« It don’t matter if I get a little tired
I’ll sleep when I’m dead. » — Warren Zevon (1976)
Master stylist Rudy Palais (1912-2004) began his comics career in 1939 with the legendary Harry “A” Chesler shop, where passed such luminaries as Jack and Otto Binder, Mort Meskin, Jack Cole, Charles Biro, Mac Raboy, George Tuska, Edd Ashe…
While he worked for just about every New York comics publisher under the sun (and certainly some under a rock), let’s note that he displayed and gleefully indulged his flair for the macabre at Harvey in the 1950s, and his versatility while Illustrating the Classics for Gilberton, tackling for instance Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, Cooper’s The Prairie and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Palais kept a low profile during most of the Sixties, but turned up at Gold Key and Charlton around 1967. For the latter, he crafted his final work in comics. Between 1967 and 1974, he sporadically turned his hand to a handful of short tales in the western, war and mystery genres. As far as I can tell, his comics œuvre respectably concludes with the quite amusing Cry for Tomorrow, in Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves no. 46 and The Last Cruise of the Princess III in Ghostly Haunts no. 39 (both July 1974, Charlton), the latter also featuring some of Mike Vosburg‘s earliest pro work. As one door closes…
If you enjoyed this one, here’s another Palais short from Ghostly Tales, from our third Hallowe’en Countdown.
-RG
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