Print

[movielover]

This week's selection is Web of Evil #1 from Quality, which can be found here https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=55568

Picked the second story, The Phantom Freaks

[positronic1]

All I could think of is that if I were caught reading this story by somebody, how could I possibly justify it? Yes, when looking at this, it's hard not to agree that everything Wertham said wasn't absolutely correct. If you were going out of your way to specifically pick something to make someone feel embarrassed about being a comic book reader, you really hit the nail on the head. That is some real bottom-of-the-barrel poop. The so-called "freaks" look like a cross between cartoon animals and people wearing Mardi Gras costumes. Clearly they went out of their way to stay as far away from anything possibly even slightly convincing as representing human oddities, which makes the story pointless on just about any level. Disappointingly, the cover art would lead you to expect better of the interior stories, but that's sadly what you often get. It's easy to forget the very worst comic books have to offer until someone shoves your nose in it.

[lyons]

Wrong artwork makes the story weak.  There is no balance between image and text, and no harmony between artist and writer. 
However, I did find the story entertaining.  Thanks movielover. 

[SuperScrounge]

Ghosts Of Doom - Interesting.

The Phantom Freaks - Eh, okay, I guess.

Custodian Of The Dead - Okay.

Laughter Of Doom - Not bad.

Rehearsal For Death - Eh, okay.

[Morgus]

Yup. Typical horror comic with middling stories but some neat art. When will guys who are nick named "Pig Face" learn NOT to be nasty to the unfortunate?
"Dang. This could end badly for me."
The art WAS weird for the freaks, sort of like funny animal art on acid. I imagine their brain trust was already feeling the heat and told the artists to lay off and be 'nicer' but it all backfired.
Favorite ad; the novel length TV ad. (Guaranteed to ruin your eyes...just like we were told watching a TV would do to us back in those days...)

Nice to have the group back...hi, everybody...

[crashryan]

Horror wasn't Quality's strong suit. The art was generally blah and most of the stories were lackluster. Like these.

Actually, the lead story is the most entertaining. We know right away where it's going, but there are spooky moments and the artist gives it the old college try...though alligators standing on two feet always look funny. One point puzzles me. Why is Aunt Melissa the champion of the dead slaves? She's a Harraby, too. Doesn't that mean she shares their guilt?

"Custodian of the Dead" is rather routine. The art rubs me the wrong way. I don't know just why.

The art on "Rehearsal for Death" is a step above the rest of the book. It shows Crandall influence. Could it be John Cassone? The story takes forever to reach its obvious conclusion.

As for "The Phantom Freaks"...it's a mess, but an interesting mess. The script is diagrammatic and entirely free of style. It's the artist's character designs that fascinate me. The story reads as if the writer intended the freaks, despite names like "Giraffe Man," to be Tod Browning-style human freaks. It'd make more sense. When the ghosts give Pig Face a genuine pig's face it would be fitting supernatural revenge. But if the freaks are already bizarre animal/human mutations, turning Pig Face into just another one of them is no big deal.

I have the nagging feeling that the mutant animals were entirely the artist's idea. Perhaps he misinterpreted the script. "He wants a Giraffe Man, does he? Well, he's the boss...a Giraffe Man it is." Or maybe he thought the story was stupid and was feeling passive-aggressive. "Giraffe Man, eh? I'll give him a Giraffe Man, all right!" I can imagine an editor receiving the finished art and exclaiming, "What the hell do you call this?! Oh, well, we're up against a deadline and the kiddies won't care anyway. Let's print it."

[neil meikle]

We all have different tastes and preferences so I'm going to be disagreeing with a bit of the above.
   Yes, The Phantom Freaks was a bit of a mess that could have been done a lot better, so no argument there.
    The first and last stories were passable ghost yarns that  I can take or leave.
   Finally we come to Custodian of the Dead. As far as I'm concerned this isn't okay or rather routine it's blooming marvellous. If I were caught reading this story positronic1 I would feel proud to be a comic reader. I don't care what anybody says about Plastic Man or True Crime, if you want to find Jack Coles greatest and most innovative work then here you are, the first eleven issues of this book. When it comes to fifties horror artists his name should rank up there with the best.
   Sadly when the comics code was established he stopped working in comics altogether, so it and Wertham have a lot to answer for.

