You know, if you've got one of them there
omniscient narrators, you'd hope he could at least be friendly, or helpful. But not in this story...
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You're stuck with
Mr. Sensitivity!! Sheesh, do you need to be such a
downer, Narrator? Would it kill you to be a
little positive?
Perhaps...but he has
good reason to be negative, because our protagonist is going to meet:
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So, these astronauts crash land on
Venus, and the co-pilot is dead. But
Rod Crenshaw lives on to meet the evillest life-form ever:
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Yes, Rod, the two sets of eyes is the
freakiest thing there...oh, wait, maybe it's
THIS:
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This bears absolutely
no resemblance whatsoever to
Starro or the
Star Trek episode
Operation: Annihilate. Nope, we would
never suggest that they borrowed concepts from a 1952
Basil Wolverton horror comic. Nope.
But, completely unlike Starro or the
slimy pancake thingies from Operation: Annihilate, you really
really REALLY don't want these things to land on you:
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You're not being very helpful,
Mr. Negative Narrator!!
Gaze in terror as head
Brain Bat reveals his evil plan (and Basil Wolverton proceeds to scare the
bejeezus out of little kiddies):
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AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!Well, Crenshaw manages to make the ship
really crash as they attempt to land on Earth. Threat over!!
But
no,
Mister Glass-Half-Empty Narrator is having none of that!!
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Fortunately:
YAY!! Dead aliens!!
Well, all's well that ends well,
right?
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NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Damn you
Mister How-Are-You-Narrating-If-Earth-Has-Been-Conquered!!!!!!!!
Maybe Rod should have tried
trade negotiations...
From Mister Mystery #7 (1952)
3 comments:
That final panel....simultaneously terrifying and vaguely obscene!.
(Is that a mouth, or......? EEWWWWW!)
Interesting to see that Wolverton had a horror comics phase before he spent (seemingly) the rest of his career life drawing buck-toothed dorks and eye-popping grotesqueries.
The Brain-Bats are my new favorite monster. I want to put them in an RPG near me soon!
And I've always hated second person singular narration. It's not like I can choose which page to turn to in order to avoid wearing a Brain-Bat-Hat (new Holloween costume idea!).
Re: "Damn you Mister How-Are-You-Narrating-If-Earth-Has-Been-Conquered!!!!!!!!"
It's obvious, isn't it? The Brain-Bats *ARE* the Narrator? That's exactly *why* he happens to be so snarky and superior to the actions of the humans throughout the tale?
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