The curious case of the recycled comic book sinking scene.

[stuckdamselfan]

While trolling through online comic book resources, I found two separate quicksand-based adventures from the Golden Age, both derived from the same original art. Talk about recycling.

The art was originally created for a story in Yankee Comics No. 4 (1941), published by Chesler Comics. Titled "In The Moors Lurks A Monster", it involved a lackluster hero named the Echo, who pressed a button on his belt to turn invisible.





Chesler reprinted the story, with trivial alterations, roughly a year later in Dynamic Comics No. 8.

Jumping ahead to 1952, the art turned up again at a different publisher: St. John. It appeared in Weird Horrors No. 2, more or less intact, but with different characters and different dialog. Now titled "Monster On The Moors", its hero merely a sleuth without any remarkable powers.





Given the lowly state and limited finances of the comic book industry back then, it's no surprise that publishers might resort to creative "borrowing" to save time and cost. But this is easily the most flagrant case I've uncovered.

Incidentally, despite its strong resemblance to the early style of Frank Frazetta, the art is credited to Rafael Astarita.

All three titles are available for download at digitalcomicmuseum.com.

[dlodoski]

Great post!

Thanks for sharing.

[PM2K]

I concur! Excellent post!

I posted something similar before.... the magazine Witches Tales (1969 to mid-1970s) had a habit of obtaining older comics and blatantly ripping them off, rerunning their stories as new, not even changing the dialogue.... but sometimes changing the art work.
For comparison and for fun, I posted both the 1970's version, and the 1950's original, of a cool quicksand scene from Swamp Witch...

The thread is here...

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=248&p=7978&hilit=swamp+witch#p7978

[stuckdamselfan]

Good point. I overlooked Eerie Publications habit of copping Golden Age horror stories for their 70s black and white titles. Their redrawing of the art was likely motivated by the desire to make the plot more sensational and gory for the new generation of readers.

The man behind the Eerie line was Myron Fass. As a former artist of the Golden Age, he knew that imitation could be the sincerest form of plagiarism.

BTW, I prefer the dialog in the second Moor story, with that absurd moment of comic timing. No sooner did the damsel say, "Careful! We're heading toward the bog." than..