Creepy Things: A Spell of Misery!

[alicemacher]

In my previous post, sindra pointed out that the victim's retribution on the protagonist was disproportionate, in that he claimed he merely wanted to teach him a lesson, via a "Hollywood Voodoo" (i.e., not real-life Voudon) spell, but in fact ended up killing him via reverse ageing. Instead, sindra argued, the protagonist should've been punished in a way that would spare his life and allow him to mend his ways.

My initial response was "Then it wouldn't be a horror story!" But then I remembered "A Spell of Misery!" from the obscure Charlton comic, Creepy Things (#2, Oct 1975), in which a villainous protagonist also finds himself on the receiving end of a "Hollywood Voodoo" spell, but gets a second chance to make amends. (Script: Joe Gill, art: Rich Larson.) The story even has a socially-relevant topic: the deplorable living conditions in inner-city slums. Unfortunately, like many a well-meaning "social relevance" story from the Bronze Age of comics, it contains flagrant racial stereotypes. Consider this a trigger warning.


Mr. Ruggles is a slumlord who deliberately fails to maintain his buildings and employs lackeys to beat up tenants who complain. As for those who fall behind on their rent, well, let's see:





That night, Mama Carafino reluctantly performs a clearly unresearched-by-writer "Voodoo" ritual: beating drums, chanting gibberish, invoking "Jambala" (who is in fact a Hindu deity, not a Voudon Loa) and alternately burning and striking the head of a small straw effigy. As a result, Ruggles wakes with the feeling of "smoke" in his lungs, a searing headache, and a summons from Jambala to go see Mama Carafino immediately.







I'll give the writer this much: the prospect of becoming small enough to be prey for rats and roaches is scary. And the wealthy, privileged, abusive Ruggles is clearly meant to be the bad guy here. Even so, the story portrays the "hero" as a fiendish-looking, "minstrel" dialect-spouting West Indian woman who returns to her former "evil" Voodoo practice as a last, desperate resort, and when that achieves its result, resumes her practice of "good" Christianity. Thus, this story is a poster example of the well-known social justice saying, "Intent isn't magic" (no pun intended).

Comments

[donnblake]

I know a little about hoodoo (read a couple books, a couple articles), but not much about Vodoun/Voodoo, actually. (I know that it involves veneration of the Loa, who are sometimes identified with Catholic saints, and ritual possession by them, but that's about it.