Jack Kirby

Mike Royer’s Cruisin’ Years: the Interview, part 2

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« Speaking of winners, I’ve got Zwellyn Zablow of 11 West Second Street in Freeport, New York, who saw me at the Rockefeller Center dance. I want you to check in at Murray Hill 85-700. Anyway, MU-700 within the next ten minutes… »

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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1962 in its entirety right here… while you can!
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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1963 in its entirety here!
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Read the liner notes, or feast your ears on Cruisin’ 1964 pronto… here!
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Read the liner notes, then grind your teeth in frustration at Cruisin’ 1965‘s absence on YouTube. Happy update: here is it now for your listening pleasure! 
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Read the liner notes, and/or listen to Cruisin’ 1966 in its entirety here!

Now then, here’s part two of our exclusive conversation with Mr. Mike Royer, picking up the thread from where we left off in Part One.

Michael Royer: Richard, you asked « How were you selected? » Well, I’d been working with Paul, and apparently he liked what I did on the Mormon history slides, so he asked me if I would do the ‘final art’ and all the research and everything on the covers, and the last time I saw Paul, before the second batch, that started with The Cruisin’ Years, that had the tickets on the table, and the picture of… I don’t know if it was Eddie in uniform or not… but whatever, that was when Howard Silver of Increase Records decided to do more for the line. And continue the series.

WOT: Right.

MR: And from that point on, all of the writing, and all the ideas, were totally mine.

WOT: I figured it would happen at some point…

MR: I think the ideas might have been a collaboration between Jacobs and Gruwell, but one of the reasons Howard Silver asked me « Do we need to contact Paul Gruwell? », and I said « Nope, you have no reason in the world to contact Paul. »

WOT: Cut out the middleman!

MR: I’m the guy who Paul used to introduce at parties as « This is the man who *inked* my Cruisin’ covers. »

WOT: Oh, boy. Okay.

MR: “Up yours, pal!”

WOT: Oh, this is gold, thank you!

MR: So I said « We don’t need him! », you know, and so all the rest of the albums after that were mine. And there are two covers that were done for a packaging, done for big box stores, that would have had either two or six cds in a tall case…

WOT: I remember those. ‘Longboxes’, shoplifting deterrents of the early cd era.

MR: … and one of them, Eddie is saying « We’ll be late for something at the theater » and Peg is saying « … but, but, the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan tonight! » So they were done to fit in the chronology of the covers. When he said « I’d like to start over with 1968 », and I said, « Well, I don’t wanna do the Woodstock. »

MR: « I don’t want Peg to have a kid from her serviceman, who obviously… died in service. »

WOT: Right.

MR: So I, and you’ve probably seen it, the cover is in front of a theater showing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Eddie discovers Peg there, as one of the Vietnam Widows for Peace. So now we know what happened to the serviceman that she ultimately married.

MR: ’cause I think, uh, the shot of Eddie and the musician with the beard…

WOT: Luthor, yes.

MR: … in college, and he’s got a newspaper clipping taped to his lamp that says « Peg marries… » somebody.

WOT: « Kevin Buchanan III » … he appears to be a society boy.

MR: I don’t know if you have all of them…

WOT: As far as I know.

MR: And of course, I continued, on all of the covers, to introduce a little bit… of tension.

WOT: Do tell.

MR: ’cause there’s some in every cover, sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s overt. But I believe I did through… what year is the Kent State thing?

WOT: Let’s see… 1970. Eddie’s talking with his boss about it.

MR: Peg says « That’s okay, because Mike wants to give me another tennis lesson. »

WOT: Well, another “lesson”, at any rate. Whether it’s tennis remains to be seen. She’s got the racket, but…

MR: So… I can say all those new covers were made… the one previous to that is where they’re at Niagara Falls, and he’s talking about things could happen at his firm, and she’s saying « But Eddie, *I* might want a career! » And I enjoyed doing that cover, because I just wanted to do her standing there at the little motel sink in her slip.

MR: … and of course, being male and having to draw female forms, I made sure that her skirt was blowing in the wind… and in her little tennis outfit in the next year.

MR: We did, uh, let’s see: there was The Cruisin’ Years, which re-established the whole series. And then, starting with ’68 through ’70.

Waitaminit, that’s only three years.

WOT: Many years later, you did Cruisin’ With Porky Chedwick in ’94, I think.

MR: Okay, I did two ‘Cruisin’ With‘… the second one, I guess it was never published…

WOT: Ah, right.