[The Australian Panther]

I normally don't read this type of book. Not due to squeamishness but because I find most Horror cliched and monotonous. I'll skim through a book like this, and if the Art grabs me, If its Ditko, or Wood, Kubert or Crandall for example I'll read it on the assumption that the quality will be better than average and at least I'll have something to look at. MovieLover, good choice again. Much to talk about. The Art is good for the period.
'The Phantom Freaks' has obviously used Tod Browning's 'FREAKS' as a template. This is quite mild compared to that. The freaks in the comic story are so obviously fantastical and realistically impossible that you can only read it with detachment. Browning went to a lot of trouble to depict his freaks in normal human situations before he got to the denouement and that made it all the more horrifying. So, interesting but no cigar!
The thing that stands out for me in the book, is in 'Ghosts of Doom' The writer goes out of his way to emphasize how evil Ellsworth is. He casually slaughters people multiple times. But the thing that surprises me is this. When he is in the boat he says to his henchman, 'Hey Ernie! Give us a Reefer will you? This place gives me the creeps!'  I wonder was that line there to emphasize his villainy or did the editor at the time not know what it meant?       

[positronic1]

"The Phantom Freaks" - Normally an unimaginative, rote "freaks get their revenge for cruel treatment by someone" story like this would pass almost unnoticed as one of the hundreds of stories needed to fill the dozens upon dozens of horror comics of the early 1950s. Here it's notable only for the depths of ridiculousness the art descends to in order to avoid any semblance to REAL sideshow performers. Who can say what the writer had in mind when he said "freaks" though... maybe he was actually thinking of something more along the lines of Doctor Moreau's animal experiments -- but what he got was something bizarrely resembling a funny animal comic. Even a dull thumper of a story like this could have been given life if it were produced by Simon & Kirby's studio for BLACK MAGIC, because the artwork (particularly the conception of the images of the freaks) would have been truly eerie and those images would have been what stuck in the reader's mind, not the blah script. (It's just my opinion, but I vastly prefer the moody/evocative BLACK MAGIC approach to the E.C. horror approach, which had to continually keep trying to top itself on the shock and/or gore fronts.)

The writer's concept of what people find horrific is laughable because it's so formulaic. Oh, Todd Browning's FREAKS creeped people out, right? And so did ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. And all those E.C. horror stories with corpses returning "from beyond the grave" to exact their karmic revenge were popular, right? So what could possibly be more horrific than combining all those concepts, right? Hardly.

[positronic1]

He casually slaughters people multiple times. But the thing that surprises me is this. When he is in the boat he says to his henchman, 'Hey Ernie! Give us a Reefer will you? This place gives me the creeps!'  I wonder was that line there to emphasize his villainy or did the editor at the time not know what it meant?       

And "Ernie", as he's being pulled into the swamp, seems to be offering the boss a pack of cigarettes. But I guess you've got to keep your reefers somewhere. Reefer Madness was the obvious explanation for casual murder by Ellsworth. It does make me wonder if the writer was working out some sort of issues he had from formerly working for DC editor Whitney Ellsworth (who would have been in Hollywood at the time, working on the Superman TV series).

[positronic1]

   Finally we come to Custodian of the Dead. As far as I'm concerned this isn't okay or rather routine it's blooming marvellous. If I were caught reading this story positronic1 I would feel proud to be a comic reader. I don't care what anybody says about Plastic Man or True Crime, if you want to find Jack Coles greatest and most innovative work then here you are, the first eleven issues of this book. When it comes to fifties horror artists his name should rank up there with the best.
   Sadly when the comics code was established he stopped working in comics altogether, so it and Wertham have a lot to answer for.

Okay, let's agree to disagree then. Seriously though, what kind of clientele can a guy like Horace really have had? He can't help being bald, but what's with the scraggly, long unkempt hair? He couldn't afford a haircut? What about some dental work for that overbite? And I can't help but think that if you're in the mortician trade, you'd be much better advised not to dress like the Phantom of the Opera. I mean, you might as well go across town and give your grave-dwelling business to the Crypt Keeper.

[narfstar]

Freaks was freakishly bad 'nuff said