Number 2569: Halloween treat from Powell and Nostrand

Halloween is this weekend, on Sunday. More candy treats, kids! Get those cavities young! Halloween candy will rot your teeth, just as surely as old horror comics will rot your mind.

But speaking of treats, we have two stories from 1953 Harvey Comics today. It is interesting to me that artist Howard Nostrand was an assistant to Bob Powell, and also did solo work. I read years ago in a fanzine that someone was mistaking Nostrand for artist Jack Davis. It's apparent, in my opinion, that the aforementioned fanzine writer did not see that Nostrand's inking style, while “borrowed” from Davis, the artist had his own drawing style under the Davis-like inking.

In the pre-internet days we had to depend on the printed word, so we had to take the bad information along with the good. Bill Spicer's superb Graphic Story, Magazine #16 (1974) was good. He had an interview with Nostrand. That is where I found out the artist's identity. And the cover by Howard Nostrand is beautiful, in a horror comics kind of way, that is.
 

“Big Joke” is by Powell, and was originally published in Tomb of Terror #10 (1953), and “The Blonde Man” was published in Black Cat #46 (1953). I found scans of the original art from Heritage Auctions (and thanks again to Heritage for such sharp scans). I had the scans in a file called “Comic Art 2005,” which is a year before I began this blog.

Number 1038


In and out of the closet


Jeez, it's only ten days until Halloween, and I've been so busy working on this blog that I haven't been able to re-wrap Ex-Lax wafers in Hershey Miniatures wrappers. See what I do for you? Blogging is work, sabotaging Halloween is fun, and for you I've chosen work.

Oh well. I've got a couple more horror stories for Halloween. We have two different stories dealing with putting people in closets. One is of a mean ol' aunt punishing her niece in that nasty dark closet, from Harvey Comics Tomb Of Terror #11 from 1953. The second story is from Charlton's Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #12, from 1954. Both comics regarded the stories as good enough to get the cover position, but then, the closet is a universal fear, isn't it? Being in a confined, dark space gives some folks the whim-whams.

"The Black Closet" is drawn by Art Cappello, and the cover is by Lou Morales. There's sleazy cheesecake (sleazecake?) in this story. This type of comic helped fuel the furor against comic books. I think it's just good sexy, sadistic fun, myself. "The Closet" is drawn by ?, according to the Grand Comics Database, with a cover by Lee Elias.

Number 945


Check and double-Check


Compared to many of the journeymen comic book artists I feature in Pappy's, Sid Check did relatively few stories during his career. He did a reasonable imitation of the better known Wally Wood, some stories looking better than others. He even found his way into EC comics as a freelancer with a couple of memorable stories.

Here are two stories of Check's that I have on file: "The Werewolf's Victims" I showed long ago, but I have re-scanned it so the pages are actually readable. It's from Atlas Comics' Mystic #31, 1954. "Death Sentence" is a story I have both in the printed version from Harvey's Tomb Of Terror #14, also from 1954, and these scans of the original art I took a few years ago from the Heritage Auctions site. It's the originals I've chosen to show you today.

More Check stories can be found, posted by Mr. Door Tree in his Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog, here.

Number 324


Rat Man!


Today Karswell of The Horrors Of It All and I are running two versions of the same story: He has the printed version of Bob Powell's "The Rat Man" from Harvey Comics' Tomb Of Terror #5, and I am showing the original art. Wish I owned this art, but I stole…errrrrrrrr…I mean borrowed it from the Internet.

This is a good example of how Powell used blue watercolor to indicate to the color artist where he wanted color emphasis. You can compare these pages to the printed pages and see if he got through to that colorist.

*******

...and while we're showing original art, here are three pages I bought over 20 years ago at the San Diego Comics Convention, all hand-picked for their horror qualities, drawn by a couple of superfine Filipino artists.

"Beware the Snare of the Tarantula," from Witching Hour #54, is drawn by Jess Jodloman, written by EC Comics vet Carl Wessler. Love that Modred figure in the splash panel. Love the whole splash panel!*

Fellow EC vet Jack Oleck wrote "Way of the Werewolf," and here's a great page by Gerry Talaoc. A really nice werewolf tale, and this issue, House Of Mystery #231, has an incredible cover by Bernie Wrightson.

My thanks to best friend Dave Miller for doing the work of stitching the pages together via Photoshop.

*After posting this Karswell sent me this poster for The Fly, which obviously influenced the splash. Thanks, Karswell!