MR: … or produced, or released. And it was just another… let’s see: Porky Chedwick has got her in a poodle skirt and they’re dancing, right?

WOT: Yeah, that’s it.

MR: Okay, the next one was outside on a city street, and in the brick building behind them you see the silhouette of a disc jockey, and the broadcast booth at a radio station, I think the sign is on the roof. And Peg is protesting something. She’s got a banner, and Eddie and she are arguing about something. Ah, I only have a copy of my rough on that, or my comp. And of course there’s more detail on her than on him. I enjoyed drawing her. That last ‘Cruisin’ With’ I thought was much better than the first one I did, for cover art.

WOT: (laughs) exactly.

WOT: Is Cruisin’ a frequently-evoked topic by your fans?

MR: Every once in a while, it’s funny… for years, once in a blue moon, somebody would say something about Cruisin’. But I was in Charlotte, just… less than two weeks ago.

WOT: Right.

MR: … and I swear, a dozen or more people talked to me about the Cruisin’ covers at my table. Maybe that’s because there’s a new series of Cruisin’ albums… with art that I don’t like.

WOT: Oh, I don’t like it either: it looks like, and likely is, clip art.

MR: I don’t know who’s producing it. I don’t think it’s Howard Silver.

WOT: It’s called “The Cruisin’ Story“, it’s out of England, and it’s just a series of run-of-the-mill compilations, without the defining radio program concept.

MR: Howard Silver ran Increase Records. I don’t know if he bought out Increase and that was [Ron] Jacobs’ company or not. He’s in Hawaii now, last I heard. Jacobs [Indeed he was, but Mr. Jacobs passed away in 2016].

-RG

Our interview concludes in Part Three!

Mike Royer’s Cruisin’ Years: the Interview, part 1

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« This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s history! »

Today, Michael Royer (born June 28, 1941), who surely needs no introduction around these parts, celebrates birthday number seventy-seven, and on this special occasion, we have a treat, both for the great man and for the rest of us: part one of an interview Mr. Royer granted us, conducted just a few days ago.

As you can imagine, Mr. Royer has spent decades answering the same queries about his work with Jack Kirby and with Russ Manning, so that’s quite a well-trod line of investigation. We like to approach things a bit differently here at WOT; having long been intrigued by Mr. Royer’s evocative series of LP covers for the Cruisin’ anthology series, beginning in the late 1960s, and frustrated by the lack of solid information concerning said contribution, I figured I’d take a hand, and reached out to Mr. Royer.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Cruisin’ Series, here’s the pitch: « Cruisin’ is a year-by-year recreation of pop music radio during the years 1956 through 1962 [the years of 1955 and 1963-1970 were produced later]. Each album is not just a collection of the top pop music of a particular year, but a total recreation by a top disk jockey (of that year) doing his original program over a major pop music station. That means actual commercials, promotional jingles, sound effects, newscast simulations and even record hop announcements in addition to the original records themselves. »

« Cruisin’ producer Ron Jacobs monitored thousands of feet of tape, travelled over 10,000 miles and rooted through forgotten files and cluttered basements for old commercials, station promos and jingles. »

« What’s so special about these album covers? », you may ask. I’d posit that they’re unique in the sense that, while they each work as standalone pieces, together, they form a quite impressive comic strip, one in which a year or so elapses between panels. Just about every detail has its place, imparting information plainly or quite subtly. Characters come and go, years apart, sometimes entirely offstage, often never speaking a word. It’s graphic storytelling at its finest. And the LPs are pretty spiffy too.

Now that you’re up to speed, shall we begin? Mr. Royer and I spoke on Tuesday, June 26, 2018, and he was most generous with his time and his recollections. I assure you that the minutes simply fly in such gracious company.

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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1955 in its entirety here!
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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1956 in its entirety here!
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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1957 in far less that its entirety here. Sorry!
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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1958 in its entirety here!
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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1959 in its entirety here!
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For this entry’s cd reissue, the cover artwork was inadvisably cropped, quite obscuring the political differences between Kevin Buchanan III (front) and Eddie (in uniform). Mr. Royer’s least favourite cover, incidentally. Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1960 in its entirety here!
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Read the liner notes, or hear Cruisin’ 1961 in its entirety here! And remember, « If you say ‘Woo Woo Ginsburg’ with your order, you get another Ginsburger free of charge! »

Who’s Out There: Mr. Royer, How did you happen to be selected for the job in the first place?

