Weird Fantasy 19 help plus a question

[Scrooge]

Neat little book. Was very pleased with it until I realized that it's missing the centerfold ... and instead of some silly two-page text feature, I miss out on a short 3-page story drawn by Joe Kubert

 

Oh well, there is enough here to keep it entertaining. The issue starts with a new splash by A.C. Hollingsworth (who was a friend of Kubert at the time) for a standard story that I believe all PCH publisher had a whirl at at one point or another, the famed Phantom Hitch-Hiker which was the topic of a popular episode of Suspense, the radio show. The splash is the best part of the story as the rest of it plays out according to the now worn out scenario.

 

 

This is followed up by yet another cliché-ed story about a violinist who sells (unwittingly) his soul for a new set of hands after an accident, but the new hands are killer hands with a will of their own *yawn*

 

After the skipped Kubert, we find the gem of the issue by, maybe, Rosenberger, about a pianist this time and his love of Chopin's Raindrop Prelude, a piece which evokes and invokes Nona, the artist's muse every time he plays it. The job on it is fantastically done and convey the fey nature of the inspiration and of the apparition. I show two pages below -

 

 

The last story is an encore piece for Hollingsworth about some fishy going-ons in the subway system -

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

 

 

 

Fabuous splash page - the best I've seen of Hollingsworth by a long way!

[Scrooge]

 

Still working on this pile of coverless and might be able to post more of them as the holidays are past us.

 

Next up is issue # 14 of Spy Fighters.

 

Spy Fighters is a better title overall than Spy Cases as Spy Cases suffers much from Bill Savage's artwork. The early issues of Spy Fighters are only slightly better in the hands of Sol Brodsky but I find with this one that once Mac Pakula takes over he provides the necessary atmospherics the title needed. I like that the writer uses Clark Mason's PoV in the narration as it lends more of a "let me tell you how it was" sense to the stories, much like "I was a Communist for the FBI" or "Yours truly, Johnny Dollar" did on the radio.

 

Another advantage or I should say interest to me is that the adventures are globe-spanning which helps situates the contemporary geo-political situation, something that many other stories eschewed.

 

I picked two pages by Pakula. The first one verges on the Eisner-esque, though obviously clearly not in the same league but, the page's use of dark and blacks is in sharp contrast to much other productions at the time. For the youngins out there reading, Formosa is Taiwan.

 

In the second page, Clark Mason owes his life to an enemy agent who gives her life to save his on this selected page.

 

I look forward getting more Spy Fighters issues drawn by Pakula.

[Flex Mentallo]

Good stuff Michaël!

 

Any more femmes fatales?

[Secret Son]

I'm happy to see the books are being enjoyed.

 

Love the posts by the way. (thumbs u

[Point Five]

 

I'll be taking over this thread.

This still makes me chuckle.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

I'll be taking over this thread.

This still makes me chuckle.

 

 

I missed that one! Hmm, the "Ask GAtor thread is just begging for a makeover....

[Scrooge]

Since 90+% of the pile was PCH, here we go back to Harvey's Chamber of Chills # 17. I have not read many Harvey pre-code books before and, though nice, their percentage of miss is higher than other top tier publishers.

 

In this issue, I kinda liked the first story, didn't understand the second, thought the third ran afoul before it got started and chuckled at the last one, so, not a great batting average overall. Some one has to explain that second story to me so if you have the book or have read it or download it at DCM, let me know so I don't die stupid.

 

Artistic-wise, Kremer delivers a solid job on the first story Amnesia! with some atmosphere to the job though the story is paper thin -

 

 

Nostrand depiction of the prize fight is splendid on the second story ... if only I was smarter to understand what happened.

 

As usual Moe Marcus underwhelms on the third story and Certa is serviceable on the final story.

 

The final story finds a big game hunter who has run out of new targets for his trophy room, so when he read about new species being discovered in Central Africa, he runs off immediately to add new game to his hit list. Turns out that he discovers a water pool that creates distorted life when an animal falls into it. As a great humanitarian, the hunter brings animal and deliberately makes them fall in the waters so as to kill their newly created twisted versions.

 

 

All goes well ... until, you knew it was going to happen, HE falls into the water and his hunter becomes the prey. The end is predictable but still very enjoyable.

 

 

Going back to the news item that triggers the trip, here's the original panel:

 

 

The mention of the Ubangi river triggered memories about the region. I do not know why exactly but it was not due to the region being an old French colony but rather some other readings I've done. Turns out that I've heard or read about the region more than I recalled.

