Wertham Was Right II: The Horrifying Art of Basil Wolverton

"No small child exposed to his drawings could ever be expected to walk in a straight line again, or vote a party ticket."

- Gahan Wilson

See?! Even so respected a horror cartoonist as Gahan Wilson thinks that Basil Wolverton was bad for children! WERTHAM WAS RIGHT!!

Okay, no. No, he wasn't. To reiterate, in fact, he was dead wrong. Again.

But if you were ever going to make a case that a single artist should never, ever be seen by small children, it would be Basil Wolverton. Or Kevin O'Neill, according to the Comics Code Authority. Or maybe even Simon Bisley, if you're Paul Levitz.

Anyway. Basil Wolverton. The man who drew stuff like this:

Horrifying, isn't it? I mean, my god. To be sure, artwork like that should never be shown to the Children of America. It would terrify them! It terrified me when I was a wee lad! See, Wolverton had been hired by DC Comics to do covers for their new humor series Plop!, and when that book hit the stands and made its way before my tiny little virgin eyes...

Instant Nightmare Fuel!

Why are you laughing?! This cover scared the complete and total bejeezus out of me back before I could read! I lived in fear of this comic! It was traumatizing! I could hardly bear to look at it after I bought it, and... WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?!

Okay... It is pretty funny. And it did get me to buy the comic, even though it freaked me out. I had this kind of love-hate relationship with all kinds of things that scared me back then, and Plop! definitely fit into that category. I was simultaneously repulsed by it, and drawn to it. Let's look at a couple more Wolverton Plop! covers before we move on, shall we?

25 Horror Comics That Prove... DOCTOR WERTHAM WAS RIGHT!!

Okay, not really. In spite of Frederick Wertham's claims in his legendary anti-funnybook screed Seduction of the Innocent, reading lurid comics featuring gruesome images of horror is cathartic, natural, and (most important) fun! For the whole damn family!

But, man. Sometimes, when I'm browsing through pre-Code horror comics, the sheer excesses on display make it a little easier to understand why people lost their shit over this stuff. Take this shy and retiring example from Gilmore Comics' Weird Mysteries #5...

Abby... Normal...

Okay, so that's one of the more notorious examples from the period. But, still. WTF, man?!

I can't promise that any of the rest of the covers I've culled for your Halloweenie enjoyment this evening will match that one, but there's still some real gems waiting... after the jump!

Happy Bela Lugosi's Birthday!

A national holiday here on the Dork Forty, Bela Lugosi's Birthday is a time for reflection and remembrance, indeed of appreciation, for all the evil brought into our monstrous little hearts by the Patron Saint of Halloween.

Click to embiggen, children of the night!

A Hideous Naughty Strangeness: Alan Moore's Neonomicon, and the Doom That Came to Lovecraft

Neonomicon
by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows

So Alan Moore’s farewell “fuck you” to the comics industry wrapped up recently, and… This unrelentingly dark and unpleasant book didn‘t exactly go where I expected it to, though perhaps I should have. He played fair with his literary mystery, after all, planting clues and images that pretty much told you where it was headed if you chose to view them in the right way. But I wasn’t exactly trying to solve the mystery anyway. I was more concerned with the commentary he was making on the works of HP Lovecraft, which is how I want to look at Neonomicon tonight.

Part of the agenda here seems to have been to give some teeth back to the incredible nihilism, the sheer hopeless existential horror that makes Lovecraft’s work so compelling, and that too often gets glossed over in the modern popular fan interpretations of the work. I mean, in a world where you can buy cute stuffed effigies of Cthulhu (I own one myself), it’s easy to forget how terrifying that fucker’s supposed to be. He’s an avatar of nameless, uncaring evil from beyond, a vast alien intellect that will devour all, and that we have no hope of defeating. He is nihilism made flesh, not a toyetic cartoon mascot.

I can understand how it came to this, of course. One of the ways people deal with scary things is to codify them, make them understandable, and (in the end) make jokes about them. And Cthulhu strikes the perfect balance between the bizarre and the relatable in Lovecraft’s pantheon of evil cosmic god-things. “Big flabby oceanic monster with an octopus for head” is way easier to grasp than, say, “formless boiling madness that sits gibbering at the center of the universe.” But it’s also more pleasingly strange than “black goat of the woods with a thousand young.” But still. Codifying Lovecraftian horrors is pretty much antithetical to the point of them. They are the unknown, the unclassifiable things that terrify us because we have problems wrapping our heads around them. That’s why it’s so difficult to do the man’s work justice on film, or in comics: visual mediums demand that you provide visuals for things best left to the imagination.

Jacen Burrows does supply visuals here, of course, and his Deep One (though a very cool monster) isn’t particularly horrifying in and of itself. But it doesn’t need to be, because of the kind of horror Moore has chosen to focus on. Which brings us back on-point, and into the realm of SPOILERS...

