Time for one of the most gruesome fairy tale freak-outs ever produced during the precode 50's, via the February 1954 issue of The Thing #12. And this one comes from dependable 'ol Steve Ditko, no less, demonstrating, as usual, his dynamically deadly, dense sense of panel packin' punch. I mean it when I say that every single page here is seriously overflowing with a fangtastic amount of ferociousness and fear. And you leg lovers look-out, because this one also has one of the most luridly loose-limbed shock endings in all of Charlton comic's history. Classic cover art by good 'ol Steve, as well!
This is an absolutely gorgeous piece of work, Ditko nearing his prime. I'm not sure if it's the age or the printing, but would be interesting to see this before the coloring from the originals.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, I grew up on 70s super hero comics and so I was always more for the realistic looks and felt people like Ditko and Kirby were "old" type art. It wasn't until a decade later I came to appreciate the absolute masters that they were.
Page 2 is great. Look at where the camera is, it keeps moving, zooming or circling, in every panel, and then pulling out to unique angles. It's really awesome work. The breasts are a little out of control on panel 1 but COMICS!
The cover, with it's much better coloring and sharp lines is amazing -- the scene of scale across the staircase and how the figures form a flow. Honestly, you could look at this stuff for an hour.
This story is kind of dark, isn't it? Cinderella was doomed regardless, but at least the vampire sisters got it.
Also: That's an interesting Ditko signature! I'm not as associated with his work outside of Atlas / Marvel.
Thank goodness, it wasn’t just me who noticed those weirdly placed breasts in that one panel. To be fair though, as dark as this tale is, the Grimm’s version featured toes and heels being cut off to fit inside the slipper and birds pecking out the stepsisters eyes in the end, blinding them for life.
DeleteNot the foot fetish label on the bottom! 🤣🤣As a lover of fairy tales, Cinderella being my favorite, I find that horror is a perfect matchup for them--especially the older ones NOT originally meant for small children. I was wondering when you'd post this one. It's fun, but alas, the coloring job on this one is atrocious. I love the plot twist that Cinderella's warning wouldn't have helped much anyway. I also love how the stepsisters go after the competition at the ball. (Did the prince ever notice the dead bodies everywhere afterwards?)
ReplyDeleteI thought from the start it looked familiar. Then I recalled that I read it back in the mid 1980s in a black and white horror comic collection. Maybe Karswell can identify it? Another few stories that I recall from that collection:
ReplyDelete1. A horror writer needs inspiration so he makes a pact with a demon for access to hell as long as he murders people to provide their souls as the price of the ticket.
2. A lost Tatar army becomes a horde of zombies. An old woman warns of it in a village and nobody believes her except a girl whom she rewards with a charm to protect her when the Tatar zombies attack.
3. A ripoff of Lord Dunsany's "The Hoard Of The Gibbelins".
The black and white version actually looked a bit better.
Somehow I have a high tolerance for "breasts out of control" and "weirdly placed breasts" in entertainment, in or out of comics.
ReplyDeleteI'm so used to endings like "I'm really a werewolf, vampire!" and "There's only room for ONE vampire in this town!" and similar ones that the prince being one more vampire shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.
Obviously, by the end of Page 7, I expected him to be vengeful, but definitely not the ending I got.
So, Mr. Karsell's warning definitely wasn't exaggerated.
Man, Cinderpapa really picked a winner when he brought his daughter to this creepy little burg. Classically, he has terrible taste in women, sure; but here at the Thing he seems to be even worse at researching the old relo. Is there anybody in town who isn't a vampire? Honestly, this time around, his choice of wives seems to be no worse than anybody else in the crowd. For once.
ReplyDeleteThis is a period of Ditko's work that I really value. By the Charlton days, he's lightened up a lot: The work is sparser, less aggressive and lurid, forms lack detail and frames lack backgrounds. It's justified--he was making very iffy money at Charlton, and needed to churn out many more pages than usual per month to make the rent. But I deeply prefer this kind of work here, dense and florid, just over-stuffed with shapes and details. I am particularly enchanted by page four, with its crowded Bacchanalian hootenanny and culminating in the audacious slaughter of the party guests.
I also love that demonic horse the fiery gargoyle-mothers whipped up for the chariot. And the middle panel of page five where the witches look particularly demonic. Speaking of that panel, it's one of several (alone with the final frame of that page and everything one the last one) that leads me to believe the coloring work here is actually pretty great. Look, I understand that this is old, yellowed, and suffered generational loss long before it was remastered and lit up on your computer screens. This is not exactly how this comic was originally intended to look. It's badly faded and the cyans have become really blotchy and gray. But I still can't understand why the coloring is getting universally dragged by everybody. I see nothing particularly egregious, and plenty that indicates that the colorist put in extra time and energy to make this story stand out. I'd love to see the original color guides.
I would also very much like to the the original art boards, though. Because the cheapjack printing going on here is definitely blobby enough to crush out a lot of original detail. That's the black lines I'm talking about, not the colors. This might be another reason Ditko refined his style to something cleaner. It'd be less corruptible.
Agree whole heartedly about the color, and this is what we got after I spent a great deal of time trying to actually these scans look better. They were so yellow originally, and it’s why I’ve never posted it here before because I knew it was gonna be a correction project nightmare. Glad someone at least noticed!
DeleteThis is one comic that neither Eerie or Creepy could outdo in a remake. Its frightening enough as it is, it couldn't be made more menacing, more gory yes, more menacing, no.
ReplyDeleteI won't say anything negative about the coloring, and I am glad you could improve the images, Karswell. I can only imagine what it looked like before the digital clean up.
As far as the art goes before the cleanup to this comic, it is similar to what an unrestored horror movie looks like, streaks galore, faded, washed out colors, something that cries out for restoration. I'm glad you did a great job in the digital clean up.