 

First, I grew up in the '70's in France at a time when Jean-Bédel Bokassa was in power in the Central African Republic (CAR). CAR lies withing the basins of the Ubangi and its capital, Bangui is located on the banks of the Ubangi. You would know the CAR more as the French Congo, a colony that suffered through the same abuses as the Belgian Congo did, though those stories were more prominently on display in Adam Hochschild's 1999 King Leopold's Ghost book. I failed to finish that book starting it 3 times over. The writing never caught my fancy. Instead, I rather recommend Thomas Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa who paints on a larger canvas, as per the sub-title, "White man's conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912", a book I read with little stopping from cover to cover.

 

Here's a map of the region during colonial times:

 

 

As you can see (if you've read this far), the Ubangi is the largest right-bank tributary of the Congo river and flows mostly west (away from the Nile, as it is not part of its watershed) then turns south to join with the Congo river.

 

From 1892 to 1894, the Belgian and French were in a race to reach the Nile watershed, the French following the Ubangi and the Belgian the Congo. The French were eventually thwarted when the British handed the victory to the Belgian in exchange for a corridor connecting Uganda with Lake Tanganyika. "This was the missing link in the 'All-Red' route, Rhodes's wild dream of a Cape-to-Cairo railway". And, you guys wonder why we don't like the brits Btw, this never came to be b/c Leopold bungled it, asking for too much, and the brits backed away for fear of a conflict with France, esp. at a time when France had good relations with Germany.

 

Unfortunately, this incident helped settled the borders and full exploitation started with its atrocities. Later, by 1905, the situation was awful.

 

First a little scenery:

 

"Three hundred and fifty kilometers east of Leopoldville, the Dolizie swung north into the Ubangi and the water changed colour. Here it was more like milk with a dash of tea. The river-banks changed, too; they were more silent, more monotonously green, with fewer birds or animals, merely an occasional hippo or crocodile, and fewer villages along the banks. As Grenfell had warned them, many natives had left their homes and fled into the jungle. For this was the rubber zone, dominated by French and Belgian rubber companies"

 

"A still more gruesome tale greeted Brazza's party at Bangui, beyond the first rapids, where they had to change to a smaller boat. They were shown a hut where, during the previous year, sixty-eight women and children had been held hostage by the local administrator in order to force their menfolk to pay their taxes in kind - wild rubber. Forty-seven of these wretched captives had died of starvation or suffocation before a young doctor discovered their plight. The scandal could not be hushed up, and protests were made to higher authority. But the only punishment given the French administrator responsible was to transfer him to Brazzaville - a much more desirable post than Bangui." As the world changes ...

 

I cannot imagine how devastated Brazza must have been. He was a major force in the exploration of the area and this expedition / trip (which turned out to be his last, he would die in September of that year (1905) from the "hard physical toll, and on his return journey to Dakar he died of dysentery and fever") led him to "produce a damming report in spite of many obstructions placed in his path."

 

Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza

 

[Scrooge]

What!?! No one commented on the Ubangi river coverage

 

I'll stick closer to the comic this time. Next up on the pile came from Standard with Adventures into Darkness # 12 with the standard 4 stories format of the day.

 

The first story was timely for me to read, though sad, as it served as a memoriam to John Celardo, the artist on the feature. Celardo passed away a few days ago, on January 6, 2012 at age 93. I know Celardo's work mostly from his work at Fiction House and his run on the Tarzan strip during the '50's. This comic is from 1953 so this is some of his last work in comics before taking over Tarzan on January 18, 1954, some 58 years ago.

 

I scanned the splash and a story page where the curse of the jewels starts to become apparent. Don't you think the guy in the splash page should have been a little more leery when buying a cheap jewel from a freaking lizard

 

 

 

The second story is possibly by Jack Katz but I am not so sure. Here's a representative page nevertheless. The story eventually dooms the guy after his temporary escape. Standard horror stuff.

 

 

The third story is not memorable, about envy and vengeance and all ends badly for ALL characters. The body count is as high as a Shakespeare play. Along with the Celardo job, the last story comes out on top:

 

After a car accident during which his wife, a former gipsy beauty, is disfigured, the main character takes up with another beautiful girl. Overcome with jealousy the disfigured wife confronts him but the husband kills her and with her dying breath curses her husband. After blowing all the money in her estate (she was a successful artist), the new couple realize that they truly love each other and settle down and get to work to support themselves until a day when the new wife is caught in a fire and is herself disfigured. The husband's mind breaks down, as he is still haunted by his first wife and is now with his second disfigured wife BUT this time, their love remains true and the second wife takes care of him and his vision of his first wife ... I found the last panel rather poignant for a throw-away horror story.

 

 

[adamstrange]

Just based on that one page I think it unlikely that Katz drew the second story.

 

I do think it possible he was the artist for the third story based on these 2 panels.