The Monster Channel

So it's been a little quiet here on the Dork Forty this week. My apologies; the day job's been keepin' me too busy to get much nerd farmin' done. But I did wanna pop in tonight to mention that one of my favorite websites, 100 Years of Monster Movies, has done somethin' pretty special: it's transformed itself (no doubt via vile sorcery or mad science of some kind) into The Monster Channel!

Hit that link above, and you'll enter a world of 24-7 live streaming monster movies! All the grade-z public domain horror movies, classic movie ads, and monster culture music videos you can stand! MORE, even! Monster Channel launched on January 1st, and I haven't had too much time to watch since then, but what I've seen has been impressive. I caught part of Penny Dreadful's horror host documentary, a bunch of my favorite bad movies, and saw a Hasil Adkins video (the true sign of class)! It's like Chiller, if it was run by people with taste!

Movie Night on the Dork Forty: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

So it's time once again to hang the bedsheets over the barn door, pop some corn, and fire up the projector for Movie Night! Pull up a lawn chair and join us for 1921's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari! A classic of German expressionist filmmaking, this early horror film concerns the evil Doctor of the title and his sleepwalking fortune-teller, Cesare the Somnambulist! As played by Conrad Veidt, Cesare is a creepy sumbitch who's been inspiring goth and emo fashion for decades, and with good reason. I mean, just look at this guy:

Though, for my money, Dr. Caligari himself is far creepier:

Don't hate him because he's beautiful.

Of particular note here are the sets. Rather than trying to capture any sort of realism, all the action of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari takes place on purposefully-false and stagey hand-painted sets meant to evoke a sense of madness and fear. It's somewhat akin to seeing Edvard Munch's The Scream put to film.

It is, all in all, an astounding film experience. Which you can enjoy in its entirety... after the jump!

We're Horrible Men

So the Dork Forty's been a little quiet this past week, I'm afraid. My real job's gotten pretty busy, and will probably stay that way for the next couple of weeks. So, just to keep the site from going totally silent, I'm gonna cut back on my usual long-winded ramblings in favor of simpler posts. Quickies, if you will. 'Cause everybody loves a good quickie! Like this one, for example...

Sometime during the original Universal Monster craze, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi appeared together on a radio show to demonstrate their singing talents! And tonight, we bring you that performance, through the magic of YouTube...

A Quick Word About Birth and Death

So things have been pretty quiet here on the Dork Forty in the back half of Thanksgivin' week. We had a big ol' time with family and friends, ate a lotta turkey and pie, and then settled back to take in the official sportin' event of the Dork Forty: the annual Punkin Chunkin' competition. It was either that or rasslin', and mama don't like the rasslin'. But while we been celebratin', two important dork events got past us, and we'd like to make mention of 'em tonight.

First, on a sad note, Hammer horror star Ingrid Pitt passed away this week. Among many other roles, the Polish-born Ingrid set many an adolescent pulse a-racin' in the films The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula. RIP.

But on a happier note, this past Tuesday would have been the 123rd birthday of the man who was arguably the greatest horror star of all time, Mr. Boris Karloff. I won't list Karloff's many achievements, but if you really don't know who he was and why he's so important, you can read about him on the Wikipedia. Karloff appeared in heavy make-up for all his most famous roles, but here he is looking more or less like himself in a promotional picture for one of my favorite obscure Karloff films, The Black Cat:

Happy birthday, Boris! Wherever you may be!

And now it's time to slip back into my turkey-induced coma for a while. But I might just be back later this weekend with a very late list of things that Dorks ought to be thankful for from the year 2010...

Movie Night on the Dork Forty: Black Sunday

As we do from time to time, tonight we've decided to show a movie out on the Dork Forty. The bedsheets are hangin' over the barn door, we got the etherweb pro-jector all hooked up, and the popcorn is fresh and hot. So come on over! Pull up a lawn chair! Grab a refreshin' beverage! Help yourself to one of our Evil Satan Robes-- I mean, uh... Snuggies! And settle on in to enjoy that delightful 1961 family classic, Black Sunday!

Click to embiggen

What's that? You ain't never heard of Black Sunday?! Well! It's one a' them Eye-talian movies, the di-rectorial debut of Mr. Mario Bava, and the first starrin' role for the beatimous B-Movie horror queen, Barbara Steele! The film was (very loosely) based on the story "Viy" by that famous Rooskie author Nikolai Gogol (read a book!), but was really Bava's tribute to the Universal Studios horror classics of the 1930s and 40s. It's atmospheric, and just too damn cool. The story's about a witch (Barbara Steele) who's executed in one of the most inventively vicious ways ever seen on film, but not before she lays a curse on her oppressors and vows to return as a vampire to seek her revenge. Which (spoiler alert!) she does.