Michael Royer: In 1966, I was working for Grantray-Lawrence Animation on the Marvel Superheroes limited animation cartoon series. And I believe that a man named Paul Gruwell… If you look at the record album, he’s listed in there as the art director… I’m listed as the artist and they misspelled my name.

WOT: Of course. We’ll set that straight.

MR: Paul was one of the guys working on the series and I did some work with him on an outside project he was doing, where he was doing… I guess you could call them slide shows, on the history of the Mormon church.

I was working on these things, and he knew someone at the record company who had this idea for the history of rock ‘n’ roll. And for the life of me, I can’t remember what the young man’s name was. But he’s the cover of one of the records, where he’s coming out of the backroom, through the beads [Cruisin’ 1967]. It’s like a head shop, or something…

WOT: Would that be Ron Jacobs? He was the producer.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

MR: So, anyway, the first batch of covers that went through, I believe, 1968… and the last cover had Peg and Eddie, who were reunited, with her little boy from her fist marriage. And they’re in the front seat of a van, in a traffic jam leaving Woodstock. That cover was never printed.

WOT: No wonder I’ve never seen it!

MR: Anyway, the covers that I did, how many was it? ’54 through…

WOT: Fifty-five. ’55 through ’70, plus one that’s “The Cruisin’ Years”…

WOT: How much latitude/wiggle room were you given? Were research materials provided or not? Were specific cultural signifiers specified, or did you get to pick (or a mix of both)?

MR: Anyway, on those ones that I did in the late Sixties, early Seventies, Paul Gruwell gave me little three-or-four square inch thumbnails… on the covers that he wanted me to do. All I got was his, in my opinion, so-so little thumbnails, which I guess gave him the reason to call himself ‘art director’…

WOT: I was going to ask if he could draw.

MR: I had to do all the research. Each cover had to feature certain items that definitely said that it was that year. Like newspaper headlines, magazine covers…

WOT: Movie marquees…

MR: … automobiles, and I had to look up all that. I went to the library, as we didn’t have “online” then. Ah, on one of the covers where I need the dash, I believe, of a ’57, or ’58 Chevy, I had to go to a used car lot in South East Los Angeles, and with my Polaroid camera, I asked these two big guys in their double-breasted suits if I could, uh, photograph the interior of one of their cars, and they looked at me like… « Okay, white boy, you’re crazy if you wanna shoot it, but we’ll let ya, you know. »

WOT: People do like those odd requests.

MR: It was very interesting researching the cars, and making sure that, even if they were shown from the basement [Cruisin’ 1963], out parked at the curb…

WOT: They had to be accurate.

MR: … you could still tell that it was a Studebaker. You know, and the jukebox had to be, I believe the Wurlitzer that was in places in that year [Cruisin’ 1961]. And so I did all of that. So all of the research materials were not provided by anyone other than me, and the special cultural signifiers had to be newspaper headlines, uh, I think the one where Peg and Eddie are in the basement [Cruisin’ 1963] café, and the Studebaker’s up on the street, there’s a newspaper that says something about “Cuban Missile Crisis” [Cruisin’ 1961 and The Bay of Pigs. 1963’s headline was the Profumo Scandal]…

MR: It’s so long since I’ve looked at these, Richard.

Our interview continues in Part Two!

-RG

Tentacle Tuesday: Mechanical Tentacles

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Mechanical tentacles! Cephalopod monsters communicating by mental telepathy! Even Jimmy Olsen playing the part of a monster in an alien horror movie! Yes, it’s all this and more in this Tentacle Tuesday post (after which I’ll quit bugging you with various cephalopods until next Tuesday).

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There’s nothing quite as annoying as someone who wants to be your friend against your wishes. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen no. 43 (March 1960), pencils by Curt Swan and inks by Stan Kaye.

Head over to the Fourth Age blog for a further discussion (with pictures!) of the cover story from this issue, “Jimmy Olsen’s Private Monster!”, written by Jerry Siegel (ahem…) and illustrated by the aforementioned Curt Swan (pencils) and John Forte (inks).

The two-eyed, many-tentacled mechanized wonder appears again in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen no. 47 (September 1960):

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It’s the same cast: pencils by Curt Swan and inks by Stan Kaye; letters by Ira Schnapp.
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Freaking cute.

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In a similar line of thought (but some 15 years later), a more steampunk relative of the creature above appears in Swamp Thing.

