Potrzebie
Friday, May 10, 2013
 

5m80 Extrait from Cube Creative on Vimeo.

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Wednesday, May 08, 2013
 
 
Saturday, April 27, 2013
  Wood Chips #44: Splash page from MAD #6

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Sunday, April 21, 2013
 
Jack Nicholson by Jim McDermott.

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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
 
http://signpaintermovie.blogspot.com/
 
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
 
Bubonic, one of my recent Wacky Package gags.

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
 



Vault Lines



Vault 22

The Vault of Horror 22 (December 1951-January 1952) featured an Al Feldstein story with a plot borrowed from Ray Bradbury and another in which Feldstein developed a tale from his own premise. Interviewed by John Benson, Feldstein explained the origin of “Gone…Fishing!”: “I got the idea for that while I was surfcasting. Living on Long Island, one of my hobbies on the weekends was going out to Jones Beach or Fire Island and surfcasting, early mornings, late evenings. And I got this idea while I was surfcasting, and I came to Bill with it, and I said, ‘You always bring springboards. I’ve got a springboard.’ And he said, ‘Go write it.’ And I wrote it, and much later it was adapted into that short movie, which they did a pretty good job on.”

The film Feldstein mentioned is a French-produced short, The Fisherman, which he happened to see at a Manhattan art theater in 1966. He called Bill Gaines and said, “Hey, Bill, we’ve been ripped off.” Gaines contacted the producers and secured both an on-screen credit (“adapted from EC Comics”) and copies of the film for both himself and Feldstein. In 1972, this film was shown during the EC Comics convention at New York’s Hotel McAlpin. 

Bradbury’s Dark Carnival (Arkham House, 1947) exerted a powerful influence on Feldstein, who commented, “Our plots came from a conglomeration of sources, movies we’d seen, books we’d read. I wasn’t doing very much reading in those days. I was letting Bill give us the springboards, so I would be free in my mind to enter into the more original areas, if possible, because we weren’t really intending on stealing stuff. We were looking just for inspiration to give us ideas to come up with something original. My function was to kind of take the springboards with Bill out into a new area… Not only borrowings in terms of plot, but borrowings in terms of writing style. I was very impressed with Ray Bradbury. I read Dark Carnival and The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man and whatever else I could get of Bradbury’s at the time. I was very impressed with his writing style, and I tried to emulate it, I think, in the comic style. We didn’t consciously steal from him, you know, but again, we might have been pretty close.”

With a print run of 3,112 copies, Dark Carnival was Bradbury's first published book. It contained 27 stories, and 21 of those were reprinted from Dime Mystery Magazine, Harper’s, Mademoiselle and Weird Tales. The six non-reprints were “The Maiden”, “The Emissary”, “Jack-in-the-Box”, “Uncle Einar”, “The Night Sets” and “The Next in Line”. Weird Tales was the major source, with 16 of the stories from the pages of that magazine as published between 1943 and 1948. Thus, the influence of Weird Tales on EC was considerable.

The life of Bill Delaney (1892-1986), publisher of Weird Tales, Short Stories and World Astrology, parallels the history of popular fiction during the 20th Century. During the years Delaney published Weird Tales (1938-54), with Farnsworth Wright and Dorothy McIlwraith as his editors, the magazine printed six Bradbury stories which later became memorable EC adaptations, illustrated by Jack Davis, George Evans, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen and Joe Orlando: "There Was an Old Woman" (Tales from the Crypt 34 from the July 1944 issue of Weird Tales); "The Lake" (Vault of Horror 31 from the May 1944 Weird Tales); "Let's Play Poison" (Vault 29 from Weird Tales, November 1946); "The Handler" (Crypt 36 from Weird Tales, January 1947); "The October Game" (Shock SuspenStories 9 from Weird Tales, March 1948); "The Black Ferris" (Haunt of Fear 18 from Weird Tales, May 1948).

During the early 1950s, when the 279-issue continuous run of Weird Tales was winding down, a glance at a newsstand revealed the magazine's strong influence on comic books. In a 1980 paperback revival of Weird Tales, Lin Carter wrote, "I can think of no other magazine in history which exerted quite the same sort of influence which Weird Tales exerted over the genre it shaped and perfected, and the authors who contributed to it so devotedly over the years... And there can have been very few fiction magazines in the history of publishing which have had as many of their stories dramatized on radio, television and in the movies."



Fifteen of the 27 Dark Carnival stories were later reprinted in The October Country (1955), some with revisions. Bradbury did an extensive rewrite of "The Emissary" for The October Country. When Feldstein wrote “What the Dog Dragged In!” he borrowed the premise of the Dark Carnival version, changing the central character of a boy to a young woman.


