Not to be confused with "Assless Chaps Man" (the alter ego of Brian Barnes), Maskless Axeman was the very first entry in the super cool, but brief "Fantastic Feature Films" anthology back-up filler tales from the earliest days of Novelty's hero-driven, Target Comics. It's a clever concept, as if we just walked into the the theater as a film is starting, --we can even see the backs of the heads from the people seated in front of us. We also get the title card and cast listing highlighting a handful of the same reoccurring actors and actresses, most notably "Orson Black" swiping Lon Chaney's moniker as "The Man of a Thousand Faces." There was around a dozen or so of these created, mostly self-contained, crime driven adventures, with a few based on literary classics like Treasure Island and Gulliver's Travels, and of course a few with some downright gruesome great horror overtones like the one in today's post, via the February 1940 issue of Target Comics V1#1 (and listed on GCD as the 666th comic entry, no less!) June Tarpé Mills, one of the first major female comic artists of the Golden era, provided the art for all but two entries, and she does a superb job with the heroes, heavies, and especially the Hollywood-esque hotties, as equally evident in the other story I have featured over at AEET HERE today as well-- check it out after today's blood soaked THOIA story!
3 comments:
Come on, Karswell, we shouldn't give away each other's secret identities, though no one is interested in mine, Dull Man.
I wonder if the script to this one came from an actual B movie or poverty row studio, or maybe June Tarpé Mills had seen one too many when she thought up this plot.
Swinging heads to terrify the villain was used in "Doomed" featured here on THOIA back in Nov 3, 2008
While Fantastic Feature Films didn't win an Oscar, it was still worth the price of admission.
"Ach, I kan see der blood out dis one eye but not out der other one!"
I'm not sure how easy it would be to fool someone with a trick monocle. But I can tell that guy was already halfway around the bend, anyway.
I really like the driving idea here. I think it's cool that the actors might carry over into other stories while the characters do not. This seems like very fertile ground for the kind of overarching, metatextual storytelling that I don't imagine the series engaged in beyond the conceit. The kind of thing Alan Moore would make a real meal out of. Well, the opportunity is still there.
I hope Karen Drake fares better over at AEET. The character she plays over here is just an unconscious prop throughout the entire picture. It's a role that doesn't really show off her range.
Great, now my crime fighting career is over, my secret identity is blown!
This has a kind of strange morality to it; the setup is that the executioner -- who does it in a tophat and tux, the cleaning bills must be, er, killer -- is "evil" and deserves to be gunned down at the end.
... but was he? Certainly he was pretty bloodthirsty but he was also state sponsored; he was just doing a job he was paid to do, and while he was going to execute an innocent woman, I'm not sure driving him crazy and then getting him murdered was the proper way to do this.
I'm putting more thought into this than it was probably given at the time. I do like the movie gag, let's see how this turns out at AEET!
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