Saturday, February 23, 2013

Craig Yoe from a Restless Grave CONTEST!

Celebrating the birthday of THOIA friend and Chilling Archives / Haunted Horror co-editor Craig Yoe today with an ACE tale from the February 1952 issue of The Hand of Fate #9. Happy Birthday, chum! FYI: After noticing a slightly familiar hairdo in today's story, I actually toyed with the idea of drawing a colorful forelock and goatee on Amos, the lead character in this tale... unfortunately, I ran out of time due to my new work schedule-- BUT maybe some other talented horror freak out there has the fiery urge to do so! Is it CONTEST TIME?! YES, sirs! Pull a panel or sequence from this story and give Amos the Craig Yoe make-over (if you're not sure what Craig looks like just google him!) Feel free to alter dialogue in the word balloons as well-- top 3 entries get a Haunted Horror package! Hurry, contest ends whenever! The winning pieces will be posted here at THOIA. Email all entries to karswell@hotmail.com --and most importantly, have fun! We have big Yoe Books news coming up too, stay tuned!









HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
XOXOXOX

15 comments:

Popeye's Blog said...

Big fan of this site and grateful for the wonderful work you do for us fans of classic comic horror. I was curious if it would be possible to offer your posts as a CBR/CBZ file in addition to the jpeg images? I often find myself manually bundling them into this file format for easier reading on my connected devices and comics reader software. You guys already do enough to be sure. But man it would be convenient to have these things in CBR formats too.

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Mestiere: I was a little surprised that Amos didn't at least "short out" dramatically hitting all that water.

Mr. Cavin said...

Happy Birthday, Craig Yoe! This is a pretty funny idea for a contest....

I really like the cover of this issue. That even kinda looks like Mama Bates. I'll bet it really freaked Janet Leigh out.

Turok1952 said...

Hazel was wrong. No "quirk of fate" did anything to Amos. A bunch of sorry people did. I do not hold Hazel accountable. She at least tried to be nice. I would have at least liked to have seen Bill and that schmuck who gave Amos the hot foot punished somehow. Instead, the writer made Bill a hero instead of a classless putz.

This great tale tells us some things about ourselves that we don't like to see. Sadly, most seem to rationalize it off like Hazel did.

Back in the old Shock Theater days, I recall seeing "The Invulnerable Man" with Lon Chaney. I don't remember much about it, but somehow my memory is trying to hone in on something that connects this tale to that movie. Does anyone know what that might be?

Turok1952 said...

I knew something else haunted me about this story!

Jack Kirby's the penciller. I don't think Joe Simon was the inker, but look at the layouts. Can anyone see it besides me?

Does anyone know anything about this?

jodie arias said...

is haunted horror number 3 out yet?

Mr. Karswell said...

Both GCD and the Ace Horror site say the art here is by Lou Zansky, did you read something somewhere else, Turok?

Haunted Horror #3 should be in stores this week!

Turok1952 said...

I know that King Kirby used several aliases. Further, Zansky did a lot of work in a constricted timeframe, apparently. I found a number of western romances from Ace in which the style is even more apparently Kirbyesque than in this story. In fact, it is absolutely palpable, differing in only a few areas such as the faces of women. Could Kirby have been experimenting with altering his style?

And remember that Simon and Kirby pioneered the romance comic genre, plus did a western line in the early fifties (such as Boys' Ranch),

I am wondering if Kirby and Simon used the Zansky name as an alias for avoiding any copyright problems. I know that about 1952, they were doing work for Harvey and attempting to establish their own line as well.

I'll try a few more leads I have in mind. In the meantime, if anyone knows, this is a big question in comic history...who was Lou Zansky?

Turok1952 said...

I know that King Kirby used several aliases. Further, Zansky did a lot of work in a constricted timeframe, apparently. I found a number of western romances from Ace in which the style is even more apparently Kirbyesque than in this story. In fact, it is absolutely palpable, differing in only a few areas such as the faces of women. Could Kirby have been experimenting with altering his style?

And remember that Simon and Kirby pioneered the romance comic genre, plus did a western line in the early fifties (such as Boys' Ranch),

I am wondering if Kirby and Simon used the Zansky name as an alias for avoiding any copyright problems. I know that about 1952, they were doing work for Harvey and attempting to establish their own line as well.

I'll try a few more leads I have in mind. In the meantime, if anyone knows, this is a big question in comic history...who was Lou Zansky?
tudiosp 573

Mr. Cavin said...

"...who was Lou Zansky?"

Easy. He was Michael Zansky's dad. Nothing much more tell-tale about being alive than leaving ancestors around. Son's a pretty good painter too, though I still might like his dad's batik-looking printmaking a little better. Maybe.

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mr. Karswell said...

And copy/pasted from the Ace Horror site:

LOUIS ZANSKY

No wonder this artist has been mistaken for Gene Colan or Bernie Krigstein. There is a „flow“ to his illustrations which we have seen in these other masters.

Zansky baffles the beholder with inspired artwork from all of his creative years. I don’t see “phases” in his work, he starts at the top and never comes down. A fascinating artist I never had heard of before I took a look at Ace comic books. Zansky starts out at Gilberton in the mid 1940s and comes over to Ace.

I’ve not yet found the first Zansky Ace story, probably a crime job in 1948. But he stays until the end, he does the last covers Ace will publish. Zansky is the man who turns off the lights.
Special Zansky trademark (and art spotting hint): gnarly trees! Really, wherever he can, Zansky puts bare-branched, old, gnarled trees into the picture. Look out for it.

Brian Barnes said...

Turok1952 beat me to how ugly the "quirk of fate" quote is in this story. There's no subtext in this one, his ugliness equaled his evil, and it's kind of hard to swallow.

That said, this is a very super-heroish story. Killed by electricity and then revived by lighting, discovering how his power works, knocking out the hero and taking his woman for a final showdown, and then meeting his end in an ironic way.

Except a lot of this story happened by accident (especially the ending,) and it completely flubs the sympathetic part. It looses a bit of power (ha!) from that.

Sorry, complaining again :) I do love this stuff, but I have to analyze it!

Happy Birthday, Yoe, and hopefully many of your great books (especially those with Karswell) to come!

Turok1952 said...

Many thanks, especially to Mr. C., Mes,' and Steve for the info. Wow, those trees in the westerns are indeed really gnarly!

There is something that, as Grandaddy used to say, something not quite kosher about our good Mr. Z. What happened to him? I don't know, maybe I have been watching too much of the Walking Dead, but something still, well, isn't right.

Many thanks again!