We continue our "Halloween Week with Boris Karloff " with a "Readers' Poll"!
Below is the cover of BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY # 47 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date; June, 1973).
A fisherman's boat swamped by a giant monster fish?
A fisherman's boat swamped by a giant monster bird?
Or a sleek speeding aircraft or spacecraft plummeting down from left to right, swamping the boat?
Now, I've reproduced it here at more-or-less the same size as the listing image, when I ordered it from Lone Star Comics. So, you're seeing it as I saw it. Let us know what YOU see!
We'll discuss it in the Comments Section...
For now, be it monster or metal, perhaps the scariest thing about this particular cover it that it was the first issue where the cover price increased from 15 to 20 cents! ...And it would only keep going up from there!
6 comments:
Interesting...it took me a *long* time to make sense of this picture. Finally made out the red rowboat, apparently made of plastic or metal, completely out of the water, seats facing us, stern highest and bow pointing to the water. It was actually the oars that helped me figure out the orientation of the boat. Monster that sent it flying is mostly in the water, and I'd guess we're seeing its large tail fin, plus maybe a side fin over on the right.
I live on the shore and see lots of small boats, and I've never seen a rowboat that looks quite like that one. I just googled, and there are bright red plastic rowboats, but even they don't look like the one on the cover. So shiny and smooth! It looks like a toy to me.
Elaine:
I had to squint-stare at the image as I saw it on the Lone Star Comics website, and still I was unclear.
I don’t wish to short-circuit the comments, but you happen to be correct – though I didn’t really get it until I held the full-sized comic in my hand!
Until then, I saw a “spacecraft” approaching the water in an sharp and accelerated way – not unlike the Flying Sub on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea – and swamping the boat! It had “back fins” and the motion lines (or “water-spray” lines) gave the impression of a dome-top.
I’d still be very interested in what the rest of you saw – both before and after reading these comments.
To me, it looks like a collision between a red rowboat and the Bat-plane!
And yes, looking back that was a scary price hike! At least when comics jumped from 12 cents to 15 cents they stayed that way for a while. The 20 cent price wiped out the 25-cent giant sized comics, which either disappeared in some cases or went up to 35 cents. I remember wanting to get two Dennis the Menace giant sized issues priced at 35 cents apiece, and my mother said that was too much to pay for comic books. Imagine 70 cents being too much! But soon after we were paying 25 cents for regular-sized comics when that formerly had been the price of the giant ones. Then it went up to 30 cents, then 35, then 40, eventually 50 and beyond! It still is heartbreaking to me. Money is so hard for kids to come by, and to keep upping the prices like that meant far fewer comics. Inflation in general is almost as great a monster as the one ravaging the boat in the Boris Karloff cover. If I could keep my present salary and live in a world where prices were at 1960s level, I would be living very well today!
At first glance, I thought it was an aircraft hitting the water at an angle, similar to Admiral Nelson's Flying Sub.
Was the cover reprinted from a 1960s issue? The price tag looks like a sticker that could have been pasted over the original 12 (or 15) cent label.
TC:
No, that was a new original 1973 cover for that issue. No reprints inside either.
But it WAS (as I mentioned) the first 20-cent issue, so maybe the new cover price was an awkwardly-added last minute addition.
I think the illusion of a “dome” and “tail-fins”, combined with the angle, and the monster-fish appearing less-defined than it might have, is why we both “see what we think we see”. …At least that’s my best guess at explaining it.
Scarecrow:
You write: “To me, it looks like a collision between a red rowboat and the Bat-plane!”
Yeah, I can see that, too! And for the same reasons listed in my reply to TC.
“And yes, looking back that was a scary price hike! At least when comics jumped from 12 cents to 15 cents, they stayed that way for a while. The 20 cent price wiped out the 25-cent giant sized comics, which either disappeared in some cases or went up to 35 cents.”
That was one “scare” I managed to avoid, because I never bought a 20-cent comic brand new! I “left” very late in the 15-cent period, and didn’t return until the 40-cent period!
Personally, I would have preferred to experience the “scare”, rather than spending my so-called adult life buying all those comics as back issues costing a bit more than 20 to 35 cents! Groan!
Post a Comment