“The Jellyfish!” in The Vault of Horror 19 was suggested by Bradbury’s “Skeleton”.  The idea for “Skeleton” came to Bradbury when a “strangely sore larynx” prompted him to visit his family doctor, who said, “That’s all perfectly normal. You’ve just never bothered to feel the tissues, muscles, or tendons in your neck or, for that matter, your body. Consider the medulla oblongata.” Recalling the incident, Bradbury wrote, “Consider the medulla oblongata! Migawd, I could hardly pronounce it! I went home feeling my bones—my kneecaps, my floating ribs, my elbows, all those hidden Gothic symbols of darkness—and wrote “Skeleton”.” It was published in the September1945 issue of Weird Tales and reprinted in Dark Carnival.
                                                                              --Bhob Stewart

Above: Joe Mugnaini illustration for "Skeleton".

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Wednesday, February 20, 2013
 
After Seduction of the Innocent was printed, these pages were razored out due to fears. Thus, surviving copies are rare collectibles.



For many scans from the book, go to My Comic Art.

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Monday, February 18, 2013
 

Charles Bukowski's Nirvana from Patrick Biesemans on Vimeo.
 
 
W. Watts Biggers died 2/10, as noted in this AP obit.


ART of "The Man Inside" by W. Watts Biggers from One Brick Films on Vimeo.

Bamberger Books did a reprint in 1999: "Fiction. THE MAN INSIDE was first published in 1968, and has long been unavailable. Bamberger Books and SPD are proud to make this thought-provoking, emotionally rich novel available once again. Caro, as the hero comes to be called, is found to be living in a state of 'continuing amnesia' -- not only has he no memory of the past, he also forgets each moment as soon as it passes. While trying to read his way through a world full of possible signs (as well as an entire library), in search of his elusive purpose, Caro is ensnared by the machinations of those insidious characters who surround him."

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Sunday, February 17, 2013
 


Vault Lines



Vault 21

The Vault of Horror 21 (October-November 1951) is notable for the introduction of artist Howard Larsen and the absence of Graham Ingels. Other than this exception, the Vault of Horror lineup was standardized with Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, Graham Ingels and Jack Kamen.

When Ingels returned in issue #22, he started signing his work “Ghastly”. Prior to that, as evident in #19, he used “G. Ingels” as his signature. The nickname began in the letters pages (see #18 and #19) where Gaines and Feldstein gave him the “Ghastly Graham Ingels” label. He obviously had no objection, because all of his Old Witch stories soon displayed the “Ghastly” signature. While Feldstein’s version of the Old Witch remained on the front covers of #18 through #29, Ingels’ depiction of the Old Witch was evolving inside, possibly influenced by two 1937 witches: Horrit, the Witch in Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, and the Witch in Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Old Witch's origin story is "A Little Stranger!" in The Haunt of Fear #14. The Old Witch was inspired by Gaines’ memory of hearing Old Nancy, the witch of Salem, who was the host of Alonzo Deen Cole's The Witch's Tale, broadcast from 1931 to 1938 on the Mutual Broadcasting System. (Miriam Wolfe was 13 years old when she began portraying Old Nancy in 1935; she died September 29, 2000.)

Howard Larsen dished out a sinister meal in the shadowy nightmarish zoo of “That’s a ‘Croc’!”, while Craig’s gator aid to this tale is a rainswept front cover that diverged from the interior storyline to present a more fantastic situation.

Larsen’s work brings to mind the phrases “darkness at noon” and “day for night”. Note that the night scenes on page four do not look that much different from his daylight depictions in other panels.


During the 1940s, Larsen mainly specialized in crime and Western stories while drawing for a variety of publishers, including American (Spy-Hunters), Avon (Romantic Love, Slave Girl, Wild Bill Hickok), Charlton (Marvels of Science), Et-Es-Go (Suspense), Fiction House (Jungle, Planet, Wings), Novelty (Blue Bolt), St. John (The Texan) and Victory (X-Venture).  For EC he contributed to Crime Patrol #12 (“The Hanged Man’s Revenge”) and returned with “The Borrowed Body” in Tales from the Crypt #26.

“Child’s Play” is another in Kamen’s “widdle kid” series. EC later did a different story titled “Child’s Play”, illustrated by Joe Orlando, in the fifth and final issue of M.D. (December 1955-January 1956).

“Trapped!”, illustrated by Jack Davis, is based on the simple premise that it’s not easy to handle flypaper. Such a situation was used most famously by the animator Norm Ferguson in Walt Disney’s “Playful Pluto” (1934), a cartoon viewed by prisoners in Sullivan’s Travels (1940). Pluto trapped in Tanglefoot flypaper is regarded as an important milestone in the history of character animation because Ferguson illustrated thought processes through pure pantomime. Pluto was seen not just as a dog but as a thinking character.

