We have some last words to deliver today as we put a wrap on our macabre, month long, Double Fear-ture fest here at THOIA, with two more ghastly ghost-a-ramas to leave you equally gasping as you're eerily giggling with gruesome glee. First, Stan Lee and Carl Burgos team-up to terrorize you into insanity, from the January 1953 issue of Strange Tales #14, --followed by a laughably lurid Larry Woromay weirdie, via the February 1953 issue of Strange Tales #15! Very strange tales indeed, and full of that awful wedded bliss we'll be seeing much more of in our annual vicious Valentine month freak-out coming up shortly. Hope you enjoyed this two-for-one month of morbid madness --stay tombed for lots rots more!
Okay, in the first story, that gold digger doesn’t even wait the first night they’re married to do him in. Somebody sure was impatient. My favorite panel is the fourth one on page three when she’s looking at his checkbook. Probably the one pretty frame of this woman. Her widow peak haircut is ridiculous looking. The second story, Wilbur really doesn’t have the best taste in women, does he? Gloria really isn’t that pretty and I feel sorry for poor Minerva. She just wanted to be loved and she had every right to cut Wilbur off after she caught him cheating on her. That ending though. Wilbur should have kept his mouth shut. Also, it took an hour for the police to come pick up Minerva and take her to the morgue? And the servants just left her propped up on that chair like that?
ReplyDeleteFirst story, she was a little too quick to bump off her husband, she should have just spent half of his money before having him declared mentally unstable and then get the rest.
ReplyDeleteTwists to the story that could have been used-
It turns out She was a ghost to begin with!
He was a ghost the whole time.
She was a psychic or daughter of a Gypsy queen and could have used her skills to summon spirits for her husband to talk to.
Second story, a neat twist ending that would have made Hitchcock proud.
Thanks for the double feature tales.
> The Man Who Talked to Ghosts
ReplyDeleteThe way the woman was drawn I would not have been surprised to see her turn out to be a vampire!
This plot sets up the "gold digger gets it" sub-genre but ... does she? Nowhere in the story are any ghosts murderous so if she just walks out she's getting away scott free!
I love the "man-eater" look on the wife and the last page's suffocation is pretty gruesome.
> The Last Word
The art on this is great. It's a horror comic, but it more aligns with a gritty crime comic, and in that vein, all the people in it are ugly, misshapen lumps.
Even the showgirl is sort of grotesque. It's a collection of little monsters are hurling together towards their doom and nobody comes out ahead.
It's dark, dismal, all the kind of stuff that makes a good horror or crime comic!
I know that some gold-digger characters don't believe in keeping the husband guessing, but the wife in "The Man Who Talked To Ghosts" really takes the prize for that.
ReplyDeleteI don't entirely agree about Gloria's looks. I think she just has a "character actress" kind of look as opposed to a "leading lady" one (so to speak).
And then at the bottom of Page 3, there's the rest of her appearance to consider.
In the annals of comics there can hardly ever have been a stupider murderess than First Story Wife. The others always wait months to years before offing their beloved spouses, but not she! She'll just "pour" over his chequebooks and smother him on Day One! And yah boo sucks to the police, too.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the color job on the first story. Especially looking at the whole page at once (in thumbnail, too); there's nothing like green faces swimming in cool purple and pink backgrounds punctuated by bright red details to really send me. And while the story was sort of slight, some of those patented Stanley touches really made it fun ("she didn't seem as impressed as I'd hoped she'd be").
ReplyDeleteThe second story has pretty amazing art from Woromay. Everybody's talking about it. The character work is aces, just walking that fine line between a rogues gallery and out-and-out cartooning. Dig that fourth wall breaking reaction shot in the last panel. This is the tone Bernie Wrightson would be taking a decade and half later: Partway Graham Ingels and the other half Disney's Ichabod Crane. I'm loving it here. I'm also loving how he positions Wilbur in front of that stained glass window in the splash, head haloed by broken glass like some kind of fallen saint, nicely contrasting the head shot in his clammy mitts. Super!