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Swamp Thing no. 17 (July-August 1975). In case the credits are too small to read, script by David Michelinie, pencils and inks by Nestor Redondo, colours by Tatjana Wood, letters by Marcos Pelayos.

And here’s a peek at the glorious (I’m a fan of Redondo) inside:

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« But destroying that thing doesn’t answer the questions it brought up… like what a stainless-steel octopus is doing in the middle of a jungle… » That’s an excellent question – but destroying this mechanized, tentacled abomination was still a good idea, answers or no.

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Here’s another file for our records of Tentacular fascination: the Boy Commandos’ intrepid gang of feisty moppets, tired of fighting Nazis, switch it up by doing battle with some tentacled robots.

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Boy Commandos no. 17 (September-October 1946). Cover by Jack Kirby.

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I couldn’t very well have a mechanically-minded Tentacle Tuesday without mentioning Dr. Octopus, one of Spider-Man’s most famous foes! Otto Gunther Octavius, a.k.a. Dr. Octopus, a.k.a. Doc Ock was created by Steve Ditko, and first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man no. 3 (July 1963). Obviously I could feature a gallery of Dr. Octopus tentacles as long as your arm (pardon the confused anatomical terminology on my part), but I’ll limit myself to a couple.

First, The Amazing Spiderman no. 12 (May 1964), cover by Steve Ditko. The “Look who’s back!!” caption pointing to the Doc is rather mystifying, given that he was there in the previous issue.

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Second, an underwater scene, because what element more appropriate for tentacles? Kudos to Doc Ock for making his perfectly watertight.

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JFC, does this guy ever shut up? Especially given that Spiderman can’t even hear him? Splash (no pun intended) page from The Amazing Spider-Man Annual no. 1 (September 1964), with art by Steve Ditko.

Dr. Octopus’ metallic appendages, resistant to radiation and of great strength and agility, were originally attached to a harness…. but became fused to his body after an explosion involving radioactivity (what else?) They were surgically removed, but he could now control them telepathically from a distance. Spooky.

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Poor Spider-Man is always getting attacked by tentacles, even when Doc Ock isn’t around! These belong to a robot built by a “nutty professor” to trap anything spider-related. A prize will go to the perceptive reader who can tell us how many tentacles this thing possesses – like, a million, would be my guess. The Amazing Spider-Man no. 25 (June 1965); cover by Steve Ditko.
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Smythe’s robot in action, ensnaring Parker instead of the spider he’s holding in a globe (and nobody but us readers knows why!) J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of Daily Bugle, watches enthusiastically from the sidelines.
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Okay, maybe the robot doesn’t have as many tentacles as the cover seemed to suggest. Here’s Spidey hotly pursued by Mr. Jameson, whose maniacal glee is a little scary. (I will readily admit I partially chose this panel because of Parker’s jiggly butt).

~ ds

Water Is Life: OMAC versus The Ocean Stealers (1975)

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« The marine life is crushed and broken
by its own atoms — which cannot reduce
as fast as the water. »

I’ve been sitting on this particular entry awhile, having realized that the most opportune time to share it would be today, March 22, which happens to be World Water Day*.

In comics, few if any creators have generated so many explosive, pulse-pounding images as did Jack Kirby (1917-1994). And yet… this solemn, understated scene has likely haunted me most of all. The visuals are splendid, sure, but it’s the nature of the situation, the conceptual ramifications of the thing, that make it stick.

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This splash appeared near the opening of OMAC’s final adventure, one that pitted him against Sandor Skuba, a rogue genius seizing and hoarding the planet’s water in view of controlling humanity. Threat-wise, all the adversaries that the One Man Army Corps had tangled with were mere preludes to this impressive madman. As Kirby left DC before he could wrap up the storyline as he intended, no-one walks away from this skirmish**, notwithstanding the final panel, subsequent revivals and reboots and corruptions of Kirby’s ideas by (inevitably) lesser hands and minds (and conversely bigger egos).

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This is OMAC no. 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1975) and « The Ocean Stealers! », scripted, pencilled and edited by Jack Kirby, inked and lettered by D. Bruce Berry.

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Could that unseen appendage be Adam Smith‘s « invisible hand of the market » ?

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And here’s how it’s done.

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In light of the current practices of certain corporations, notably the Swiss transnational Nestlé, Kirby was sadly prescient and clear-eyed again. As evidenced by recent events, given the technological means, today’s robber barons would not hesitate.

