Kickin' off this September 2021 month with a Drac'd-out double header of blood suckin' shenanigans, and both stories are from two heavy hittin' Atlas legends-- mean Gene Colan and joltin' Joe Maneely! And oddly enough, both stories are from the same June 1952 issue of Strange Tales #7. Plus the new Asylum Press ad for my VAMPIRES #1 comic one-shot, flappin' its weirdo wings in your doomed directions this October, --more on that as we get closer to the release date! Happy Friday Frights too!
6 comments:
I'm more wolfy than batty, but both good tales!
'My Brother Talks To Bats': heard that before, though my sister's take is "my brother IS bats".
Funny how both of the characters in these stories are named George. The first story feels like a hidden metaphor for George entering puberty and trying to explore his body more. Especially the part where he really wants to bite someone in the movie theater and when he's at home trying to bite the cat and gets caught by his father. Not to mention the part where he starts to feel funny and ends up transforming into a vampire. The ending's pretty cute though. The second story is weird though. If the village is entirely composed of vampires then were the two men and their three sheep just traveling by?
The first story is quite the psycho-sexual stew, ain't it?
Gene Colan delivers as usual. Even his early, "rougher" style is cinematic. Might the "hundreds of eyes" panel show a Ditko influence?
This is one of your better features. Just as the reader is ready to retch, Pop comes home for a heartwarming ending.
Really looking forward to Vampires #1.
This must be my favorite mode for Colan. Sheesh, this stuff is great. All the close up faces and inky black shadows swallowing everything up. Every panel on page three is loose and expressive; he really gets the most out of that brush. The bottom of page four is terrifying. Especially viewed through the metaphorical lens mentioned in the comments before mine. It's astonishing what you can wring from objectification in POV.
I dig the second story too, but it there's a lot less to it. Still can't ever shake a stick at Maneely. Page three's six long panels are all just perfect. This one feels a little over-colored to me, but it may be an effect of having looked at it so closely behind the other story. I was going to ask you if these were reprint colors--they are so bright and exhibit an unusual level of technical labor--but then I see the evidence of CrafTint DuoTone in the Maneely story. Check out the cyan pass on that pole in the splash. The green stripes. You will usually only really see that straight line offset color pattern employed during the forties and fifties. No one would have had access to those physical materials in the sixties and seventies. At least I don't think.
Here's one place where Colan's style lets him down a bit -- his beautiful thin lines bleed out in the print. Still clawed hands and twisted feed above anybody else in the business. The colors are great, heavy black and bright green/yellows in the panels really stand out.
The splash has a great staging and the 4 panels that follow it and top notch. The printing again kind of beats the last page but it is still incredible. I bet the pencils for this thing are crazy good.
Of course Maneely holds his own, every page is awesome. I like the brighter colors in this one, I think it works well for Maneely's heavy inks. Page 2 is especially good, building suspense for what is basically a number of panels of a guy walking. Maneely gives us a lot of different camera angles to keep it interesting.
Great stuff.
I'm happy to hear everyone's enjoying these vampire posts... I'm trying my damnedest to keep this theme going, but to also find a good variety of art styles and story plots. Got one you wanna see? Check THOIA first, if it's not there let me know about it and I'll see if I can get it posted. And thanks again as always for all the great comments!
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