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Saturday, October 31, 2009


Number 620


Halloween tales of sex and death


It's a special Halloween edition of Pappy's today, featuring two of my favorite all-time subjects, sex, as in illicit and otherwise not normal, and death, as in dead people up and walking around, looking for that aforementioned sex.

What better way to remember deceased loved ones than to have them coming in the door at midnight stinking of decomposition, rotting flesh dripping from their bones, maggots crawling from their eyesockets, looking for a little lovin'! Works for me!

First up is a tender tale of unrequited love from Twisted Tales #1, written by Bruce Jones and drawn by the incredible Alfredo Alcala. Then a story of a love worth waiting for, even after death! It's drawn by Good ol' Ghastly Graham Ingels from Vault of Horror #19. The original art scans are taken from the Heritage Auctions site.
















Bonus!

From Creepy #3, a 1965 Joe Orlando-drawn tale of morbid revenge that fits into our theme. This seems like Horror Comics 101: husband killed by wife and her lover, then returns from grave. It's written by Arthur Porges, a prolific author who wrote hundreds of stories that appeared in mystery magazines like Alfred Hitchcock's, etc. So what was he doing writing a pseudo-EC Comics story for Creepy, when Archie Goodwin is credited for all other stories in the magazine? Damned if I know!

I believe it was Porges' only story for Creepy. I wonder why he named the cuckolded husband Arthur, after himself...?

UPDATE: I am writing this on September 19, 2018. Recently I checked the Grand Comics Database to check on this story for purposes of reference. I was surprised to see that the GCD credits Russ Jones, writing as Arthur Porges, for the story. I did a double take and a comic bookish “What th — !?” For any interested person’s information, Arthur Porges was a real person, as I mention above. He was born in 1915, and died in 2006. He was a math teacher until he quit teaching for the life of a free-lance writer. He wrote for mystery and science fiction digests, preferring the short-story format over the longer form of novels.

I still don’t know if  “Return Trip” was his one-and-only story for Creepy, but I can tell you that if he is credited on the title page, I believe firmly that he wrote it, and if Russ Jones had anything to do with it, I don’t know what it was, and I won’t speculate. Sometimes I wonder where the GCD gets its information. As someone who is trying to provide information on old comics, knowing who wrote them or drew them is important to me. I hate seeing someone lose credit because of bad information.

And believe me, I am as hard on myself as I am on other sources of information. When someone convinces me I am wrong I am happy to go back and set the record straight. That is the good thing about the Internet...unlike print, we can go back and fix our mistakes.










10 comments:

Chuck Wells said...

Three outstanding picks today, Pappy. May you and yours have a safe eerie holiday.

Runs.with.Ferals said...

I've always preferred looking @ the EC horror tales in B & W oversize hardcover editions~ but man~ what a treat to see the paste-ons and corrections ! Who knew Graham Ingels could ever mess up ? He truly made horror~ BEAUTIFUL !

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Lillian was plainly insane by the last panel of the fourth page. She was married at 19 years old, spent 16 years with Waldo before meeting Roger, and spent another 5 years waiting for Roger's first return; yet, after all that, she thought of herself as 25 years old.

Mykal Banta said...

Pappy: I'm ashamed to say I was not familiar with Alfredo Alcala. That makes me feel very stupid, but at least there's a cure! I am going to look up more of his work. That first story was magnificent. That ending - well, what can one say? It certianly sets the imaginiation reeling, doesn't it? It produces far more images that are probably healthy. Happy Halloween! -- Mykal

Mr. Karswell said...

Helluva trio o'terror Paps... I think you even outspooked THOIA this Halloween!

Hope yer holiday was a blast!

THE APOCOLYTE said...

Great stuff, as always! Alcala with his fine, engraving type of style, and I love seeing Ingels work in black and white - that man could really draw! and the Orlando story didn't suck...

THE APOCOLYTE said...

The Ingels art is incredible -- I must HAVE IT!!

Prof. Grewbeard said...

Good Lord!(choke!)...

Bhob said...

Actually, the CREEPY story is by Russ Jones (whose likeness appears in the art). I asked him once why he chose to use the name of an existing author as his pseudonym, and the answer was suitably vague. He apparently liked the name, or something like that. I also asked him why the word "Flashback" appears in the story, and he said that Jim Warren did not understand the usual visual device of wavy lines as indicating a flashback and insisted the word be pasted there as a cue to the reader. I was fortunate to have Alcala illustrate my script "Bugged!" in ARRGH! #2. He drew a six-foot cockroach in a trenchcoat precisely as I visualized it. "Bugged!" is credited to Russ Jones' pseudonym Jack Younger but was scripted solo by me (inspired by Thomas Disch's story "The Roaches"). Maybe you could post "Bugged!"?

Bhob @ Potrzebie