Time to get October all lit up with a good 'ol witch burning from the November 1954 issue of Journey into Mystery #19. Ed Winiarski pulls out a couple of obvious Jack Davis facial swipes here and there, but still manages to conjure up a bit of odd originality as well. And like I even need to say it, but stay tombed here and at AEET for lots rots more all month...
6 comments:
This one kind of flew in the face of my expectations and the lady that declared her innocent was an evil witch, and the guy we thought was evil at the beginning really did have a holy power to detect witches!
Page 2, panel 3 could have come directly from an EC comic, Davis did those kind of panels a lot so it'd be hard to find it exactly.
I know other people could mimic Davis' style but I wonder how much of this was an artist trying to get ahead and how much of it was an artist who was told by editors to mimic the style; I know for sure that happened.
Again: the writing on this does a really good job of doing a red herring on our witch finder general. One the first page he's rubbing his hands together, which is a sure sign of evil ... but ... nope.
That said, a nitpick, not a fan of the black radiant light lines. Really something that shadows and coloring is better at in comics.
I have to admit the fact that the old lady turned out to actually be a witch was a bit of a surprise. I assumed that he was going to get his comeuppance as being from a family of "witch"-burning assholes.
Color me surprised as well. I figured the witch hunter was falsely accusing people of being witches for some kind of property motive. That one panel of the old lady declaring that he erred is awesome. Turns out burning a witch even after she’s died from a heart attack is not overkill after all. I was not expecting him to actually have witch detecting powers and for the victim in question to truly be a witch. Loved the panel of her spirit showing up to possess him. Pretty good twist too. My only nitpick on this one is that in the beginning the son looks kind of like a kid, face-wise, but later on in the story, we can see he’s a full grown man.
John Burton. What a disappointingly pedestrian name to take over the legacy of the likes of Increase Mather and Cotton Mather.
Like x amount of witch hunter stories, this one refuses to have a "good guy." The widow Malloy is neither a falsely accused witch nor a "good witch" (though this story might be a little early for one of those, with some exceptions).
And who knows how many of THOSE two kinds Burton has turned people against, even if you only hear about the guilty ones.
And now his son has started his own career, and started it off in a huge way.
There's another funny thing. This story doesn't have any classic "hot" witches (as opposed to the opposite kind), but Pages 2 and 3 make up for that with the girl that John rescues. Either that "Puritan" clothing is extra tight or she's very dramatically built!
Or both.
It makes you wonder whether her making John a celebrity "in all the hamlets of England" is the ONLY thing he hopes to get out of rescuing her!
Jack Davis-style or not, that's a Will Elder-style girl Samuel Burton rescues from that orange witch on page two. Not for nothing: That's an excellent little piece of art to print on cardstock and tape to the door at the end of the month, too.
I'm never sure how to feel about stories that work so hard to justify the terrible and draconian reigns of terror perpetrated under the guise of "witch hunting" in ye olde days. But at least this one gives us something plenty creepy to nibble on. If you must burn a witch to keep her spirit from possessing the town elders, then we all really screwed the pooch back in Salem, where all the supposed witches were hanged. I assume witches are still running the place to this day.
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