Number 495
Moon Monster
Bernard Baily, who began his comics career almost before there were comic books, drew this moody-looking monster tale for House of Mystery #97, April 1959. I scanned it from DC Special #11, a DC Giant Comic from 1971.
Baily co-created The Spectre, Hourman, had his own comic book art shop, did some of the most gruesome and horrific horror comics covers of the early '50s, and during the Silver Age did a lot of work in DC's mystery comics. That's not to mention his syndicated comic strip work. The guy was busy!
Baily, who was born in 1916, died in 1996 at age 79.
Wow! Love this one Pappy. Very nice read on a rainy day.
ReplyDeleteThis was just beautiful art. And the story, at least for the first three pages, was pretty badass as well. So mature and so fabulist that it was almost avant-garde. Those pages work as fantasy and also as a sort of send-up of comic booky origins.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I thought the story lost a little steam after that, as if they actually had so little idea what to do with this whimsical fluke that they had to wall him back up in a typical kind of hunky-dory comic book happily ever after. But the art remained kickass throughout.
This is one of those few times I really yearn to let the property rights run out and then see what happens when a post modernist has a crack at the character.
I remember this one. Read it when it first came out.
ReplyDelete(We used to see all the DC comics in Australian reprints at that time. Sure, they were in black-and-white but it never bothered us.)