 

[adamstrange]

After the Yugo, here comes the Cadillac! The next book I grabbed was Strange Adventures # 16, DC Sci-Fi book par excellence, the dominance of early '50's DC on the comics scene is on full display. No one else except EC did comics better than DC during that time period.

 

The issue starts with a Broome / Anderson (with Anderson inks) Captain Comet story which makes sense whereby a creature from an alternate dimension is projected to earth and appears as many ghosts as his apparition is fed by people's psyches and loved ones are the ones most thoroughly missed. Thanks to his mutant powers, Captain Comet, a.k.a., Adam Blake, can communicate with the creature and help send him back to his dimension.

 

Not only is the story scientifically grounded (gotta love all the editorial asides about science facts) but the coloring job in this is fantastic to convey the evanescence of the ghostly characters (see second page below)

 

This post on Str Adv 16 caught my eye. In my view it's an accurate, and mostly positive assessment of DC Sci-Fi expressing what I find enjoyable. Both Str Adv & Mys in Space were edited by Julie Schwartz and exhibit the same quality charateristics.

[Scrooge]

Thank you for the comment! Some one is reading this

 

Back to the pile after I strayed and read a few Four Color issues.

 

It was a pleasure to come back to Farrell's Voodoo Comics # 7 from 1952. At first, I was sceptical about the book but it didn't turn out bad at all.

 

We start with Devil Flower with a great splash and a silly premise but the art makes it palatable. If you don't know how this one ends, you need to read more Pre-Code Horror stories

 

The second story is titled, appropriately enough, Voodoo painting. It's exactly what one would expect with a painting trying to take over a person, an oft-seen premise (heck, I just saw an early episode of Warehouse 13 with the same plot) that is played out dependably here. The cursed person escapes the voodoo and burns the painting in the end for a nice conclusion.

 

I was lukewarm to the third story at first: a shopkeeper in town takes revenge on a local artist using a, you guessed it, voodoo doll. The story is better than average because of the gimmick used to pierce the doll. The dollmaker hides it in the archery target practice of the wife of the artist, a master archer. Due to a sprained muscle, she lets her mother use the target for practice. Her mother, being a lesser archer and therefore, less accurate, only manages to harm the limbs of the artist. Once the target is IDed as the source and hiding place of the doll, every one realizes what would have happened had the wife practiced and most certainly hit the bullseye. I thought that was clever beyond your standard PCH story.

 

Coverage continues in next post ...

[Scrooge]

The fourth story, is in my eyes, the highlight of the issue though I thought it would be the first story.

 

We start with a great splash, follow up with inter-stellar harpies and end up with the demise of the human race. What more can one hope from a PCH story?

 

[adamstrange]

 

Thank you for the comment! Some one is reading this

(thumbs u

 

It was a pleasure to come back to Farrell's Voodoo Comics # 7 from 1952. At first, I was sceptical about the book but it didn't turn out bad at all.

 

You should have more faith. The Iger shop produced stories for both Superior and Ajax and there's an interesting story or two in each issue.

 

"Goodbye World" is high in the pantheon of pre-code horror stories. It was praised by Suarez in his Tales to Terrible to Tell and did not disappoint when I finally found a copy.

[Scrooge]

IIRC, this is the only Romance in the stack but, at least, it's an Atlas romance. There is nothing that differentiates the stories in this book from hundreds of other romance stories of the era so I'll skip mostly along and post two pages. First the splash by Robinson to the intro story to the book. I like the aztec / mayan motif he selected for the drapes and then a page from the slick Hartley job on the second story (though it may look bad as I had to cut down on quality for this page to get it under 200k). The artistic line up is Brown / Gantz and the last story looks like a Carrabotta job.

 

[adamstrange]

I like the aztec / mayan motif he selected for the drapes

It's nice touch, like some of the statuary that Frazetta put into his romance stories.

 

(though it may look bad as I had to cut down on quality for this page to get it under 200k).

Get a photobucket account.

[BangZoom]

 

I was looking through an Atlas romance comic the other day and discovered the contents consisted of a single 32 page story.

 

Is that something they did very often?

[Scrooge]

Not to my knowledge. It's certainly the exception rather than the norm. A typical Atlas Romance book is structured as their war books are: 4 stories.

 

Do you recall which issue it was?

 

AS: Yeah, I know. I have a photobucket account ... but it's faster if I let the board host. I see it as a compromise for the time it takes to scans the pages I do keep larger resolution versions of the scans.

[Scrooge]

To wit -

 

 

[BangZoom]

Not to my knowledge. It's certainly the exception rather than the norm. A typical Atlas Romance book is structured as their war books are: 4 stories.

 

Do you recall which issue it was?

 

 

I don't.

 

I've been looking at a lot of oddball Atlas titles of late...probably due to your thread.

 

When I come across it again I'll report back with more info.