EC Terror Illustrated 1: "The Sucker"

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Behold, Picto-Fiction! The story, ultimately, makes no sense,and is in fact a bit of a riff on a previous Shock Suspenstories tale, but good lord, the sweet Reed Crandall art and the very nice use of two-color, a technique not used as much as it should be anymore. (Though I have a few times. It's fun.) Anyway, Happy Halloween! (mods: far less than 1/3 of total issue length)




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(c)1955 EC Comics Inc.

Comments

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

Beware the honey trap ! Great cover.

[mcbangle.insanejournal.com]

OMG that "Save Your Hair" ad is terrifying!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

And just imagine, given EC's medically-remarked-on powers of mind control. A guy reads this thing, gets to that ad, the anxiety eats and eats at him, until he says later, to the cops, "Yes! Yes, I killed all those hookers! I had to! They gave me germs! I thought my scalp just itched, but I didn't know about the smell! AND NO ONE TOLD ME, BASTARDS! Just, just snickered, behind my back! (sob!) AND ON MY SCALP! GERMS! FILTHY GERMS, IN THEIR MILLIONS, MAKING ME BAAAAALD!"

Or words to that effect.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

I dunno, the story seems pretty straightforward to me - the guy gets off the bus, meets the girl, she turns him into a vampire, and he goes around killing girls and draining them dry to feed his hunger until the mob catches up with him. The only weird thing is him seeing her everywhere, and even that has possible explanations - perhaps A: the process of being turned into a vampire left him a little screwy, or B: this was all a set-up by the female vampire. I subscribe to the latter theory.
My guess is that she had been in that town for a while, being careful about who she fed on and hiding the evidence, but she knew that sooner or later someone would find one of the bodies, and then the jig would be up. Therefore, she needed to move somewhere else, maybe the big city where the hunting would be easier, but first, she needed to make sure that no one would ever trace the killings to her. So she picked a likely-looking character right off the bus, took him to her basement, and turned him into a vampire, meanwhile planting some sort of post-hypnotic suggestion that would lead him to see various other girls as her. This would mean that he'd be hasty and sloppy in his killings, which would ultimately get him staked - and if anyone ever found her earlier victims, they would assume it was his doing, not hers. She's a crafty one, she is.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

I suppose it's helpful too that all the women in that city wear the same evening dress. Hard to spot her.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

I think that's supposed to be part of the illusion - he doesn't just see her in whatever the actual girl is wearing, he sees her as he first saw her that night - and that includes the evening dress.