Time for one of Lou Cameron's better, oft reprinted / reworked Ace classics, originally from the July 1953 issue of Web of Mystery #19 (as seen here.) This is a fast paced, ferocious tale of rampaging statues in a spooky old museum, and is seriously as funny at times as it is brutal. Tales of grotesque golems on the loose are no stranger to THOIA, or Hollywood for that matter, because once the military get involved here this story begins to remind me of IT! (1967) starring Roddy McDowell. Thinking about it even more, this Cameron crusher would have been a fun project for Ray Harryhausen to bring to life upon the silver screen-- what he created with the terrifying Talos statue in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) is unforgettable and forever frightening.
7 comments:
yoooooo
Ray Harryhausen's Dynamation would have made this story equal to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, or at least The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Harryhausen was the true wizard of special effects.
Edward Tillston made the same mistake so many supervillains make, explaining everything before dispatching his enemies. Had Tillston just said "I learned black magic to bring statues to life, and if I die, they will destroy the earth itself!" leaving Dorne reluctant to stop Tillston and his stone faced hit men.
I did try to decipher the Pygmalion Parchment, but I am not good with languages, it literally is all Greek to me.
Marble marauders, one more menace now found in the dungeons of THOIA.
Ha ha, well, that isn't Greek to me! It's got a J for godsakes. I understand that this sort of curse is hand-crafted to be unpronounceable--like Cthulhu chants, Bill the Cat's dialog, and Mxyzptlk--and I've got to hand it to these guys, they've gone all out! That code is absolutely impossible to say. Like trying to read a list of frat houses out loud.
Love the Lou Cameron art here, naturally. His facility with anatomy is tops. I love the dynamic statuary with look of Grecian urn decorations, but I am especially impressed with the walking legs at the bottom of the first page. Disembodied bits are so hard to depict accurately. I also really love the craggy old faces on regular the people. The first victim in his fatal zoom on page two and most especially the old geezer Tillston whenever he pops up in his guard hat. I dig the way the colorist kept opting to balance blue and light purple in all the stone men--as well as in their boss on the last page.
Now I want to track down the Eerie Pubs redo.
>Now I want to track down the Eerie Pubs redo
Click the word reworked in this post intro-- or go here:
https://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-devil-statues.html
Hah! I already found it in the archives already using sleuthing! I was pretty sure I remembered it being there. I don't know if it's my browser or what, but I can discern no difference between regular words and links until I mouse over them (and then after I've clicked them, when they are a totally different color). Anyway, thanks for the tip. I like the reworked job too, though not so much and not for the same reasons.
I love Cameron and I love the Fraga redo -- each has panels that are more dynamic than the original and both are very cinematic in their own ways. The two statue re-assembling themselves panels are both incredible and I'm not sure which one is better!
Cameron also does a really good job of making the statues blocky and more statue-like instead of just human-like. It's a really fine piece of work with some great angles and, unlike the Eerie pub one, hiding a lot of the gore behind shadows and such.
One thing about these tales is I'd like to know the rules better. How MUCH do you have to destroy a statue where it can't come back, or can it always come back? From dust? What if you bake the dust into a block? Where does it end? Why do I care? I just do!
Oh, and BTW, thanks Edward Tillston for wrecking invaluable pieces of art for your dumb revenge plot!
I know the series (unlike the two TV movies) very badly, but that narration by a main character has a real KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER feeling to it.
Max isn't exactly a trigger-happy cop (like in a lot of these stories). The line "Gotta kill him - it's my only chance!" really spells out the way he's forced into it.
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