absolutely terrible guess. So who does it looks like to you? From the August 1953 issue of Mysterious Adventures #15,
So these stories work on the build up; it's pretty obvious what is coming from the first couple panels, and there's a good deal of build up here that works really well.
ReplyDeleteThat said, how they kind of brush over that the freaks just assumed the bros did it but the captions basically say that they know and don't need proof; I might have re-arranged it a little and added in the daughters finding out just to tie up that plot, but that's getting into the weeds and the real reason for all the previous pages is to setup the ending.
These stories have such a strong prototype that even on the splash, where an argument could be made that the freaks were just crazy and attacking some innocent folks, it's obvious that they've been tortured by our two goons. This isn't even anything you'd get from watching Freaks; it's a standard story of the powerful vs the downtrodden, and that always makes a good basis for a horror story.
Speaking of smaller details, the lion's cage is locked afterwards, making it one of those "locked room" crime stories, not an accident. But never mind.
DeleteThe daughters just dropped out of the rest of the story. I was half-hoping they'd join in, or at least set up those two jerks for the others, especially after their dad was threatened.
ReplyDeleteThis story shows just how powerful Tod Browning’s Freaks impacted the imagination, even though it was out of circulation during this time…
ReplyDeleteIn any of these circus tales, the aerial acrobats, if there are any in the story, are *always* either the villains or one half of a victim-villain duo. This story actually made a change in the template in not having Rocco and Rabbo killed by the freaks sabotaging their trapezes. Nequam's observation is right: the daughters abruptly disappear from the story. But then the daughters aren't really people anyway, they're MacGuffins. They have no personalities and not even the basic IQ to see that their "boyfriends" are abusive jerks.
ReplyDeleteGotta agree about how that's not Disbrow--though to give the question markers over at the comic book database the benefit of the doubt, I can see how Jay draws his faces somewhat the same way, everybody's cheekbones and the ladies' eyebrows especially. But the magic of Jay Disbrow isn't about drafting, it's about brute magnitude and panel composition. I don't think he'd make anything with this lack of visual depth and weighty shadow. I like the art here just fine, but it's mostly just outlines distinguished by the colorist. Whereas Disbrow wasn't afraid to lay down the ink to give the images hefty impact.
ReplyDeleteI love all circus freak stories, so of course this was a winner. Art-wise I particularly like the back-to-back double panels at the bottom of page three and the top of page four. I love simultaneous split screen action! Also, that first one is like some kind of yin yang shape. So strange.