Thoth and Not-Thoth.
How hard could it have been for someone to crack a book on Egypt and see that Thoth had a bird’s head (an ibis), and what they are representing as Thoth looks more like the Hindu god, Shiva? It doesn’t seem that hard. But then, as I’ve mentioned before, any gods represented by cultures other than American were just sort of lumped into one big pile of “other” gods. If the artist or editor or writer or whomever thought a multi-armed god looked better than a bird-headed god, then they might have thought who was going to notice, eh? (They didn’t reckon on a cranky comic book blogger bringing up the subject 67 years in the future.)
Oh well, I like the cartoony demons. Art is credited to Charlie Tomsey with a question mark by Grand Comics Database, which means they aren’t sure. Script credit goes to Bill Woolfolk.
**********
4 comments:
I'd credit the art to Kurt Schaffenberger. The Fawcett system may have had the Ibis figures "fixed" by someone else to bring them on-model, but look at Beelzebub and the layouts in general.
It's really a form of cognitive dissonance; if you are a believer of one faith, all other faiths seems silly and open to ridicule even though there's little difference between faiths on the "silly" level.
Seeing this in your own faith can tend to strengthen it to avoid the dissonance.
I love the skull-toothed devil, and his little horns. That's a great image, would make a great character (visually) in a modern comic.
So is Thoth more powerful then Lucifier? Could Lucifier appear and steal the stick? What made the stick, Thoth? Is he powering it? The mind boogles at the implications of this story!
Martin, the art-spotting brings up what I see as flaws in the Grand Comics Database, which is a lot of different eyeballs looking at the work and a lot of guessing.
I don't disagree with your assessment of the art by Kurt S., because some of it looks like his work to me, but I've been wrong before when guessing Schaffenberger, especially in his early work. Charlie Tomsey I don't know at all, and what I saw is probably what you mentioned as someone "fixing" the demons, which led me into my own ? territory of "not sure."
What a great little story! Thanks!
Post a Comment