Horror Week: The Loathsome!

[cyberghostface.insanejournal.com]

This one's from Weird Science #20.

















If the girl looks familar to you, Alex Ross used her as the model for "Maggie" in Marvels.

Comments

[sandoz_iscariot.insanejournal.com]

She's cute. :( Poor little kid.

[sistermagpie.insanejournal.com]

Poor nameless girl. And she's kind of cute, actually.

I think we all learned something today.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

D':

[sinisterlink.insanejournal.com]

Aw, I remember this story from the old scans_daily. You'd think one of those nurses would have figured after a while that if everyone she met didn't treat her like a repulsive inhuman monster and actually showed a little kindness towards her that maybe she wouldn't keep breaking stuff and throwing tantrums or whatever.

The really sad part of the whole thing is that if they hadn't lied to the mother about her dying, she probably would have grown up loved and cared about.

I actually remember another story like that, which was posted on the old scans_daily. It was like how a bunch of people moved to another planet and whenever a couple had a baby, the baby would be taken away and the parents would be told the baby had to be quarantined or something like that, but years would pass and they wouldn't be given back their baby. So by the end all the couples are furious and demand their kids back and the doctor finally tells them that all the kids born on the planet have really weird mutations and such, and the story ended with the mutated kids finally meeting their parents and it was great because all of the parents were shown to love their kids, no matter how weird they looked. Anyone remember that story?

[blakeyrat.insanejournal.com]

On the other hand, maybe the first note they didn't find read: "meet at city hall at noon Friday, bring your ray-gun, kill all normals!"

[lookingforsigns.insanejournal.com]

And at the end the kid asks to get a glass of water and he gets out of his bed and he's the cutest little head on tentacles ever.

[crinosg.insanejournal.com]

How is she hideous? I think she's adorable.

She has big doe eyes. She could be a model for a line of plus dolls.

[sandoz_iscariot.insanejournal.com]

She should have been named Blythe.

(http://tinypic.com)

[cleome45.insanejournal.com]

The sad thing is: I lived with the real-life counterpart of the caretakers in this story. Gah.

[lawrence_live.insanejournal.com]

My sympathies :(

[cleome45.insanejournal.com]

Thanks, but reading back, maybe I'd better clarify a little.

What I mean is: I once had a roommate and a couple of her buddies tell me that you don't need to feel any empathy for "ugly" people. Because, you know, nine times out of ten, "ugly" people are evil, bitter assholes anyway.

Uh, yeah. Sure. O_o

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Sounds like they were ugly and justifying themselves. >_>

[cleome45.insanejournal.com]

Oh, trust me. None of us were in any danger of being mistaken for super-models. That's what made the whole exchange so deliciously "WTF"??

Yeah..You have my sympathies..People can be so cruel..

[steverodgers5.insanejournal.com]

The nurses from the foster home/orphanage certainly reminded me of a former step mother of mine, who treated my step sister like crap..

And I'm sure I've spoken to a Doctor just as insensitive as this at one point..

So yeah, it's ironic most people probably read this and think that it's lacking in subtlety, and a bit unrealistic. But having encountered people like this in real life, I have absolutely no problem with suspension of disbelief here..None at all.

Re: Yeah..You have my sympathies..People can be so cruel..

[cleome45.insanejournal.com]

Ugh. :(

Yeah, subtlety is not the story's strong point. But its distortions are based in reality, so they strike a nerve with the viewer. Like any good horror/suspense story should.

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

I'm really luvin' the tight inking on these story. Great stuff.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

There is nothing like Wally Wood. Nothing. Maybe Elder, but differently.

[mechanicaljewel.insanejournal.com]

You've got to love EC. Given the way the other Golden Age comics so often fell back on stereotypes and out-and-out racism/sexism/ableism for a cheap story, EC was always trying to make their readers think and to question those same tropes.

God, I really hate Dr. Wertham whenever I read EC stories. This was destroying the minds of America's youth? Really?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Not in the right way. Destroying it with patriotism and paranoia about "good and evil" and "law and order" was infinitely more preferable. Oh, and encouraging young boys to like battle, and guns--when used against the right people--and go off to war. That was okay.

