'The Loathsome!'

[cyberghostface]

So this is my final EC post, just in time for Halloween. It's from Weird Science #20. While I'll stop for now until presumably next Halloween, if there are any stories from EC or Warren that you would like to see here, just ask and I'll do my best to post it.

The story opens with a child born in the aftermath of a nuclear bomb. The wife of a sailor who was in proximity of the bomb gives birth to what we are told is a hideous mutant. The father is convinced, for the sake of his wife's mental health, to give away the child to an orphan asylum and tell her that it died in pregnancy. Years go on, and the two parents have another child and quickly forget about their first one.

Their child however, has grown up in the orphanage and has become hated by everyone around it. She is considered to be both a monster in looks and behavior. She often steals toys and breaks them, and she is frequently punished by the orderlies. When she is allowed to mingle with the other children, she is vicious. This is all recounted by two nurses; we never see the child.

Comments

[thanekos]

And so the world was spared another Jenifer.

[proteus_lives]

I loved that episode of Masters of Horror.

[kenwyn89]

This is a case of the captions being much better than the dialogue...

[leoboiko]

[mrosa]

Me too! As soon as I saw skull girl, I immediately thought of the mutant girl in Marvels.

[leoboiko]

They say it was an explicit reference.

[mrosa]

That's very interesting to know. I always love to find out those things. Makes me wonder what other references I may have missed.

[leoboiko]

By the way, this cover made me cry. I don’t know why. It never happened again.

[thosefew]

Why is there a spiked wall? With a tree branch dangling over it? Frankly I'm betting this isn't the first child they've lost that way.

[shadowpsykie]

we;ve been discussing EC in my graphic novel class... they seem very interesting

[superfangirl1]

Great story but why does the stone wall fence have spikes on them?

[sherkahn]

Intimidation.

[richardak]

Was anyone else expecting the child to look completely normal?

[cleome45]

TBH, when I first read this last year, I expected her to look more like a literal "beast." Fur, a tail, and claws, like a small werewolf or werecat, maybe...?

That's what I get for being too literal.

[ar_feiniel]

Ok I love e.c. but I think I'm a bit dense. Was the girl evil and manipulative in the end, or just misunderstood? Or was it meant to be ambiguous?

[cyberghostface]

Probably more the latter. My impression was that no one treated her with decency so she acted out, but not that she was naturally 'bad'.

[cleome45]

I would vote for "misunderstood," personally.

Had she been able to somehow wrap the staff and the other kids around her little finger, despite their conscious revulsion of her appearance, then there'd be a case for "manipulative."

"It comes in peace, break its legs!"

[espanolbot]

I do think that it's darkly humourous that the guy went from yelling "destroy it!" to "Oh no, she's dead!" in about three minutes though.

Didn't EC do a similar one, where it had a kid who was a supergenius but otherwise had a freakish appearance, so despite all the beneficial advancements he created everyone still shunned him to the point that he moved to his own tropical island because everyone was being a dick to him?

...Which kind of comes across as a fairly standard supervillain origin story to be honest. Seriously, didn't Warren Ellis use something similar where an embittered and disfigured Japanese supergenius tried to murder the X-Men as they claimed to be mutants whilst looking like supermodels, while he, deformed due to his parents proximity to the atom bombings of WW2, was more of a genuine mutant in his mind.

Re: "It comes in peace, break its legs!"

[althechi]

That exact plot is the origin of the Marvel supervillain Brainchild, IIRC.

[blackruzsa]

This story, of many, has one moral:
People are dicks.

[proteus_lives]

Decades later, EC still rules the school.