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Writer and comics historian Mark Evanier, who spent some years as Kirby’s assistant in the ’70s, writes, in his foreword to the DC’s exemplary reprint collection Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps (2008): « So consider this fair warning: the last issue comes to a whiplash-inducing sudden stop. Jack had been setting up something big for number 9, but since he was gone and there wasn’t going to be a number 9, a new last panel (not by Kirby) was inserted to remove the immediate cliffhanger.» … a panel created, at that, with the finesse of 10-year-old unburdened by a sense of pacing. “Wharoom” to you too.

-RG

*Don’t buy the duplicitous hype, though! A perfect example of the fox guarding the henhouse.

**more accurately, everyone is stranded in limbo.

Tentacle Tuesday: Eightball Eyeballs

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Compared to their bodies, octopuses have fairly small eyes. Yet in comics they often sport saucer-sized peepers, and like villains in a bad Broadway production, they love to glare menacingly at their potential victims from under their impressively wrinkled brows.

Case in point, these two Tales of Suspense covers, close cousins despite the change of scenery. They’re both from 1960, both penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Dick Ayers. Both monsters promptly acquire loving nicknames from people you would think have more important things to think of, like not getting eaten and/or crushed. Meet Monstro and Sporr!

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Tales of Suspense #8, March 1960. An octopus who was minding his own business gets temporarily but dramatically enlarged by radioactivity from nuclear tests (*communist* nuclear tests). “He lives! He moves!” – I fail to see why that’s amazing more than, oh, say “this thing’s gigantic on a scale heretofore unknown to man”.

 

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Tales of Suspense #11, September 1960. A well-intentioned but overly enthusiastic scientist exposes an amoeba to an « experimental death ray » and the poor thing grows into this.

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Not all puppy-eyed octopuses have two baby blues; unlucky cephalopods end up with Cyclopean anatomy and a bad case of suffering the wrath of grapes – a cherry in a glass of buttermilk, anyone?*

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The original art for the cover of The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor #19 (Gold Key, April 1976). It was painted by Filipino artist Jesse Santos. Dr. Spektor is our protagonist, yet he looks particularly baleful here, hunchbacked and grinning, nothing like the kind of  dashing  hero who’d rescue a drowning maiden.

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A panel from « Loch of the Leviathan », also drawn by Jesse Santos, and written by Don Glut. I just love this panel – the gentle curve of tentacles, the skeleton and his pleading gesture…

I highly recommend the issue, certainly because of the art, but equally the story. You won’t find a straightforward man-finds-monster, man-kills-monster plot-line here; and there’s also bikini babes for your viewing pleasure.

* Your eyes look like two cherries in a glass of buttermilk
Don’t roll those bloodshot eyes at me
I can see you’ve been out on a spree
(Wynonie Harris, Bloodshot Eyes)

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Sometimes octopuses have big eyeballs *and* a vocabulary all their own.

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Octopus language is the biggest mystery after “what does the fox say?” I bet you never knew that octopuses go “LURK LURK?!”

Akim was an Italian comic, published from 1950 to 1983, and translated into several languages, most notably French. Drawn by Augusto Pedrazza and wrtten by Roberto Renzi, Akim was a « tarzanide », which is to say heavily “inspired” by Tarzan, if not directly ripped off from it.

The LURK LURKs in panel above were no one-time occurrence. The octopuses in this story keep saying it again and again, and with different intonations, which I find hilarious. Turns out, a whole range of emotions can be expressed with this small four-letter word! My thanks go to co-admin and partner RG, who noticed this unpromising, poor-excuse-for-a-comic in a store and pointed out why we should pick it up after I had scoffed at it.

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I can’t help but feel that the octopus is trying to say something important, but all its mouth (?) can form is a piteous luuurrrkk.

~ ds

 

Felicitous Festivities, Funky Flashman!

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Today is birthday number ninety-five for Stanley Lieber, aka Stan Lee. He was hatched on December 28, 1922. Have a good one, Stan.

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Jack Kirby recalls with fondness his former editor and his toady, in “Funky Flashman!” (Mister Miracle no. 6, January-February 1972, DC).