[mechanicaljewel.insanejournal.com]

There's a reason that all the hippies had grown up reading MAD.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he had only attacked EC's gore, but he deliberately took panels out of context to prove that they were also racist. It was so easy to find racism in a lot of those comics, but he picked on the ONE company that was actively anti-racist, and thus actually in line with Wertham's primary cause. But he just had this horse-with-blinders approach to comics and managed to take this side cause to the Senate. What a waste of time for him, and a waste of talent for EC.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Not just the hippies, either. Myself, in the form of reprints(MAD mostly) as a little kid, and later in the 80s as a teen, in the South. Getting the Russ Cochran SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES set one Christmas was one of the greatest Xmas gifts ever.

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

And so, through the death of their young agent, the mutants' plan to unleash the ILOVEYOU computer virus on the world remained hidden... until it was too late!

[redsilkscarf.insanejournal.com]

Wow, great story. D: Poor thing. This reminded me of a similar story back up on the old scans_daily, where there was this girl whom everyone thought was horribly mutated and ugly and therefore hated her, but it turned out that she was this hot chick on a planet of fugly aliens. She discovered this when human space explorers landed on her planet and were blown away by her gorgeousness. Too bad that the girl in this story didn't get a happy ending (though the message this story sends is really quite poignant ;__;).

[toasty_fresh.insanejournal.com]

:C So sad. . .

[espanolbot.insanejournal.com]

Dr Simms: She tappered in God's domain.

*fade to credits*

[thehefner.insanejournal.com]

Does my heart good to see stories like this up here. Even the really sad ones. I just showed it to a friend, who is still muttering, "... goddammit, John."

[mysteryfan.insanejournal.com]

I remember this one. It's very moving. Poor thing.

And it's kind of... well, Alex Ross--I usually think of him using live models, so it's really interesting to see him using this fictional model.

I guess it got to him, too.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Thanks for making me cry. :(

I'd make myself feel better by pretending her mutant power allowed her to fake death and move on to Marvels, but stupid Marvels hasn't bothered to finish the plot.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Excellente. Muy.

[ezlebe.insanejournal.com]

Oh, this is horrible on a number of levels, but really shows the sheer ignorance of some people in this time. Fear of technological advancement in particular is really interesting in this issue. I really like the whole moral issues that the Weird Science crew used to stick in.

Although, hate to say this, but I was half expecting her to turn out looking like Wolverine or something, lol. Hypertrichosis being a legitimate disease and all, apparently I didn't take the nuclear radiation thing as seriously as I was supposed to. That, and I generally think Wolverine when its something mysterious for some ridiculous reason.

That said, it would probably be impossible for someone with such tiny arms to climb a tree like that, she was built like a T-Rex. Or that guy from the Burger King commercials; with his tiny hands, he's probably not very good at climbing either.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

The impression I got was that she was mostly using her legs - that treetrunk looks a bit slanted, so she could probably climb up it like a ladder, if she was nimble enough. It's where she tries to shimmy along the branch that things go wrong, because there she DOES need the use of her arms, and her arms aren't sufficient to the task.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Well, that's a sad story, all right.
It's very well-done, really, because it doesn't really answer the questions that it raises. I mean, yes, we're sympathizing with the poor little mutant girl by the end, and that sympathy is justified, absolutely - she's lived a short, terrible, unhappy life - but is she completely in the right, or do the nurses have a point, too?
What I mean is, it's quite possible that the girl really IS fairly nasty to those around her - whether that's the result of others treating her badly or some defect in her own character, we don't know. One of the classic psychological symptoms, though, is for someone who's in pain to lash out at those around them - they desperately need and want some basic love and comfort, but they don't know how to express it, and wind up simply releasing their anger. If THAT'S what's going on here, then it's not surprising that the nurses are not happy with the girl - if they're already prejudiced against her due to her looks, then her behaving badly is bound to cause them to overreact. Adds to the pathos, really.