It just wouldn't be Halloween without a vicious visit from the greatest monster of 'em all-- Frankenstein's Mobster Monster, that is! This dynamite, Jay Disbrow crime horror updating of the Mary Shelley classic is from the September 1952 issue of Shocking Mystery Cases #50, and is seriously packed with awesome art, and tight, uniquely compact story telling as only Disbrow seemed to know how to do (and all done in a mere 6 pages, no less too!) Star Comics definitely got their money's worth out of Jay (as well as utilizing L. B. Cole on those gnarly great covers), --it's just a shame they couldn't have used a better quality printer as nearly every single thing they ever published looks rotten. Oh well, hopefully this won't hamper damper everyone's overall joy and celebration of this oddly overlooked, Golden Age, creature feature monsterpiece!
4 comments:
It's strange to see the detective being such a witness to everything including the heroics at the end, without being involved. But it's original.
This story follows mad scientist logic- create a monster to prove it can be done, insuring the monster will obey me and not destroy me be damned!
I could imagine George Zucco as the mad scientist in this, a reprise of his role in The Mad Monster 1942.
The ad page looks like something that would be published in Cracked Magazine, only the ads would have been worded in a humorous vein.
Thanks for the monster mayhem comic post.
Ah for the days when you could tell your troubles to the local gangster in a bar….
I suspect the non-entity that was the detective was because they were trying to be both a crime and a horror comic. If you removed the detective completely the story would not have changed at all (even the ending was unnecessary, any shocking information we already knew and them being confused isn't super exciting!)
So it's very interesting -- trying to keep it as a crime caper but at the same time have it a horror story.
The art is awesome, but a little cramped. The monster is super cool but the real star of the show is all the equipment. It's really sci-fi and looks like something you'd get out of an EC sci-fi magazine. Even the "ray gun" used at the end (just suspend disbelief that it can suddenly be carried around) is really cool. Poor lab assistant, he didn't deserve his fate.
I think that ad looks like cracked because that looks like John Severin art, which is always nice to see.
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