On this momentous occasion, let’s hear about Stan from some of his colleagues, who knew The Man and obviously loved the experience:

Wally Wood:
« Did I say Stanley had no smarts? Well, he DID come up with two sure fire ideas… the first one was ‘Why not let the artists WRITE the stories as well as draw them?’… And the second was … ‘ALWAYS SIGN YOUR NAME ON TOP… BIG’. And the rest is history… Stanley, of course became rich and famous … over the bodies of people like Bill [Everett] and Jack [Kirby]. Bill, who had created the character that had made his father rich wound up COLORING and doing odd jobs. »

EC legend Bernie Krigstein, who collaborated with Stan at Atlas, and whose « Suppressed Desire » is featured in Spellbound no. 17 (September 1953) , with a glorious cover by the above-mentioned Bill Everett.

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In the course of a 1960s interview with comics scholar John Benson, Krigstein responded to Benson’s statement of « I guess you know that Stan Lee has been the spearhead of the so-called current revitalization of comics »:

« I’m delighted to learn that. Twenty years of unrelenting editorial effort to suppress the artistic effort, encourage miserable taste, flood the field with degraded imitations and non-stories have certainly qualified him for this respected position. »

Then Gil Kane, who was Marvel’s principal cover artist for much of the 70s, and who collaborated with Lee on The Amazing Spider-Man in some of its most popular years, including the infamous, comics-code unapproved “drug” issues (nos. 96-97, May-June 1971), on the respective creative roles of Stan and Jack Kirby:

« On each page, from 1964 – 1970 next to every single panel Jack wrote extensive margin notes explaining to Lee what was taking place in the story. It took Jack about 2 weeks to do a single story, it may have taken Lee as little as 4 hours to add text to Jack’s art. »

And Steve Ditko, in a letter to the editor of Comic Book Marketplace, published in the magazine’s 63rd issue in 1998, on his and Stan’s respective roles in crafting an issue of Spider-Man:

« The fact is we had no story or idea discussion about Spider-Man books even before issue no. 26 up to when I left the book. Stan never knew what was in my plotted stories until I took in the penciled story, the cover, my script and Sol Brodsky took the material from me and took it all into Stan’s office, so I had to leave without seeing or talking to Stan. »

Further  illuminating reading: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/2015/07/25/according-to-kirby-1/

Once again, Happy Birthday to the Funky Flashman! ’nuff said and all that rot.

-RG

Where everybody knows your name, like it or not.

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« I’m usedta dealin’ with stiffs! I spotted the maggots crawlin’ outta yer mouth the minute you opened it! »

Just another Friday night happy hour at Ginger’s Joint, watering hole of Duke “Destroyer” Duck and his put-upon pal, the Little Guy.

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Written by Steve Gerber, pencilled by Jack Kirby, inked by Alfredo Alcala, coloured by Steve Leialoha, lettered by Tom Orzechowski. An eye-popping feast!

The local fauna is gathered in this splash from Destroyer Duck no. 1 (Eclipse, 1982). In case you didn’t know, “the book was published as a way to help [Steve] Gerber raise funds for a lawsuit he was embroiled in at the time, in which he was battling industry giant Marvel Comics over the ownership of the character Howard the Duck, which Gerber created for the company in 1973.” It was an alarming account of the (not-fictional-enough) Godcorp conglomerate’s incalculable greed, its unchecked power, and how « It’s Got the Whole World… in Its Hand! », which, as true as it was then, is discouragingly even truer now.

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« You all right in there, Walt? … say, what happened to all my beer? »

– RG

Hallowe’en Countdown, Day 12

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« Within the hour, Roger Parris’ eyes had been removed from his still warm corpse! »

Some specimens of walking corpse are kind enough to just snap your neck or rip out your throat, but not old Roger Parris… he was, and remains, a spiteful coot.

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This is Black Magic vol. 4 no. 4 (#28, Jan.-Feb. 1954, Prize), illustrating “An Eye for an Eye”. Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Joe Simon and/or Kirby.

 

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The story’s opening panel. For my money’s S&K’s Black Magic offered the scariest ride in 50s horror… often with unlikely, seemingly innocuous topics, and without showing much in the way of gore or gratuitous imagery. They took the Val Lewton high road, if you will.

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I’m reminded of another old dear who was inordinately attached to her earthly possessions (in her case, a ring) even after kicking the bucket. Well… not quite, it turned out. From Mario Bava‘s 1963 omnibus film, “I tre volti della paura” (aka “Les trois visages de la peur”, or “Black Sabbath”)’s most spine-tingling segment, “La goccia d’acqua” (“The drop of water”).

– RG