[crashryan]

Happy New Year's, everyone! While looking for New Year's-themed comics I came upon this great Ogden Whitney cover. The story starts on our page 23. Enjoy!



https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=15974

[narfstar]

Pretty predictable but fun story. First page was beautifully drawn. All the pages show the great work of Whitney.

[The Australian Panther]

Nice New Years choice, Crash! And may there be a happy new decade for all of us. 
ACG comics were available in OZ but I avoided them. When they were up against Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Justice League, Charlton Blue Beetle and the Dell and Gold Key comics [to name a few] , MAGICMAN AND NEMESIS seemed embarrassing and childish. I also didn't like the design or lettering on AGC comics, there was just no dynamic to their books. I did read some HERBIE and was amused by it but it was never high on my list.
That said, CB+ has rehabilitated Ogden Whitney in my eyes.Up to a point.
A quote, '  Dan Nadel, author, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 (Harry N. Abrams, 2006; ISBN 0-8109-5838-4; ISBN 978-0-8109-5838-8):

  "  Whitney is a master of psychological distress. He had these super-bland faces; nobody looks distinctive. But then he'll throw in these crazy close-ups, or very oddball compositions, where things are static in space. I find them really compelling, almost terrifying. If you read his romance comics ... they're the weirdest romance comics ever. ... His version of men and women courting is men and women terrorizing each other for eight or sixteen pages. Pure terror. Psychological warfare. Also the thing about Whitney I like so much is that it's like phone book art

[Andrew999]

Terrific cover!

The Passengers in Cabin 9 is surprisingly good

[SuperScrounge]

The Passengers in Cabin 9! - Eh, okay.

Trip To The Moon - Predictable.

A Matter of Blood - Eh, not that good.

The Old and the New! - Okay.

Annals of the Occult - Okay.

The stories in this book feel like stories that would be rejected by Western Publishing's various horror books (Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff, etc.)

[Robb_K]

First, I must say that this book was interesting enough to hold my attention all the way through.  The artwork was average to slightly above average, and good enough to not get in the way of the storytelling, and convey the emotions - but nothing special.  The whole book had the feel of the old US TV series "One Step Beyond", with stories about paranormal, unexplainable events.  Most of them were very predictable, and expected, but still entertaining,


The Passengers in Cabin 9 The wife having a premonition that the boat trip was headed for disaster was par for the course in this type of story, but having her split herself in two, so that her "spirit" could accompany her husband on the trip and save him from certain death, was totally unexpected, and a novel idea.  So, this was my favourite story in the book.



Trip To The Moon
This was a great vehicle for a visual experience, which was denied the reader (except through his own mind) by the fact that this was chosen as the text story.  The whole purpose for comic books is to blend artwork with narrative and dialogue in the perfect combination to tell a story.  As a story writer and artist, I would have liked to have drawn myself, or to see a different artist's conception of the evil villain's anger and madness, shown in his facial expressions and also to see the way the artist would use staging and lighting to provide suspense and terror in his scenes of violence towards the bird, and the boy's fear for his bird, and joy in the last scene, when the bird grows to gigantic proportions, and carries the villain off.  This would have been, by far, the most visually satisfying story in the book.  This reminds me of the "magic"-related stories of "The Twilight Zone", "Thriller", and "One Step Beyond", in which a doll or puppet comes alive to wreak vengeance upon a villainous human.



A Matter of Blood
This was an interesting story, having a person return the favour of saving someone's life without knowing that his had been saved by the other, by the coincidence of his face having been covered by bandages at the time, so he couldn't be recognised later.  As a storywriter, I have to constantly come up with new stories that have unpredictable, surprise endings that often need to also be ironic, to provide variation in them, so that they are different enough in style and tone.  One of the necessary story devices to accomplish that is the use of an extremely unlikely (but possible) coincidence that is perfect for making the needed situation work.  This story is a perfect example of what I need in probably one-third of my stories, so the reader is not going to know how the story will end, until he/she sees it unfold.



The Old and the New
This story was very predictable.  As soon as the couple was able to get away from the house after the crash, and go on with their lives, I KNEW that they were going to save all the party guests from the crash in the future, BECAUSE of the very fact that the author and artist SHOWED  me that the couple was going to return to the house on a later snowy night.  And yet, none of that "ruined" the story for me.  The reader still wants to see HOW the author and artist will portray how those events will occur.  It's analogous to knowing that a character who is a hapless, inept, bumbler, will always make a disaster out of what could have been a good ending for himself; but, we readers, or film viewers will want to see just how he goes about his masochistic self-sabotage in this particular story or film.  I enjoyed this story despite knowing exactly how it would end.


Annals of the Occult
A dead woman returns to save her daughter from a deadly fire.  Straight out of "One Step Beyond".  It's too straightforward for "The Twilight Zone".  Not much for deep thinking.  I believe there is something to ESP (extra sensory perception) - (e.g. using senses that humans had when we had less brain and reasoning powers, and relied more on built-in instincts).  But I DON'T believe "ghosts" effect life in this World after they die, and are gone physically from this Earth.

