Time to finish up the macabre March - April 1953 issue of Dark Mysteries #11 --and what a bonkers collection this turned out to be, eh? It's hard to beat vampires, rats, and haunted hotrods, but I think this fourth and final nail in the comic book coffin is my favorite, and perfectly packed with gory severed heads, and slimy zombie vengeance! Hope everyone enjoyed this COMPLETE issue presentation --see the last 3 posts too if you missed 'em! But don't crawl back into your coffins just yet, there's even more Dark Mysteries coming up next! I'd say "stay tombed" like I usually do, but I just told ya not to crawl back into your coffins, didn't I?
I love the artist's idea of clothing and hairstyles in France circa 1790.
ReplyDeleteI guess it’s time to again pose the same question to you that you posed in the comments of the previous post:
DeleteDid you ever read a pre code comic book?!?
In this story the artist can't seem to decide who the narrator should be, the sinister witch/hag or the skull, with a blue skull with eyeballs making a cameo appearance on the splash.
ReplyDeleteHaving two narrators for one story, sort of a tag team of narrators, a unique idea that occurred in a few pre code tales, I think.
In this story we get not one, not two, but three vengeful wraiths, though Madame Reclas did most of the work by haunting Picard.
We don't see an image of Madame Reclas "With her head tucked underneath her arm" - a missed opportunity by the artist.
Thanks for posting this tale of a trio of terrors getting their revenge.
Hmm, only a few posts so far, I guess followers of THOIA took an early summer vacation starting on Memorial Day.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I still like this story as another addition to THOIA's archives.
So having a full issue is interesting. One thing EC and Atlas had going for them was an over-all "style" to their magazines. You kind of knew them by their artist and while each artist was different, there was a connecting thread throughout them.
ReplyDeleteHere, I suspect different comic studios made these different stories, the one here, and the first one, are more highlighted and bright; the middle two are more dark and dreary. It's not bad, it's just interesting. It feels more like a collection than a series.
This is a fun one, we get multiple ghosts, and one is kind of the stalking horse for the other two. Madame Reclas just goes after Picard the millisecond after her death, already chasing him down with her physical head and then haunting him the very night!
I love the skulls on the couple at the end. Not the best drawn skulls by a long shot but fun never the less. They look like they could chew off the top of his head and I suspect they are going to do just that!
At least this time I feel like the skulls decorating the captions here and there were all drawn by the same person. The wide maxillae with perfectly even teeth, wide sunglasses-shaped eye sockets, oversized chins--these traits match up across the board (heck, that pretty much described the old witch hosting the story, even). The only nod to the oddity of the last post is that blue head floating at the top of the splash. That was drawn by someone else, and has been pasted into the window without purpose--much like nearly all the heads in the last post. I'd like to think that someone's box of Halloween decorations accidentally fell into the printer and splashed all over the whole mag.
ReplyDeleteMatter of fact, I got so used to these weird, unnecessary heads popping up everywhere that I initially thought Mme. Reclas' little severed noggin--stuck in the corner of page four, second panel--was just one more example.
Anyway, I liked this one a lot too. It really delivers the goods in the last few pages. You absolutely cannot go wrong with headless ghosts and vengeful swamp zombies. Classic!
I would've liked to see Andre have a bigger role. He starts out looking like more of a main character.
ReplyDelete