Here's a fascinating page from GHOSTS #11 (DC Comics, Cover Date: January, 1973), which we will offer with a minimum of comment as we don't really do politics here. …With good reason, I might add!
Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, broke that particular curse... and I hope the curse REMAINS broken for ALL TIME, and I never have to say anything about it ever again!
It was just a fascinating find that I thought to share with you, deeply embedded in a comic published back in late 1972... when the curse was still in effect. NUFF SAID!
.........................
REGARDING COMMENTS: Because things are just so awful these days, ANY comment added to this post must be in good - AND RESPECTFUL - taste! No partisan politics, regardless of side! Any comment that fails to meet that basic and readily understandable criteria will NOT BE PUBLISHED!
We had an incident like that a number of years back, and I don't wish to have another one!
Thank you!
4 comments:
An interesting one-pager, indeed. It does have one rather glaring error, though: Roosevelt was elected to his third term in 1940, not his second term.
I, too, hope the curse remains broken forever, as should everyone, if not necessarily out of admiration for the person holding the office at a given moment, then out of respect for democracy and for what is, after all, a human life.
PERFECTLY SAID, SERGIO!
As for DC, all I can say is...“OOPS!” Perhaps there were some “GHOSTS in the machine” that day!
Historical inaccuracy aside, this is still a very striking and remarkable splash page. I'm wondering what the substance is that is rising up out of the candle and linking the zeroes until it connects with the page border. It's not a wisp of smoke, because it has clear edges. It's not candle wax, because wax moves downward when a candle is lit. Yet it serviceably links the dates, rendering them almost like a series of doughnuts. I hadn't realized before that every twenty years, even-numbered, falls on a presidential election year. This page graphically demonstrates it.
The artwork of the Presidents is quite remarkable, too, and the artist appears to have taken pains to make each figure as life-like as possible. (Life-like in a page about their deaths? Well, you get what I mean!) I particularly like the image of Roosevelt, who along with Kennedy would have been a living memory for the parents of the original readers of that issue. And interestingly they are all shown as quite solemn-featured, except for Kennedy, who appears to be cracking a slight smile--ironic and rather frightening, because his killer is depicted directly below.
I do wish some editor had caught the error. It would have been an easy task to switch out "second" for "third" and then the whole page would ring with more sense of authenticity.
Chillingly, Ronald Reagan almost fell into the same pattern when his much-publicized assassination attempt occurred. That he escaped it may have been what broke "the curse" (provided one "for real" believes in such things). I have read speculations that his survival of the attempt opened up an alternate timeline, which if you align it with this page, could have some significance in a sci-fi kind of way. In any case, sci-fi writers can certainly come up with some fascinating parallels between historical events and fictional tropes.
Another fascinating contribution of comments, Scarecrow!
It seems that just about anything I *don’t* say in the post (despite considering some of them when composing it), you *do* say – making the experience into a greater whole!
My guess is that the “substance is that is rising up out of the candle and linking the zeroes until it connects with the page border.” IS candle smoke… it would have to be, but it is some sort of supernatural, “ghostly” candle smoke designed to visually enhance the page composition with atmosphere! …Besides, if you can’t have “ghostly” candle smoke in a comic called “GHOSTS”, where can you?
The renditions of the different presidents, being as remarkably accurate as they appear, is also striking, as DC does not make any attempt at “soft-pedaling the subject” with more stylized or nebulous illustrations.
Although I did not read this book at the time of publication (…I was pretty much out of comics by 1973, and would not return until 1980-81), and actually read this for the first time in 2022, John F. Kennedy would indeed have been a living memory for me at the time! …As would Roosevelt at the same time for both my parents and grandparents.
Ronald Reagan’s “breaking of the curse”, particularly as he very nearly became its next victim, was not only chilling, but (perhaps appropriately) the stuff of movies! I’d very definitely considered HOW he broke the curse by surviving the type of assassination attempt that claimed too many of the others – and that’s the primary reason I decided to issue this post! …The thought that “no story is ever really ended”, as long as life rolls-on with its myriad twists, turns, and surprises!
…And, Reagan’s future-situation – and triumph – that could not have been foreseen by the page’s creators, turn this obscure little comic book filler page into a superb example of exactly that!
Post a Comment