Our next not-so-fresh catch of the day as featured on THOIA's Monday Menu of the Macabre is from the January 1954 issue of Weird Mysteries #8. I guess if you never imagined the thought of fishing and horror mixing well, then reel in this slippery sucker and see what's biting! Art by Mortellaro.
5 comments:
Fish revenge, somedays you are the predator somedays the prey.
Fist page, bottom right panel, had Otto shaved his moustache he would be a Dick Tracy villain Fish Face.
For some reason, this story made me think of the tale 'Fishhead' By Irvin S. Cobb. Maybe it is because both feature catfish, at least it looks like a catfish.
A cute one; probably created from going backwards from the saying, but, at the same time, the horror is really effective. Think about that happening to you, there would be no escape.
I'm with JMR777 -- I think the artist was going for making Otto fish faced. The panel on the first page is way to exaggerated otherwise, but you never get that same kind of exaggeration later, so then maybe not!
Some nice nature artwork here, and the pages where the fish are converging and the panel where they are leaving is pretty creepy.
When I saw the last panel, Page One, I had assumed that the denouement would involve Fish Witch there turning Otto into a fish as revenge.
Thanks for reminding me of "Fishhead". That was a pretty good story.
Really nice work, thick with environmental detail. I love the wavy water lines and the sky striped with puffy white clouds. Also all the trees and mossy rocks and the layers of complicated clothing fishermen apparently must wear. Every page is really fleshed out; there's only one talking head panel with a blank background across the whole story.
I agree that it's a safe bet this story's genesis was the punchline. And yet, the art veers close enough to the horrifying imagery of "fish kills" I've seen that I feel like Tony Mortellardo was maybe just as influenced by experiencing a local die-off, or maybe seeing pictures of the one in a photo mag like National Geographic or Life. It's the sort of imagery that can haunt a person for sure.
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