The word “geek” has changed its meaning over the past couple of decades. Now its primary use is as a person who is “an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity; computer geek.” (from Merriam-Webster.com). It can also mean a socially inept person, or, in this story, a guy who works for a carnival and does outrageous things like bite the heads off live chickens. On page 3 panel 6 the geek, Walter Bascomb, is about to take a bite, but is shown in the act of choking the chicken (which has a double meaning I won’t go into here). Ugh! The disgusting cruelty was made popular by the 1946 novel,
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, which spawned a film noir classic starring Tyrone Power, and more recently a graphic novel by Spain Rodriguez.
That is the long way around describing a story of revenge from beyond the grave. It was published by ACG in 1954, while it was making the short-lived transition to what they called shock stories, the EC comics type of horror stories. “Terror Under the Big Top” retains an element of the more common ACG story, a ghost haunting a loving couple, and the ghost committing murder. In an EC comic it would not be a ghost, but a walking, rotting corpse returned from the grave committing the murders. The shock stories were killed by the Comics Code, which came along less than a year later.
The story is drawn by Kenneth Landau, and appeared in
Forbidden Worlds #27 (1954):
Uh… uh… uh….
ReplyDeleteWhat's perhaps actually interesting about this story is that it offers a revenge fantasy that might not be recognized as such. Yes, Bascomb is explicitly out for what he regards as revenge; but Joe isn't willing to settle for just stopping Bascomb, by destroying the little bag immediately upon gaining possession of it. Instead, Joe has a felt need to taunt Bascomb, to make Bascomb think that he has regained the upper hand, and then to have Bascomb witness his destruction.
Even the implausible business of the police joining the search for Bascomb's grave and then acquiescing to an exhumation fits the pattern of many revenge fantasies, in which third parties are assumed to align themselves unquestioningly against the object of the fantasizer's hatred.
Wow, a whole lot of innocents die in this one! Our evil little ghost -- who's vengeance is truly undeserved as he created his own fate -- certainly gets in a lot of killing!
ReplyDeleteBTW, yes, they stopped the ghost, but there is no way that their entire circus isn't ruined. First off, I don't think they have a performer left, and frankly about any regulation board would shut down what was left of that thing!
BTW, also, I'm going to see if I can call around and be allowed to randomly exhume bodies because "a ghost is going to kill me." Wonder if that will work!
Some great artwork in this one, a fun grisly little tale.