One of the wildest, weird war horror villains to ever butt heads with a Four Faves Golden Age supe, (Unknown Soldier), was equally the "Father of all Japanese evil, and spirit of the underworld" aka --DRACO-SAKI! And however you choose to spell his name throughout the story, (?!) his sinister, supernatural vampire abilities are anything but suki, for example: the typical transformation into a bat, hypnotism, etc. Meanwhile, his most interestingly unique and hysterically unusual talent lies in the putrid power of overpowering and possessing his victims with a freaky fume emitted via his gaping, empty eye socket. GAG! MAD Magazine legend, Harvey Kurtzman clearly had a blast coming up with that goofy, gross-out detail, and the whole whoppin', 13 page adventure is just frenzy paced, fists a'flyin' fun. I love Kurtzman during this early 40's phase of his amazing career (see also this Lash Lightning tale in the THOIA Archive HERE!) From the August 1943 issue of Four Favorites #11.
6 comments:
The eye socket is hard to beat.
A vampire who can transform into a bat is standard equipment. One who subdues people with fumes from an empty eye socket suggests somebody in 1943 decided subtlety had already had its chance.
War comics were not known for restraint.
Draco-Saki appears to have taken that personally.
I have heard of the evil eye before but Draco-Saki is in a league of its own.
Emitting a mist from an eye socket to kill an opponent, no one ever thought of that before. I am a bit surprised no artist ever drew that in either a horror magazine like Eerie or an underground horror comix. Maybe it was a little too horrific for modern horror tales.
It was a pretty clever way of driving a stake into Draco-Saki like that, here's to the writer whoever he was.
His one and only appearance in comics ever too, apparently (according to GCD.)
It was probably Kurtzman himself, sounds like a crazy enough concept from him anyway :)
I do love the way the story keeps the big idea, that this vampire is a rotting carcass, front and center with this eye socket thing. This is a villain who is literally filling up with the usual fetid death gases--found in just about any corpse--and weaponizing that. I'll bet this guy can light his own escaping miasma powers with a match and all the frat boys will just laugh and laugh.
On his very worst day ever, Kurtzman may fall to the bottom of my top five list. Look at that amazing splash. Yeah, the dehumanizing racist caricature is a shame, weirdly coded more Chinese than Japanese (assuming I understand my hoary old stereotypes right), and certainly rates as really ham-fisted wartime propaganda... and yet that splash is vibrant and wild as can be. Absolutely breathtaking.
This is a super interesting job.
Kurtzman -- known for his super realistic war comics that completely upended the nationalistic fever of most war comics -- draws one that is complete propaganda. Yeah, it's of a time, I get it, and he didn't write it, but it's neat to see him handle it as an artist.
But around that everything is this weird mix of big ideas, small power limiters (which actually have an effect on the action, unlike how wild power sets could be in the 40s) and a pretty neat vampire gimmick.
I love out of nowhere, on that last page, Kurtzman is pretty much tracing and actually doing realistic war comic type of stuff; even here in the 40s he is started to work on that.
Super cool!
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