Strike a light!

Here's a funny thing; for all the fuss Fredric Wertham and his pals kicked up about the pernicious influence of horror comics on the children of 1950s America, they never once complained about ads like this...

(click the ad to spark up the size)

*EDIT: As per usual, I don't know what I'm talking about. A quick Google search reveals that Wertham did mention ads for whips, guns and knives in his testimony before the subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and Crime. Read what he had to say here.

He probably would have had a pop at this ad, too, if he'd seen it.

Scan from Tales From The Crypt #22, February 1951

Things I Want #1

On the last episode of 11 O'Clock Comics, host Vince B was enthusing about a mid 90s Mars Attacks! comic from Topps. This got me thinking about one of those holy grail-type collectibles that I'd really like to add to my piles of decaying man-tat - The 1962 Mars Attacks bubblegum card set. Designed by no less than Wally Wood and Bob Powell, the final painted art for this classic set was provided by Norm Saunders, the same man who came up with this classic...

A quick google for Mars Attacks cards revealed a Boing Boing link to a rather lovely Flikr show of the English version of the set*. Check it out HERE. Truly stunning, eh?

I have to own these! Full sets go for quite a bit on ebay. Incomplete ones are pricey, but not totally out of my reach. Individual cards are very doable.

So it begins.

*The cards in the English version are smaller than the American ones.

The Green Horror!

In case you didn't know, the excellent Four Color Fear has just been reprinted by Fantagraphics. This survey of obscure pre-code horror classics is a must have for horror comics fans. Every single one of the tales inside is a stunner, they all come with footnotes and, in the middle of the book, there's a glossy gallery of classic pre-code horror covers.

I had just started to scan in one of my favourite stories from the collection when my crappy scanner exploded. Bah! Got the first page. It's a particularly bonkers effort...

for a series of black-and-white scans of the rest of the story, (in which the cactus' face can be seen!), go here.

To read more about Four Color Fear, download four of the stories from the book as PDFs and check out one of Fantagraphics' nifty little flick-through preview vids, go here.

YAAAAAAAAAH!

Yaaaaaaaaah! It looks like Gemstone Publishing are going tits up, (see here for details). This is bad news for ageing American men who still get a kick out of reading Disney comics, but I'm also gutted because it probably spells the end for The EC Archives. Tales From The Crypt Volume 4 and The Vault Of Horror Volume 2 have already been cancelled, so it's difficult to see a future for the series at the time of writing. 

As someone who owns all 12 of the archives that have been published thus far, I can honestly say that these books are some of the most beautiful reprints I've ever seen. When I originally heard that the entirety of EC's pre-code catalogue was going to be recoloured I was very sceptical, but the new colourists have been doing a wonderful job. They've remained true to the palette that Marie Severin used back in the 50s and just sharpened everything up. The results have been spectacular and the thought of the series going unfinished is one which makes me genuinely unhappy.

I know that the man behind the archives, Russ Cochran, has made it his personal mission in life to get these books out, so there is some hope that  he'll make the effort to ensure that the project will continue under the imprint of another publisher. Perhaps Dark Horse could pick up the slack, after all they are doing a similar thing with Creepy and Eerie. They might decide to pass on the war and crime books, but I'm guessing that the audience for EC horror and sci-fi reprints is bigger than the one for the Warren equivalents. If it's worth their while to reprint Creepy and Eerie then it must make sense to do Tales From The Crypt. 

All hope is not lost then, but for the moment I think we have to assume that the series is dead. Bollocks, I knew the credit crunch would impact my life in the end! 

Golden Age euphemisms for masturbation #102

Panel from "The Beast from the Deep" originally published in Tales of Horror #7 (1953)

The Disintergrating Top!

OK this is about the grimmest piece of pre-code sadism I've ever seen.



1952 folks. Yup, 1952.

Panels taken from Chamber of Chills #6 reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Horror Comics

Hanged by the neck: A classic Reed Crandall story

Even taking into account the fact that I bit my lip and refused to get drawn into the amazing "3 Marvel essentials for the price of 2" offer at Gosh!, I could still have spent a LOT of money on comics today. Honestly a bundle of good stuff came out this week and I really had to force myself not to buy it all.

Of course I still dropped a sizable wedge at Orbital, taking home

Fell trade paperback Volume #1
Back Issue #22
2000AD prog#1538
New Universal #6
Irredeemable Ant-Man #8
Captain America #26 (Which features a spiffing Epting cover)
Criminal #6 (Yay! New issue of Criminal!)
and best of all from Orbital's magical 50p boxes: issues #1 through #5 of Eclipse's 1980's pre-code horror reprint series Seduction of the Innocent.

What a treasure this little lot is. Wall to wall chills, 1950's style. Check out the cover of issue #1, it's by Reed Crandall from the story "Hanged by the neck" which originally featured in the 1953 comic Out of the Shadows #9

Hanged by the neck is a classic pre-code horror story beautifully drawn by Crandall and brought to life by some atmospheric inks from an unknown source.

It's a tale about a magician by the name of El Rondo whose ability to hang himself on stage every night without dying proves a big hit. After being taken ill one evening, El Rondo's young apprentice Leonardo (notice the partial anagram of El Rondo there) has to act as his mentor's understudy.

Leonardo isn't ready to do the hanging trick yet, but his good looks and novelty turban wow the audience anyway. Worse still, Leonardo's act also earns him the attention of the girl El Rondo secretly lusts after, Carla.



And so a dastardly plan begins to form in El Rondo's mind. He chums up to Leonardo and much to the young magician's delight teaches him the world famous hanging stunt.

What a fucking fantastic panel that is by the way

yes indeed. El Rondo rigs the knot so that it kills Leonardo.
Problem solved
Or so it seems, for on returning to his dressing room, El Rondo is greeted by this...
And now the story really takes off. The next few panels contain everything I love about pre-code horror comics

Just a sensational panel that one. As good as any I've seen. Great use of shadows and real terror in that scream from El Rondo. I love this shot.


That tips El Rondo over the edge and into this....

Saweeeet pre-code goodness for us, waking nightmare for El Rondo.

Carla takes it all pretty well, but El Rondo just can't come to terms with the fact that Leonardo's burial outfit is now hanging in his wardrobe. Eventually his fragile grip on sanity slips under the pressure....



Clearly he's in no state to perform the hanging trick. But perform it he does...
and of course that's Leonardo's cue to return from beyond the grave and exact his ghastly revenge...
How indeed? A fine ending to a pre-code belter which I had never seen before. I've used a lot more panels than I normally would in one of these posts, but I just think they're all so damn fine that it's worth getting a few extra ones in. I hope someone out there will get as much of a kick out of them as I did.

Nick Nacks of the Executioners

I love this panel of an executioner in his front room.

Sorry about lopping off the left hand side of the panel but unfortunately its impossible to scan any of the EC archives properly without ruining the spine.

I'm an EC nut so obviously I'm in a frenzy over these glossy reprints. They're big expensive buggers but my are they pretty.

I had some doubts about the recolouring largely because I think Marie Severin did a perfectly good job in the first place, but thankfully Gemstone have stayed true to the originals and the new colours look fantastic.

As great as the Archives are though, I won't be selling my beat up originals. Most of them are in horrible condition - battered, torn, taped and faded - but there's still a thrill to be had from leafing through original pre-code comics.

Check out this one - that's Marie Severin's autograph on the cover!