[Robb_K]

Nice New Years choice, Crash! And may there be a happy new decade for all of us. 
ACG comics were available in OZ but I avoided them. When they were up against Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Justice League, Charlton Blue Beetle and the Dell and Gold Key comics [to name a few] , MAGICMAN AND NEMESIS seemed embarrassing and childish. I also didn't like the design or lettering on AGC comics, there was just no dynamic to their books. I did read some HERBIE and was amused by it but it was never high on my list.
That said, CB+ has rehabilitated Ogden Whitney in my eyes.Up to a point.
A quote, '  Dan Nadel, author, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 (Harry N. Abrams, 2006; ISBN 0-8109-5838-4; ISBN 978-0-8109-5838-8):

  "  Whitney is a master of psychological distress. He had these super-bland faces; nobody looks distinctive. But then he'll throw in these crazy close-ups, or very oddball compositions, where things are static in space. I find them really compelling, almost terrifying. If you read his romance comics ... they're the weirdest romance comics ever. ... His version of men and women courting is men and women terrorizing each other for eight or sixteen pages. Pure terror. Psychological warfare. Also the thing about Whitney I like so much is that it's like phone book art

[Johnny L. Wilson]

I totally agree with our Panther from down under. ACG always seemed like an also-ran when I saw them on the stands (I was pretty young, though, and primarily interested in brightly colored comics--just sayin').

It's interesting that two of the early replies cited The Twilight Zone and Robb K. cited One Step Beyond. I cited both of them when I commented on the book in the comments section.

I was also intrigued by the quantum entanglement theory Mr. 999 gave us for the "Blood" story. I thought the story was more Outer Limits than Twilight Zone, though. I liked the Cabin 9 story, even though the name of the ship rather foreshadowed the eventual event. I didn't anticipate the clever revelation about Cabin 9 at the end, though, and felt kind of silly for not anticipating it.

And, although I enjoyed the cover story, I was reminded of how much I didn't like the teasers in the splash panels that introduced the stories from that era. It seemed like they always gave some vital element of the story away.

I'm sorry I've been away from this forum for so long. The stories and especially the comments are always stimulating and enlightening.

I thought the stor

[crashryan]

Funny thing: I enjoyed this book yet as think it over it's pretty pedestrian. We've read versions of all these stories many times before, including in other ACG comics. Richard Hughes tended to re-use three or four basic plots throughout his weird-story career. From reading hundreds of ACG stories I get the impression Hughes was relieved when the Comics Code gave him an excuse to dump horror and write the stuff he really wanted to. I searched for a word to describe the vibe I get from Hughes' stories. I came up with gentle. Most of his tales feature ordinary, decent folk living in a world where a certain amount of evil exists, but justice is granted to the good people, not only served to the bad. Countless ACG stories concern old wrongs righted from beyond the grave, the downtrodden and despairing at last finding peace, and unlikely heroes preventing calamity. I haven't seen a One Step Beyond episode since my youth, but I remember the show being like ACG stories. Low-key, giving a pleasant tingle instead of the chills you got from a classic Twilight Zone episode (that is, before you'd watched every episode a hundred times}.

The ACG presentation was equally gentle. Covers were intriguing but, like the stories, at odds with promises of "gripping...baffling thrills!" Sometimes the art was quite good, but mostly it was the work of seasoned if unexciting professionals who seldom worked at other companies: John Rosenberger, Pete Costanza, John Forte. Colors were muted. Sound effects were limited to a few standards like the catch-all "Ker-Pow!" In the letters column, the editor called his own writing good, bad, and indifferent right along with the readers! All this must be why reading an ACG weird comic feels like stepping into a comfortable pair of slippers.

The Passengers in Cabin 9 was the most transparent of the stories. The only mystery was whether Jane would survive or die to save Milt. But like I said...in Hughes' world the decent people usually get a break. Someone wrote that Ogden Whitney drew ordinary-looking men. Personally I think John Rosenberger was the King of the Ordinary Guy. His heroes weren't unattractive but they weren't handsome either. They looked like the guy in the next office. Rosenberger was good at subtle expressions. He also obviously preferred drawing people to drawing ships. There were so many cheats and cop-outs that it looked like Bill Molno ghosted his backgrounds.

Most of A Matter of Blood covered familiar ground, but the unusual explanation of Frank's second sight lifted it above average. Emil Gershwin's artwork was surprisingly good. I'm reminded of good storyboard art: interesting characters, good posing, and sufficient detail inked in a breezy, assured fashion.

Given the cover image and the dialogue in the splash panel, we knew where The Old and the New was going by page 3. That made the story seem longer than it is. Not bad, just ordinary. Though the splash panel and the first panel on our page 27 are nice and moody, Ogden Whitney's art is only adequate.

Whitney perks up for Annals of the Occult. I especially like the panel where the narrator addresses the audience. Great character. But the story...how many times have we read an identical story in a ghost story comic? Filler.

Now it's on to 2020. New Year's Eve passed without a plane crashing into my house, thanks to Richard Hughes, so we can relax and anticipate many happy comics to come.

[lyons]

Passengers in Cabin 9 is a nice blend of history and legend mixed with the supernatural.  Great sequential art. A foreboding story told without grotesquery; and a prelude to why Forbidden Worlds won the 1964 Alley Award for Best Regularly Published Fantasy.  A good read.  Thanks crash. 

[baldy51]

I realize I'm a late comer,  but I just read this issue, and had a few comments.  The cover art is an unusual double diagonal composition,  which I think adds to the feeling of angst.  All in all,  a good, solid issue,  a bit predictable,  but the stories are  still interesting and fun to read,  and, after all there are only so many variations on a theme.  I'm glad I found this thread as I would not have read this issue otherwise. Thanks!