Halloween is tomorrow, so it looks like I’d better get a couple of bags of cheap candy for the neighborhood monsters. But...wait. I think I have a few of those miniature candy bars left over from a couple of years ago. Heh-heh. I try to discourage the kiddies from coming back to Casa Pappy, but as I’ve found out over the 38 years I’ve lived here, the neighborhood kids aren’t discouraged by mold on stale Snickers bars.
So...where was I? For Halloween I’m presenting four Steve Ditko stories from the infamous Charlton horror comic, The Thing. The stories, scanned from black line reprints published in a 1972-73 Australian comic, Doomsday, were uploaded by scanner Bladeshade9. Thank you Bladeshade9. I appreciate your efforts, and if you come on over to my house I’ll give you some Halloween candy. I’ll even scrape off the mold.
Unlike Pappy’s candy, these Ditko stories may be old, but never moldy or stale: “The Worm Turns” and “Day of Reckoning” were originally published in The Thing #15 (1954). “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The Evil Eye” are from #14.
Some great art against some relatively poor quality stories. Sometimes, as incredible as Ditko was, I can't tell what he was going for. The woman in the last story seemed to be Indian, but were those meant to be giant eyelashes/eyebrows? Crazy make-up? A problem because of B&W printing? It's an interesting look, though.
ReplyDeleteRumpelstiltskin is an outright great visual, though.
I give out tons of great candy and put up a large Halloween display, so I think that my love for the holiday cancels out your grumpiness. You're welcome :)
I'd say it's makeup, Brian. Maybe Steve Ditko's idea of exotic.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind Halloween except for the trick or treat part. It's fine when Mrs. Pappy is home and able to go up and down the stairs to the front door to hand out candy...me, it's a bummer. She won't be home on Halloween this year, either. She has a business taking care of people's animals when they are out of town so she'll be sitting in a plush condo with a spoiled doggie watching TV while I go up and down stairs at home.
Incidentally, today I just spent about $20.00 on candy for the kiddies, so how much is enough? Of course, I'll eat about $10.00 worth of it, and therein lies another problem with trick or treat...
Ditkko's original art for The Thing still existed as late as 1973??!! And was reprinted in Australia? I'm astonished.
ReplyDeleteAB: I don't believe the blackline was shot from original art. Probably just stats provided by the publisher, Charlton, in the 1950s to an Australian publisher. The 1973 book could have been shot from those reprints of that earlier era. Just a guess, but it was usually how it worked with American comics published in other countries.
ReplyDeleteI hope you had a happy Halloween anyway, Pappy! It's interesting: Doomsday seems to have reprinted Rumpelstiltskin without it's second and third pages. In these, the titular demon rates a lousy third place, much to his chagrin, and makes a wager with the other denizens of hell that he will win the following year's contest. Then he goes on the trick the greedy king into announcing a bogus contest of his own, which, in turn, sparks the rather humbler scheme of the peasant girl and her father to trick the king into marrying her for her hair, where we pick up again at the top of page four. It's too bad, they are two excellent pages, moving through a complicated number of storytelling layers with the graceful aplomb of Ditko at his very best.
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