Wednesday, March 01, 2006

The Macabre Art Of Tom Sutton (or Repost Au Go Go Part 3)

What! More repost for dinner again!?! But wotta repost!
First, some explanations, apologies and corrections. Well... let me tell you how it is with the Skywald stuff - and i'm not whining, as you all know how much i hate that.... Here's the unvarnished fact of the matter - those darn Skywald books from the post Sol Brodsky era are just not cut square! Drives me nuts. The panel borders are not in line with the edges of the pages. There - i've said it. So each page has to be fiddled with on the scanner glass by me to get them all lined up. Since i'm scanning them for other purposes than making these fun pdfs for your enjoyment, it's more than a small concern. The earlier issues (say up to Nightmare & Psycho #8 or #9) are nicely lined up, but after.... eh. Not so good. The bottom line is that it's kinda slow going.
The upside is that you guys get all this other stuff while i fumble around getting my act together. So what else is new?

Also, seems i don't know my Bill Shakespeare as well as i thought - with regard to Forbidden Planet, someone corrected my error..... Robbie is Ariel NOT Caliban.... which is in fact the Id monster from the brain of Morbius (Prospero). Ooops.
Also, the link for "Imposter" has been fixed... Too hyper for my own good it would seem... so i'm sorry 'bout that glitch too..... Now on with the show....


Tom Sutton is probably THE most under-rated comic artist of all time. Most folks probably don't know who he is, and if they do, they're probably more familiar with his work at Marvel or DC. The thing is, Tom toiled long and hard in the fields over at Charlton, doing amazing work (at lower page rates) for the sake of freedom of artistic expression. i may have a bit of a hard time convincing some of the worth of this artists output, so i've put a few things together, just to prove my point. Apart from some spotty fanzine coverage, there just isn't that much interest... which is a shame.
Check some (or all) of this material out, and see if you don't agree with me, that Tom Sutton is indeed, truly one of the unsung masters of the macabre....

1 contains the following stories - Bones, An Unfinished Tale, Pity Aunt Margeret, Baku the Dream Killer, The Hybrid Man & One Night in Paris.
2 contains the following stories - There's Life in the Old Girl Yet, The Game Keeper, The Weirdest Character, The Hellfire Club, & Terrible Teddy.

The Art of Tom Sutton 1

The Art of Tom Sutton 2

But wait - you ALSO get... a whole years worth of Ghostly Tales.. Now i know this is kinda recent, but this is with the faster and more reliable hosting from Streamload, and they show some GREAT covers by Tom Sutton. This is probably Charlton at their peak. Killer issues every one. Ditko, Sutton,, the usual gang of mavericks (PAM, Boyette, Cuti, Gill), plus there's even a story with layouts by Wally Wood and finished by Sutton! i'm NOT going to give any plots away, since the stories are almost all quite exceptional, and deserved to be experienced by you - "unspoiled"!
My point with this post is thus - if Charlton was such a shoddy, low-rent, "nobody-gives-a-damn" operation... how then are these 6 issues consistantly good? i wish 6 issues of any DC horror line title from the same period had produced an equal level of both quality and innovation, Philipino art aside. Somebody REALLY needs to (re)write the history of "Horror Comics in the Silver Age" to skew some of the attention away from the "Big 2"... since it seems to me that Warren, Charlton, Skywald and Eerie had A LOT MORE to do with it than contemporary fandom would care to admit! Ah well... you know how it goes.... the survivors get to write the history....... i'm doin' what i can to turn it around, but i'm just one guy..... i know it must seem like i must have a team of evil little pixies helping me out sometimes, but no folks, it's just me and a couple of computers with the aid of one comicshop, one bookstore and eBay. They don't call me hyper dave because i'm asleep on the couch, that's for sure!


Ghostly Tales #105



Ghostly Tales #106



Ghostly Tales #107


Ghostly Tales #108


Ghostly Tales #109


Ghostly Tales #110

Plus - here's some fun audio on the horror tip that's actually not re-post.... more of a housecleaning excercise really

Peter Lorre's Mystery in the Air - "The Marvelous Barastro"
Mystery in the Air - "The Lodger"
Mystery in the Air - "Beyond Good and Evil"
Mystery in the Air - "Crime and Punishment"
Philco Radio Show with Karloff
Philco Radio Show with Lorre
Hollywood Star Time - "Shock" with Vincent Price
SUSPENSE - "Drury's Bones" with Karloff
SUSPENSE - "Green & Gold String" with Price
Command Performance with Vincent Price
Information Please (1941) with Boris Karloff
Information Please with Alfred Hitchcock
Information Please (1943) with Boris Karloff
Peter Lorre on the Martin & Lewis Show
And finally - some cooking fun with Vincent Price.... and as Jack Kirby once said - "Don't ASK! Just BUY!" (These are best if listened to in order posted... i TOLD you not to ask).
Cooking with Vincent Price #1
Cooking with Vincent Price #3
Cooking with Vincent Price #4
Cooking with Vincent Price #2

.... and we're done!

PS. The NEXT post will be a Skywald mag! Honest! No Foolin'! (....fingers crossed!)

And here's the checkered flag from that hot-rod daddy ratfink from another world - your pal, hyper dave (AKA the datajunkie).
web statistics
Since August 2005 - Free Site Counter