Despite the wonderfully striking, and intensely colorful cover designs by L.B. Cole, Star Comics still manages to top my list of least favorite Golden Age horror publications. The interior stories are always a mixed bag of bad art and poor writing (even worse printing), and for the money these days, just an overall dismal, overrated, bargain barrel affair. But a few stories contained within occasionally managed to rise to the, uhh occasion, as with this titanic struggle of unleashed ancient evil, from the July 1953 issue of Spook #25. No artist credit.
7 comments:
The publishing date is 53 but the story looks like it could have come from 49, it feels like it has none of the improvements that comics made between those years, especially in it's very text heavy presentation.
The first couple pages are pretty standard, drawn in a very static way but suddenly, the minute they open the tomb, everything gets massively improved.
A leering Satan, a very Hollywood-ish set, the cool descending stairs, and finally the crazy demon plus crazy angel and devil fight (why the stone guardian doesn't automatically active is a pretty large oversite by the forces of good!)
The walls of text kind of dull it, a little. We don't need to be told the statue pushes Satan back into the door; we have enough panels to show it (as I said, it seems to not have the advancements of the last couple years.) STILL -- those are some awesome pages. The artist, for all the things that aren't quite right, is perfect for that page.
I love the laughing skull, panel 2, last page.
BTW: I wouldn't mind if you wanted to post the worst of the worst from this issue, it's always fun to read one that is just bizarre or the story makes absolutely no sense.
The story was above average, but the art...
No wonder the artist didn't sign his name, if other publishers knew who he (or she) was, they would be blackballed from comics.
In this tale at least the bad guy didn't kill the expedition member to join the group, he just dumped him onto a train headed west. A unexpected twist in this type of tale, that and the fact the expedition is headed for Babylon instead of Egypt.
In a pretty escapist story, it's just a little strange to see one of those "All religions comes from the same source" messages.
Page 5, panel 2: try as I might I can't see those stairs headed any way but upwards.
At least "Bahri" was not presented as a caricature "Arab" in a fez or something similar, speaking broken English and calling the archaeologists "sahib", and for a change the expedition leader's beautiful daughter wasn't part of the party.
Also, Bahri gets respect from John, and he's sort of on the fence about whether he believes in the taboos or not.
"Surely you don't believe this nonsense, Bahri."
"I will not say, sir. The legends are consistent."
Well the splash is sort of unsophisticated--aggressive, primitive anatomy with plenty of outsider charm--but after that this story seems to gain a more mainstream footing. It is challenged by a lot of text, certainly not the easiest thing to draw around (the last page is particularly guilty--I have no problem with text-heavy comics stories, but you don't usually see the mix so lettering heavy even as the story speeds to its twisty climax). But I think page four especially is full of lovely and capable visual storytelling. The coloring on that page pleases me too. The last page gets a little cartoony in its emotional emphasis, and I like that most of all. Altogether, I think this has a kooky and interesting look, and I wish I knew who this artist was.
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