On the occasions I’ve shown an original Ghost Rider — not the Marvel Comics motorcycle guy with the flaming skull, but the original Western character with reversible cloak, riding a horse — there has been a bit of grousing because the Ghost Rider stories usually turn out to be tricks that look like supernatural. So here you are, supernatural fans. A “Tales of the Ghost Rider” seven-pager from
Ghost Rider #8 (1952) that features a “real” supernatural being, a vampire.
Art by Dick Ayers.
Great work by Ayers in this one, especially the composition of the last two panels.
ReplyDeleteThe beginning is all shades of nonsense, though. How did that tree bit even work? Was her coffin buried half out of the ground, even though it obviously isn't in the previous panel or the next panel? Did they have really lazy grave diggers? Were they thinking "she'll rise again, might as well make it easy on her." Pretty women get all the breaks!
Ayers makes up for it with panel 2 and 5 on the next page.
Page 5, panel 3, "Jeepers Girl."
Brian, I can always trust you to find the things I miss. I hadn't noticed that Ysabella's casket was awfully close to the surface, making it easy for her to get out of her grave. I'm sure writer Gardner Fox wrote something in the script like "An old hag, who has been buried, arises from her grave..." and Ayers interpreted the best he could, which included a coffin a couple of inches from the surface.
ReplyDeleteOr, maybe they just had a really high water table and coffins had to be buried shallow.