After a quick skim through the pertrifyin' possessed puppet archive of THOIA's past posts (there are a lot more puppet stories than I thought!), I'm fairly confident I've never uploaded anything about one that drinks blood. So here we go, The Vampire Puppet fills not one, but two requests that came in this week, one for something puppetty, and one for the weirdest vampire story I've read in awhile. And both requests came from my friend Chris, who also admitted that he's not a fan of puppets or vampire stories. This tale on the other hand, came from the May - June 1952 issue of Witchcraft #2. And despite the nice art from Ed Goldfarb throughout, plus that iconic precode cover by Gene Fawcette, I'm sure Chris will still hate it...
7 comments:
Poor Chris, confronted by both vampires and puppets. I hope he doesn't hate death disguised as an old crone, too!
I like the concept that death is just watching this all going down, knowing full well they can't escape their fate, but gives them a warning just to rub it in at the end. When you have eternity, you are probably starved for entertainment!
I like the art in this! It's rigid, but there's some clever panels and I love how overly expressive people are, all the wide mouthed yelling! I wish this was a little lighter on text, though, page 5, panel 7 is kind of ruined; that dialog could go but then the very next panel is great, it's pretty creepy.
So this is a new one to me, it's the first vampire puppet, first guy merges with a puppet and then turns into a vampire also, that I've seen.
This was a unique idea, blending a cursed object and vampirism.
The art was pretty good, though the artist made the two women in this story look like men in drag, could this be a comic form of Glen or Glenda? Probably not since it lacks Ed Wood's nonsensical prose.
This concept could go in many different directions-
-A puppeteer makes a deal with the devil for immortality and eternal youth, but becomes a puppet that feeds on human blood.
-A sorcerer, wizard or warlock turns Count Dracula into a puppet to feed on and eliminate enemies of Drac's magical master.
- A maker of puppets makes a vampire puppet from a coffin and the end result runs amok.
Somehow I get the idea that there are a few more vampire puppet tales out there in horror comic land.
Well now I've seen vampire everything! Vampire dog, vampire car, vampire Christmas tree, and now vampire puppet. Pretty impressive the different formats that vampirism can run to. Sadly, I have not seen a commensurate range of evil puppetry. Whenever you eventually run into a precode werewolf dummy story, I want you to save it for my birthday. Thanks!
This art was quirky for sure. I feel like shaking your fist at the stage and screaming "bravo" is some kind of mixed signal to the actors. Also that splash! "Hey dummy, my eyes are up here!" But there are a lot of frames I really love. The clapping green hands on page three and the second-to-last panel on page six are two examples. All the faces in this--marked up by an unexpectedly variable array of line widths--are pretty neat looking.
…vampire Christmas tree‽
>…vampire Christmas tree‽
I believe he's referring to the Brian Barnes christmas classic, as featured here on THOIA back in 2019. CLICK HERE if you missed it:
https://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2019/12/oh-christmas-tree.html
Speaking of the artwork, I get that Marion is a battleax, but did they have to make her look literally like a man?
It's not like those two things are one and the same.
Ah, thanks. I missed that before.
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