Monday, December 1, 2008

The Vampire’s Victim

I don’t know much about Emil Gershwin (except for what it says in his Lambiek entry HERE) but I seriously adore his crisp ‘n clean art style, and it appears he worked on a lot of great, heroic type stuff before his horror days with ACG. And before anyone else has a chance to say it, I will--- the devil vampire villain in today’s tale is completely ridiculous looking but that’s exactly why I love it so much, hook nose, horns, and all!

From the June 1951 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #20











TOMORROW: An awesome Lou Cameron classic from the Web of Mystery!

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Happy B-Day, Barnabas!
Fans of the great Dark Shadows TV series will be interested to know that our Vampire's Victim tale above actually appears in celebration of Jonathan Frid’s 84th birthday today! Born this day in 1924 in Hamilton, Ontario Canada. (Weird, I thought he was more like 284 today or something, oh well…)
And for a fun Dark Shadows parody, head over to the Magic Carpet Burn archives and read “Darn Shadows” from the October 1970 issue of Spoof #1. (The Prof also has a great Blacula spoof there for you as well.)

12 comments:

Mr. Cavin said...

Wow. The nightmare landscape of Mother Australia is certainly dotted with a lot of Cyrillic-looking place names. Load the police weather plane with the leftover silver, boys, I gotta baby to save.

"...the devil vampire villain in today’s tale is completely ridiculous looking but that’s exactly why I love it so much..."

Indeed. It's the evil villain costumes on everybody that get me. So that's what the vampire logo looks like. I especially liked the silly bat shorts. I'd be terrified of being turned into a ridiculous dork-monster, too, baby!

Wings1295 said...

Wow. Just... Wow.

If I had read this as a child, vampires would have never been scary. These maroons seem to have escaped from a "Casper the Friendly Ghost" comic!

Anonymous said...

REALLY NICE ART, I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN ABOUT CRISP AND CLEAN. THE STORY WAS FUN TOO, LOVE THE AIRPLANE SCENES. THIS VAMPIRE SHOULD HAVE TEAMED UP WITH ECLIPSO AND THEN THE RULING OF THE WORLD MIGHT HAVE BEEN AN ACTUAL POSSIBILITY.

SO WHAT TIME IS THE BARNABAS PARTY TONIGHT AT COLLINSWOOD?

Kitty LeClaw said...

I thought he was more like 284 today or something

The Great Whiteness of the North keeps us well-preserved, n'est-ce pas? Hamilton kinda sucks, tho -- I don't recommend it!

Pierre Fournier said...

Wow, Nice, sharp artwork. I'd love to see more of Mr. Gershwin's work. Nice, flat coloring job, too.

Mr. Karswell said...

Wow, everyone's full of "wows" today, haha. And I agree, Emil's ultra tight, precision line style works wonders with this campy vamp tale, almost seems a bit ahead of it's time, a tad more silver age than gold... or even like say Mitch O'Connell's brill pop kitsch inking, especially the close-ups of the girl's face on the bottom's of pages 3 and 4.

I'll dig around my long boxes and see what else I have by him.

Okay Kitty, what's so bad about Hamilton?

Anonymous said...

more funny than scary like something dc would have put out in house of mystery

for some reason the vampire reminded me of eclipso too

Dane said...

That nose got more preposterous as the story went on.

Prof. Grewbeard said...

that was out of control but i loved every panel of it!

an old aquaintance of mine met Frid at a Dark Shadows convention and had a chance to go back to Frid's hotel room with him, but he just couldn't handle the whole idea...

Anonymous said...

I don't think the vampire himself looks silly, he looks like a C.C Beck character from CAPTAIN MARVEL, it's the costume that gets me. I also really liked the false alarm with the bird, nice touch.

Frederick said...

Karswell,
Talk about karmic synchronicity!!!!

I had no idea when I posted the House of Dark Shadows entry on Monday the 1st that it was Frid's B-day, or that you were posting it over here.

I just checked in here and saw the coincidence. Amazing! There must have been something floating about in the psychic ether that day.

Anonymous said...

That is some sweet Emil Gershwin artwork!
Thanks for unveiling another artist, Karswell!