Though to be honest I’m not sure about the perspective of the floor in the third panel of that full page.
Some more great art from the 1970s Atlas/Seaboard era: Frank Thorne illustrating “Son of Dracula” from Fright #1 (June 1975), written by Gary Friedrich:
Those thick black panel borders (a regular Thorne thing, if I recall correctly) are used throughout the story, and add a bit of…foreboding, I suppose, to the proceedings. It certainly sets the look of this comic apart.
I love the artwork’s detail, though it’s mostly confined to small-ish panels heavy in dialogue. Not a splash page in the bunch! You certainly got a lot of story crammed into these 18 pages, so you did get your quarter’s worth. Even so, you did get the occasional nicely-sized panel featuring Thorne’s art:
My favorite panel is probably this one, even with the inset panel in the corner:
Okay, maybe without that inset you’d just get more drains and cobwebs in the drawing, but it’s still a wonderfully evocative and creepy image.
I am such a goddamn fan of Atlas/Seaboard, and I don’t care who knows it.
(Missing VICKI #1, 3, 4, WESTERN ACTION #1, and three of the magazines. For the record.)
I’m building out my own Atlas/Seaboard collection (I blame “The Destructor”). I have resigned myself to never completing the “Vicki” run because people are asking stupid money for it. Alas. The rest, though, are great. It has led me to wonder if some day somebody will be clamoring for the Marvel “New Universe” comics from the ’80s that I threw out.
Oh, I feel like I should add that I totally understand it is the seller’s prerogative to ask what they see fit for a comic, I just can’t justify spending big $ on a single issue or short run of a comic. I guess I’m a bad collector.
You intrigued me, Philip, so I went looking. $20 each? For a bunch of reprints? Reprints of a title currently available for free online? I can’t believe demand justifies the price; must be scarcity.