Wednesday, August 14, 2013

That Stray Cat

Today's story was originally slated to appear in Adventures into Darkness #15 in 1954, but thanks to the Comics Code this issue never happened. Fast forward to October 1985 and Eclipse Comics unearthed these unfinished pages in their Three Dimensional Seduction of the Innocent #1... also check the THOIA archives for the other stories in this "lost" issue: "Death Dives Deep", "Harvest of Death", and "Tryst with Terror!" (The usual Standard Comics bonuses and text tale fill out the ends of each post.) And don't worry, you don't need 3D glasses for any of these either.








8 comments:

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Keir said...

Who thinks up 'Jabez Sprong' as a name?

Keir said...

Who thinks up 'Jabez Sprong' as a name?

Brian Barnes said...

I like the ending of this one; Emily and the cat were obviously the same, but thinking about that took my eyes off the "9 lives." Good misdirection.

I love to see these stories in B&W. Sometimes the coloring of the time is good, but some of these artists positively take on a brand new brilliance in B&W. So much is missed by the muddy or just indiscriminate coloring, and obviously anybody scanning from the original art brings out tons of detail.

You're doing a real service here, Kars!

Mr. Cavin said...

When it comes to obscuring details, I don't think the coloring style is so often the culprit as is the super cheapo ink and paper running under bad plastic printing plates. I know I tend to like the colors in these precode stories (a whole lot) better than you do, but it's the crappy black passes that make the art look muddy and bad.

Brian Barnes said...

@Mr. Cavin -- this brings up an interesting point; regardless of why the comics looked so muddy, it shows how dedicated to their work these artists are.

If you knew that when it hits the stands (and most of these guys thought it would be long forgotten after that) it would look that bad, would you put that much fine pencil or ink work into it?

Yet, a lot of these guys gave 110%.

Anonymous said...

They should have printed it - other pre-code were dated march or April 1955. It doesn'r look like we'll find out what happened to the countless stories rejected in the early days of the code.

nutsilica.blogspot.com said...

This is my favourite story from the 'lost' issue.
It's good to see some artists in black and white because their art is better in black and white. Jack Davis and Graham Ingels are ones to look at in particular. It isn't that the color drowns anything out. It's how the black and white interacts with each other... it's difficult to explain without an example.
Basil Wolverton is another one.
Matt Fox would be nice to see in black and white. I've only seen some of his science fiction stuff with Leiber in b&w.
It would be nice if Marvel released a b&w version of the Atlas stories.