I was
going to post this page from
Eerie
Tales 1-and-only merely to
showcase the howling error of a sort
I can't recall seeing anywhere else (but then, I haven't read every
comic book published). Then I realized I had an art attribution
differing from one of the GCD's for this issue (in fact, for this story).
Eerie
Tales predated
Creepy
by half a decade. Michael T. Gilbert unearthed it
in
Alter Ego,
and later Joe Simon confirmed editing it. The magazine
itself
presented only joke editorial credits, just as a number of humor
B&Ws did at the time, and was published by the otherwise
unknown Hastings Associates (just as DC later published the two
short-lived Kirby magazines as Hampshire House, for the sake, one
supposes, of
plausible deniability).
Gilbert, Hames Ware, James Vadeboncoeur Jr., and Dr. Michael J.
Vassallos pored over the artwork for attribution; I pass along their
credit of Ken Battefield on "Shroud Number Nine," who would never have occurred to
me.
They guessed at Bob Powell for the "The Suckspect" (pictured). Bob Powell's story later in the issue, "The Unbeliever,"
shows his style pretty unmistakably; "The Suckspect" doesn't, to me.
Those gray washes don't help art-spotting! But look at the leftmost figure in the second panel, for instance; that's
where Joe
Orlando's work shows best on this page. The four art experts did suggest assistants helping on this story's art; I can't disagree with that.
Just before posting, I found a comment on Harry Mendryk's
Jack Kirby Museum attributing every story in this and its the predecessor one-shot title
Weird Mysteries to Carl Wessler; here's where I stood when I composed this post:
"From the Greyble to the Grave" jumped out at me as a Carl Wessler
script at
the climax, when the protagonist screams "Nyaaaaa!" "The
Stalker" ends up more or less in the same place as Wessler's "The Night
I Watched
Myself Die" (
The
Unexpected 105, Mar-Apr/68, DC),
although otherwise they're two very different stories (and the later
one moreover makes sense). He may have written "The Suckspect" and
"Shroud
Number Nine;" if he wrote "The
Unbeliever," I'd say it was rewritten. (From the comment by Rick on Harry's blog, I take it that all of these stories are indeed in Wessler's records, although the CGD entry credits no writer at all.) UPDATE: Robin Snyder informs me that Carl Wessler's account book does not include those three stories. It also omits "Shocked to Death," so that argues against my thinking I see his style there; I've added question marks to that credit below. On the other hand, the records show that Wessler wrote the issue's text piece, "Frozen Stiff," which was meant to be continued in the never-published issue 2.
There was a question of whether the morgue keeper in
Eerie Tales,
unnamed in the stories, is
technically Morgue'n from
Weird
Mysteries (which I'd love
to see in total).
He is; his
name is on the morgue wagon in the cover painting.
Eerie
Tales
| July/59 |
1 |
The
Stalker |
w: Carl Wessler
a: Gray Morrow |
|
|
Gunk |
w: Wessler a:
George Tuska |
|
|
The
Suckspect |
w: ? a: Joe
Orlando |
|
|
Burn! |
w: Wessler a:
Morrow |
|
|
Shroud
Number Nine |
w: ? a: Ken
Battefield |
|
|
The
Unbeliever |
w: ? a: Bob
Powell |
|
|
Shocked
to Death |
w: Wessler?? a:
Paul Reinman |
|
|
From
the Greyble to the Grave |
w: Wessler a:
Angelo Torres |
|
|
Little
Miss Gruesome |
w: Wessler a:
Reinman |
|
|
Lower
Than Hell |
w: Wessler a:
Al Williamson |
