Number 752


Aieeeee! Aggghhhrrr!


Bob Powell's original art is always a treat for me. The story, "It!" is from Heritage Auctions in 2004, and appeared in its printed form in Harvey Comics' Witches Tales #10, in 1952.

You can see the printed story as Karswell presented it in The Horrors Of It All here. Because the Heritage scans didn't include page 4, I have included that page scanned from the printed comic.

This story uses a lot of "Aieee!" and "Aggghrrr!" onomatopoeia. The anonymous writer didn't have to think up a lot of dialogue.

This story preceded the popular movie, The Blob, by a few years, but another blob story preceded "It!" "Spawn of Venus" appeared in Weird Science #6, in 1951, drawn by Al Feldstein. Maybe it inspired both the Witches Tales story and The Blob.


This panel is from Wallace Wood's 3-D version of "Spawn of Venus," done a couple of years later and unprinted until it appeared in Witzend magazine.

There's at least one puzzler; why does the victim on page two have only four toes on her right foot? Finally, this story has a classic phallic panel: page 3, panel 5.

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Number 523


Rudy Palais pops a sweat!


Golden Age comic art by Rudy Palais can be spotted easily by looking for flying sweat drops. This past Monday I showed you a couple of stories by Johnny Craig, who also used perspiring faces to indicate stress or fear. But Palais used the type of sweat drops usually associated with funny animal comics. I'm thinking of Chad Grothkopf (Captain Marvel Bunny) or Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse). Both of those cartoonists drew characters with bullets of sweat flying from their heads. Sweat as Palais portrayed it wasn't usually used in more illustrative comic art, and I can think of no other artist who used sweat or tears in the bulbous and exaggerated way Palais did.

Here are originals for four stories by Rudy Palais I culled from the Internet, all of which show his signature flying sweat. "The Scarecrow's Revenge" is from Witches Tales #14. "The Clock Struck Doom" is from Black Cat Mystery #37, "Army of Scorpions" from Black Cat Mystery #33, and "The Man With the Iron Face" is from Witches Tales #12.

I also showed two crime comics stories by Palais here and here.

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