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| Black Cat Mystery #50 |
Black Cat Mystery v1 #50, 1954 - A man's face and hands start to deteriorate from radiation poisoning on this jarringly horrific cover, one of my pre-comics code favorites. In the story featured here, an eccentric character enters a small town and entertains them enough to gain their trust and predictably, their money. Comic book price guides have attributed the story art solely to Sid Check, but it seems likely that
Frank Frazetta did the inks. Though Check had a vaguely similar approach, the fine lines and meticulous detail are inconsistent with his other works. Note the superb craftsmanship on the characters' faces and most of the backgrounds. One of the most telling moments is the scene where the policeman's figure reels from a gunshot (see interior page below). His tightly gripped hand and the detailed folds on his uniform are familiar traits of Frazetta. Another collaboration between the artists is
Beware #10, which has comparable characteristics. I'd welcome other opinions as well. This is 1 of 1
Black Cat Mystery issues by
Frazetta.
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"Here Today..." Frazetta story inks (Sid Check pencils) 5 pages = ****
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Reviewed by Ted F
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12:22 PM
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4 comments:
Based on the page shown, I find it hard to believe that Frazetta pencilled this. Even in the early days, Frazetta had a pretty highly developed sense of layout and composition. The layouts on this page are pretty bad. I find a more likely scenario here is that these pages were pencilled or layed-out by Sid Check, and inked by Frazetta. There are surface details that are consistent with Frazetta, but the layouts are not.
To me, it doesn't look like Frazetta inked any of this. On a few panels, Check did some nice Frazetta swipes. He is clearly attempting to ink like Frazetta, but most of it seems too crude to actually be inked by Frank.
Just FYI, here's two more online sources that attribute it to Frazetta:
---Frazetta Forum (http://www.joevicas.com/frazettaforum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2004)
---Heritage Auction Galleries (http://comics.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=805&Lot_No=6413).
Actually, this was drawn by the great Bob Powell...who was an assistant of Howard Nostrand.
Both worked for Harvey Comics at the time. Nostrand did a very similar cover for Tomb of Terror #15 (1954) only one month before.
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