“Trapped!” has a number of inconsistencies and unanswered questions. Why is Marty King “ridin’ hobo style” on a freight train when he has a bag full of cash? Why not just buy a ticket? Perhaps he stole the money, but there is no mention of such. Why does he kill the friendly old man? The reader is given not even a hint, other than the unconvincing notion that a ”cursed place” could trigger such a sudden unmotivated action. With this weak explanation, the plot pieces come unglued, and the story collapses despite the vigorous art treatment by Davis.
                                                     

                                                        

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Saturday, February 16, 2013
 
1919 Boston Molasses Disaster


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Thursday, February 14, 2013
 
Third installment from EC Archives.


Vault Lines


Vault 20

The Vault of Horror 20 was yet another plateau for Craig, as he decided to upgrade his art with a new approach. The front cover of mob frenzy ranks alongside #15 as the best of his early Vault covers, and like #15, it could have dispensed with the unnecessary speech balloon. Jack Davis’ “The Reluctant Vampire!” was chosen as the cover story, and Craig offered his interpretation of Davis’ closing page. Yet the cover is imbued with Wally Wood atmospherics, as Craig explained to John Benson, “I think of Wood when I see the cover of #20. He inspired that cover, probably, by his ability to handle that type of situation. It’s another example of spotting something an artist does and trying to see if it works for you. I think that in “About Face!” I was trying to change my technique a bit. I was trying to become more illustrative, with a thinner line. My girls were starting to improve, too.”

“Revenge Is the Nuts’!” and “The Reluctant Vampire!” were both adapted for HBO’s Tales from the Crypt series. In the sixth season, “Revenge Is the Nuts” was telecast 16 November 1994 with a cast of Anthony Zerbe, Teri Polo and John Savage.  In the third season, “The Reluctant Vampire” was telecast 10 July 1991 with a cast of Malcolm McDowell, Sandra Dickinson and George Wendt.

The short story “Mr. George” by August Derleth (1909-1971), writing under the pseudonym Stephen Grendon, provided the inspiration for the ghostly bodyguard of “Grandma’s Ghost!!” (again with two exclamation points), illustrated by Jack Kamen for another in his “widdle kid” series. It borrows the major plot elements of Derleth’s “Mr. George”. (Coincidentally, “Craig” is George’s surname.)

Derleth’s story was published in the March 1947 issue of Weird Tales. Because the prolific Derleth had so many stories in Weird Tales (a total of 137), he used his Grendon pseudonym, but the pen name seemed pointless since the front cover of the March 1947 issue proclaimed, “Mr. George by August Derleth”. The contents page carried a deceptive disclamer: "Through a regrettable error, this story is announced on our cover as by August Derleth. Mr. Derleth acted as agent for Mr. Grendon's story, and someone in our office confused the agent's name for the author's. The error was discovered too late to stop printing of the cover." To make matters more confusing, Derleth used Grendon as both a pseudonym and a character name.

In his introduction to the collection Mr. George and Other Odd Persons (Arkham House, 1963), Derleth wrote, 'The tales in this book were written all in one month 20 years ago specifically to swell the log of Weird Tales… All these stories appear here as they were first written down--for time did not permit revision and re-typing in those hectic days; each story was put down on paper ready for the printer, and went off next day in the mail.”

By day, Derleth was working on a novel, so he wrote the stories late at night amid interruptions from visitors and students:  “Never earlier than nine o'clock, and on, frequently, to two o'clock in the morning… These narratives were written under conditions in which the average writer could not have begun to function.”

Derleth often employed plots with a “revenge from beyond the grave” premise. Darrell Schweitzer described the story in Discovering Classic Horror Fiction 1 (Borgo Press, 1992): “It was in the 1940s and 1950s, however, that Derleth matured as a writer of weird fiction. This is shown by the high percentage of original and impressive work from this period in Lonesome Place (1962) and Mr. George and Other Odd Persons (1963). Appropriately, the stories in the latter—his best collection—were published under the pseudonym of Stephen Grendon, the name of the autobiographical character in the Sac Prairie saga. For in many of them the contributor toWeird Tales merges with the mainstream author. In the story “Mr. George” itself, for example, the working out of a vengeance from beyond the grave is given conviction by the matter-of-factness of the style, and still more by the vivid characterizations, the realistic texture of the background, and the touching depiction of the relationship between a child and her father, which continues even when he is dead.”

“Mr. George” was adapted twice to television, first for a telefilm by Revue in 1953. Thriller, hosted by Boris Karloff, carried an adaptation on May 9, 1961. Directed by Ida Lupino, it starred Gina Gillespie as the child, along with Virginia Gregg, Howard Freeman and Lillian Bronson. 



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