The sinister 70's hits keep a'coming, as Mike Sekowsky and Bill Draut power duo art duties and create a wonderfully taut, atmospheric chiller from the October 1973 issue of Secrets of Sinister House #14. Moonlight, muscle cars, and rockin' red heads-- what more could you ask for?
10 comments:
This one dispenses early with the "is she or isn't she" a vampire. She's a vampire from panel 1! I do like the concept that she carrying around a gun as proof, there's got to be easier way to do that!
There's a lot to like in the art, the muted color palette, the walk in the forest is actually pretty interesting, and it's always fun to have a story where you know the monster is the monster and just waiting for the other fanged shoe to drop.
The fence was unannounced, but that happens a bit in DC 70s horror output.
The fence was properly announced, one panel, then two, then crash. Should they have passed a sign at the top of the last page that read “Fence Ahead” ?! The car was moving after all
Evil Mary Jane gets spiked! I'm a big lover of Sekowsky! I take it this will be the "permanent" address from now on?
Yeah,like Brian said, thanks to that splash of Ariadne maniacally shooting herself in the heart, we already know from the get go that she's a vampire,so the reveal really isn't a reveal or a surprise. Not to mention there are some very obvious clues even if the splash wasn't there, such as Ariadne sleeping during the day and having an odd fascination with blood and the veins of a leaf.
I do love the splash--it's a lot more fun than the actual panel of this part. I do love the insanity of having to prove that you're undead is by simply taking out a gun and shooting yourself in the heart with it. That's rather extra if you ask me. I love Ariadne's dark, creepy facial expressions on the third page.
I do wonder though, although the lore always differs depending upon the story, but I'm surprised that Ariadne isn't suffering any ill effects from the priest holding up the cross at the funeral. Maybe she's Jewish? Also, a lot of this story seems to go extremely fast, such as the fiancee being introduced, and then almost immediately killed off afterwards. Then right out of nowhere--boom! Fence! I love it.
What I like is that there's a moral here. Unlike the wanton thickets of the nihilistic precode era, this story has good wholesome messaging: If you study hard and do your work, you'll be dead by morning.
It's always striking to see late silver age superhero art in horror stories. Maybe I should say "late golden age romance art," since that's how Marvel redefined the look of adventure comics in the late sixties. And I think it works wonders here. I love page two, in which our villain can't get a word in edgewise--so she jut stands around, posing like an extra from the cover of True Confessions.
Haha, great comments you guys, glad you're enjoying these silver age DC tales o'terror.
And no, I wouldn't say this is going to be my "permanent" blog address for now on, but I suppose it could be if Blogger never gets these upload / sizing issues sorted out. How many of you love to click on a page scan and watch it get smaller? Yeah, not me... it's annoyingly pointless and defeats the entire purpose of my way of blogging. So for now, we'll be doing things here where the page lay-out format allows for larger / readable scans on the main page so that you don't even have to click on them.
What if the bullet she shot herself through the heart with had a tiny splinter of wood somewhere in it? Didn't think that through, did you, vampire-girl?
I was just thinking today that those old comics artists actually had to work infinitely harder than we have to these days, since they didn't have the advantage of software. For instance when I draw my comic strip I can pretty much correct any mistake I make in the pencilling and inking by editing it on the computer after scanning, but they had to get it all right first time around. It's a mind numbing amount of work just to think of.
Ariadne is drawn exceptionally lovely!
Agreed!
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