Now, this movie was considered pretty shockin' by 1960 movie audiences. The American edit had three minutes of violence and gore edited out, and they still didn't let anybody under the age of 12 in to see it! And it was banned in England til 1968, when it was released as The Mask of Satan! And that English print seems to be the one we got our hands on via the etherweb tonight.

So, without further ado... here's Black Sunday, aka The Mask of Satan... after the jump!

The Zombie Apocalypse Will Be Televised

So The Walking Dead has now gone from an indy comics slow-burn hit to the most-watched program in cable television history, and we’ve yet to say two words about it here on the Dork Forty. Which is odd, considering that our dual obsessions with funnybooks and horror border on the pathological. And I have been watching and enjoying the show, so… I guess maybe it‘s time to talk zombies.

In spite of the obsessions mentioned above, this really isn’t a show I should be all that gung-ho for. For one thing, I’m not a big zombie fan. Or, rather, I’m not a big fan of the zombie apocalypse, which is a slightly different thing. Zombies themselves I’m okay with. I mean, who doesn’t love a rotting corpse? It’s just when the zombies have over-run society that I start to lose interest. Part of the problem, I think, is that I‘m not real big on apocalypse fiction in general. Growing up in the third and fourth decades of the Cold War, I saw an awful lot of apocalypses in TV sci-fi. Those all seemed to mostly involve people running around in deserts and big fields of yellow grass, and uniformly bored the crap out of me.

While watching how a society collapses might fascinate me, the aftermath of that collapse leaves me cold. It typically only reveals ugly truths that I kind of take as a given anyway. Yes. Get hungry enough, or desperate enough, and the rules really do change for most people. That doesn’t tell me anything new or interesting about human nature. So it really does take a lot to make me enjoy Armageddon. Colorful characters help (“I Master! He Blaster!”). So do mysteries surrounding the cause of the apocalypse (such as the one Jeff Lemire‘s created in his Sweet Tooth comic). Or you could just write it so well that I can’t not read it (as in The Road).

The zombie apocalypse seldom gives me any of those things, though. Once you get past the first couple of Romero flicks, very few people (Romero included) have said anything new or interesting. I recognize, for instance, that 28 Days Later was a really well-made zombie apocalypse movie, and I can appreciate it on that level. But it’s still just the goddamn zombie apocalypse all over again. So I’m not a big fan. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see more zombie apocalypse fiction that explores different themes, and I enjoy the few examples I’ve seen that have (Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, World War Z).

And we'll finally get around to talking about Walking Dead... after the jump!

The Chicken Heart

So here's a Halloween classic for you, courtesy the classic radio program Lights Out: it's the spine-tingling tale of... The Chicken Heart!



Of course, just between you and me... I like Bill Cosby's version better...

Will Rogers' Legend of Sleepy Hollow

So it's been a long and pleasant day here on the Dork 40. The first Halloween presents were given, we got a coffin cake from the mummy, and we put the sun to bed over a feast of strange Asian delicacies (don't ask what's in the dumplings, folks!), accompanied by talk of blood and death by fire. A red-letter day all around. But a day that's left us a bit tuckered out. So I hope you'll forgive us if we don't get to that next post on the horror hosts tonight. Because right now, there just ain't time and energy enough in the world for that.

Instead, we offer you this: a 1922 silent film version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, starring none other than Mr. Will Rogers! Hope you enjoy!

The Tingler is Loose On This Blog!!

So I'm getting a very, very early start on Day 24 of the Countdown to Halloween, but I just watched The Tingler for what must be the fifth or sixth time, and thought William Castle's intro was so Halloweenie-great that I just had to share it...

Do You Dare Enter...?

So I was just thinking that it was time once again to delve into the wonderful world of funnybook covers. When Joe Orlando landed in the editor's chair for DC's line of horror comics, he brought in a renaissance for their longest-running title. So tonight, I thought I'd give you a sampling of covers from that series, House of Mystery.

The series began in the early 50s as an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the EC horror line, which included such classics as Tales From the Crypt. But DC's horror line was much tamer (and lamer) than their competition, as the cover of House of Mystery #1 should show...

It's a valiant effort, don't get me wrong. That's actually a pretty scary-looking pack of slavering hounds (which I guess are supposed to be wolves). And the semi-see-through skirt on old Wanda there is actually a bit more risque than EC itself often was. But overall? This cover lacks the drama and sheer visceral thrill that EC was routinely delivering on covers like this:

Heh. Of course, that's also the sort of thing that got EC publisher William Gaines dragged before a Senate subcommittee hearing, while House of Mystery managed to survive those horror comic witch-hunts and the arrival of the Comics Code Authority. Albeit in an even-more-neutered form, as they switched from supernatural horror to science fiction and giant monster stories, as you can see... if you continue reading past the jump...