Well, we racked up another monstrously macabre month of comic horror classics, and with one final tale to go it surely doesn't come more horrific than this! Hy Fleischman seriously knocks it way out of the park here with 7 taut 'n tense pages of perfect pacing and atmosphere, --and that iconic cover design is absolutely one of precode's finest moments ever. From the August 1954 issue of Dark Mysteries #19. We'll be back in August for lots rots more, so stay tombed as always!
12 comments:
Well this is the definition of lurid!
Good girls! Tight dresses! A shower scene! Torture! Skeletons! A pretty cool monster and monster transformation. This story is literally somebody going down a check list and making sure to include all the 50s horror comic elements!
Fleischman always had that Wally Wood thing going, at least to me, but not with the same level of figure placement and eye for camera. That's a small nitpick; being as good as Wally Wood is not something that happens often and Fleischman was great, also. And like the blurb, he really does knock this out of the park.
I'm not sure how the red herring works since the skeleton is in Professor's house unless I read that wrong but it's still a great monster.
It could’ve literally been any old skeleton, real or unreal. How on earth could she possibly know it was Rena inside the armor just because of the hair color?
There has to be some wordplay in that title.
There's no reason for her or the reader to assume that BOTH the prof and Franz can't be murderous psychopaths working independently. After all there are several missing girls and Marie only found the one.
This could have been the plot to a seventies Euro-horror film, downbeat ending and all. It has all the elements one would expect in such a horror film -
Eighteen year old girls trying to get a better grade or avoid expulsion by turning on the charm on the professor.
Trying to solve a mystery not realizing the danger they are getting themselves in.
An all too friendly night watchman who has plans of his own.
This tale was pre Giallo, all it needed was a weird dream sequence or two with a few bloody murders thrown in and it would have been perfect.
I can only wonder if Franz had the ability to raise the skeletons of dead inquisitors to continue their torturous ways, reminiscent of 'Tombs of the Blind Dead'.
This was a chiller worthy of THOIA, thanks Karswell.
Girls' School Horror is one of my favorite genres. This one shares a lot of (probably incidental) DNA with the 1961 Italian feature Lycanthropus, known in the US as Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory. But the bad guys in the feature were mostly sympathetic. The same can't be said for the comic.
I love the way the first three pages of this thing were composed. The ongoing conversation between the main characters as they arrive home, shower, get ready for class, and head back out in the morning neatly collapses the passing time, tackles the exposition and character development, and all without asides or awkward transitions. It seems to me very skillful storytelling.
Not particularly hard to foresee Franz turning out to be evil, what with the way they force fed me the idea that he was kindly throughout--but I didn't expect his Jekylling hide to literally transform there at the end. Super! I'd like to think the man was responsible for all the murders, and just finding handy places to stash the corpses up in the professor's old dark house. You gotta stash them somewhere, yeah?
Nice work by Fleishman--if it's really him. I see that question mark after his name in the GCD. There's also a question mark for the cover art, sans any attribution. But that's clearly by the same artist, going by the ropes and the necks on those skeletons.
> Nice work by Fleishman--if it's really him
It’s him… I guess everyone forgot (especially since it never got released), but I spent a year working on a Fleischman book, via his daughter, and all his stories were confirmed by Hy himself before he died. I have a poster of this issue’s cover signed by him as well.
"Girls' School Horror is one of my favorite genres."
Mine too.
When it comes to movies, there's also a good Mexican one called HASTA EL VIENTO TIENE MIEDO.
Ooh, thanks for the tip, Grant. That'll look perfect on the shelf right beside Suspiria, the House that Screamed, Black Christmas, Little Darlings, etc. Good looking out!
You know the movie Mr C, we talked about it on Facebook back in 2021
I'm glad to help.
I thought the same thing. A bosom bonanza.
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