Cover Cavalcade

 

A Bill Ely cover from 1956. If you live in a Comic Book universe, this is probably a really, really bad plan.

Ghost Ship

cover art by Neal Adams

An anthology book--especially a horror-themed book that obligates the writer to come up with a twist or shock ending every darn time--can be a mixed bag. But when the creators of a particular story hit their mark, the end result is can be an atmospheric tale and a visual treasure.

Writer Jack Oleck and artist Jack Sparling came up with "Ghost Ship," the lead story for House of Mystery #197 (December 1971) and I think the two Jacks definitely hit their mark here. It's set in 1858, aboard a sailing ship with a brutal and tyranical captain named Jonah Frame. He is cruel, uncaring of the lives of his men and apt to punish them harshly for the slightest infractions. After several deaths, the crew begin to grow mutinous. 

It is when a young cabin boy named Jamie spills coffee on Captain Frame that matters are brought to a head. The crew won't stand for a boy being flogged and soon a deadly brawl breaks out between the crew and the officers.

A fire breaks out during the fight, detonating the gunpowder the ship is carrying. The only survivors are Captain Frame, the story narrator (John Dodson) and young Jamie, adrift together while clutching to a broken spar.

So far, the story is a pretty good one, elevated by Sparling's art. I especially like his panel design in the one of the pages above, using slanted, vertical panels to highlight the the danger of working atop the mast during a storm.

Well, this is a House of Mystery tale, so its not surprising when something supernatural happens. They soon find themselves aboard a literal ghost ship, crewed by the spirits of sailors who can't seem to see or hear them. Frame refuses to acknowledge that this ship is indeed the Flying Dutchman or that there is anything supernatural going on. Dodson and Jamie believe what they see, though, and jump off the ship before it vanishes. Frame is trapped aboard the ship for all eternity.

The twist comes in the final panel. When Dodson and Jamie are picked up by a non-ghost ship, we don't see them directly as they tell their story and are dismissed as having gone mad while drifting on the sea. But are they mad? Was it all an hallucination? If so, why--as we finally see in that last panel--have forty years passed and why are Dodson and Jamie both four decades older?

It's not the world's greatest twist and might have been made stronger by a little foreshadowing about the passage of time while on the Flying Dutchman. But it's a pretty good twist and it is strong enough to sell the story. And Starling's art remains strong throughout. "Ghost Ship" is well-worth reading.

Next week, a look at the comic book adaptation of one of my favorite Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.

The Man Who Died Twice

It's really neat when a writer and artist can take a very cliched trope, play it straight and still do something fun with it.

"The Man Who Died Twice," published in House of Mystery #225 (June/July 1974) does just that. Written by Jack Oleck and drawn by Alfredo Alcala, it does indeed play the "Deal with the Devil" cliche completely straight. A man sells his soul to Satan to get the thing he most wants. He gets it, but in a way that leaves him worse off than he was before.

You know from the first panel that Giles Mornay is going to come to a tragic if well-deserved end. But all the same, the story is fun due to a combination of Alcala's atmospheric art work and enough interesting details to keep the reader intrigued.

Mornay is a poor cobbler who dreams big. He's a peasant, but feels he was destined to be a nobleman and looks down his nose at his equally poor neighbors. Determined to actually become a nobleman, he is constantly trying to summon the devil, must to the disgust and fear of his long-suffering wife.

It's only after Mornay murders his wife in a fit of rage, the devil finally appears. The deal is this: Mornay confesses to the murder and gets executed. He must spend a year in the grave--but the devil promises he won't die. Then he'll get the body of a noble.

Mornay goes along with this. He's hanged for the murder and buried, but he remains suspended in a sort-of not-quite-dead state. Though he rots away into a moldy skeleton, he still lives.

The devil, of course, hopes that this experience will drive Mornay insane. But the cobbler's overwhelming desire to become a noble keeps him going. When the year is up, he digs his way out of his grave and confronts the devil, demanding his new body.

The devil lives up to his part of the bargain, moving Mornay's soul into a nobleman's body. Mornay, though, had no idea that there had been a revolution during his year in the grave. It was no longer healthy to be a nobleman.

Alcala's art really does sell the story. Setting it in 18th Century France--along with the irony of Mornay's disdain of his fellow peasants & desire to be a noble--effectively sets up the twist at the end and gives clever readers a chance to guess what's coming without this spoiling the story. It's similar to the satisfaction of figuring out who the killer is in a mystery novel by legitimately spotting the clues--it enhances the big reveal rather than spoils it.

Cliches often exist because they are effective storytelling tools. Used poorly, they can ruin a story. But if used skillfully, even the oldest cliches can still be effective.

Next week, we'll get back to superheroes with a look at a two-part story from Marvel Two-in-One that packs a lot of emotional punch.