Lurking in the foreground

Looking at that old DC house ad with the comic covers in my previous post, I was reminded of a couple of other covers that made an impression on me, and a particular style of cover design that appeared frequently on DC comics of that era.  A number of covers had sort of a split focus between foreground and background, with one focal point being on a person or people in the background, frequently framed in a doorway or some similar structure.  These figures would be speaking the only dialogue on the cover, drawing attention to them, but prominently displayed in the foreground, some danger or horror lurked, visible to the reader but unsuspected by the characters in the background (or, at least, unsuspected by one of the characters in the background — sometimes, one of the background characters appeared innocent but was actually part of the threat).  This design wasn't used much on superhero comics, but it was used on a lot of DC's horror and war comics.  Below are several examples.

(You may notice that a large portion of these examples were drawn by Nick Cardy.  I don't think that's because he had any tendency toward this particular design, but rather just because of the sheer number of covers he drew for DC in the early-to-mid-70s.)

The Unexpected #130.  Art by Nick Cardy.

The Unexpected #131.  Art by Nick Cardy.

The Witching Hour #31.  Art by Nick Cardy.

This next cover below can be seen in the ad that I shared in in my previous post, and this is what got me thinking about all these covers.  This is another image that was burned into my brain from reading those ads when I was an impressionable youngster.  I was both frightened by this and fascinated by it.  (My parents would never have let me own a comic like this at that age.  Fortunately — or perhaps unfortunately — they didn't pay much attention to the ads in the comics I was allowed to have.)  Note that this cover, from The Witching Hour #45, is essentially a recycling of the cover from The Witching Hour #31, shown above, substituting a demon for #31's witch.  I think the cover to #45 is more effective (but I'll concede that I might be biased because of that brain-warping ad).  Both covers were drawn by Cardy.

The Witching Hour #45.  Art by Nick Cardy.

Here's another cover that I vividly remember from one of those ads, The Unexpected #161.  I bought this comic a few years ago and read it, but I have no memory of this cover story.  It must not have lived up to my impression of the cover, but apparently it must not have been a crushing disappoint, either; just not very memorable.

The Unexpected #161.  Art by Nick Cardy.

Weird Mystery Tales #12.  Art by Luis Dominguez.

This one is kind of creepy:

The Witching Hour #52.  Art by Nick Cardy.

(And I'd like to add that "The Hidden and the Hideous" would make a great name for a soap opera.)

Weird Mystery Tales #17.  Art by Ernie Chan.

The Witching Hour #37.  Art by Nick Cardy.

The Unexpected #139.  Art by Nick Cardy.

The Witching Hour #55.  Art by Luis Dominguez.

This type of design was used a lot on The Unexpected and The Witching Hour, which were edited by Murray Boltinoff, but it wasn't used much in what I tend to think of as DC's two "main" horror titles, House of Mystery and House of Secrets.  Those were edited by Joe Orlando at the time, so the difference may just have been due to editorial preference.  Below is a rare example from House of Secrets.  I only found a couple others, and there don't appear to have been any covers like this for House of Mystery.

House of Secrets #133.  Art by Ernie Chan.

(And just to make sure that no one thinks I'm less impressed with House of Mystery and House of Secrets, or with Joe Orlando, let me add that during Orlando's editorship, House of Mystery and House of Secrets featured dozens of the most awesome comic book covers ever drawn — they just didn't have this particular style of cover design.)


Below are several examples of war comics with this design.  All but one of these war covers were drawn by Joe Kubert, who drew the majority of the covers for DC's war comics for many years.

G.I. Combat #160.  Art by Joe Kubert.

G.I. Combat #171.  Art by Joe Kubert.

Star Spangled War Stories #181.  Art by Joe Kubert.

Our Fighting Forces #149.  Art by Frank Thorne.

It could be argued that the cover above has three focal points: the heroes in the background, the lurking Nazis in the foreground, and a prominently positioned portion of the heroine's anatomy, courtesy of artist Frank Thorne.

Our Fighting Forces #151.  Art by Joe Kubert.

Our Army at War #241.  Art by Joe Kubert.

This next one, Our Army at War #249, has an interesting twist in that the danger isn't in the form of lurking enemies, but what the hero is unknowingly about to do himself:

Our Army at War #249.  Art by Joe Kubert.

And here are a couple of covers from Our Army at War with a variation on this design.  In these examples, the focus isn't split between the foreground and the background, but vertically, with the hero above the water and the lurking enemies below the water.  While it isn't quite the same design, the effect is similar:

Our Army at War #217.  Art by Joe Kubert.

Our Army at War #293.  Art by Joe Kubert.

And finally, saving what may be the best example of this design for last, here's another horror cover, The Witching Hour #28.  They should sell Christmas cards with this picture:

The Witching Hour #28.  Art by Nick Cardy.

After 37 years . . .

Back in the early-to-mid-'70s, DC Comics used to run these house ads, where they'd show a number of small, mostly-black-and-white pictures of several comics on sale that month, such as this one, which ran in comics cover-dated August and September 1974.  (Click on the image for a larger version.)

I remember reading these ads (at the tender age of six) and being fascinated by the covers, particularly the horror ones and also some of the war ones. I was mostly interested in superhero comics (and I would not have been allowed to have a horror comic at that age), but the horror and war comics had the covers that really grabbed you, and even now I have vivid memories of some of the covers advertised. One of the images that burned itself into my mind was the cover of Our Fighting Forces #150, in the middle right in the ad above. Here's a larger picture of the actual cover, drawn by legendary comics artist Joe Kubert:

 

I could hardly imagine a situation more desperate than this: the American GI, forced to lie perfectly still or be shot by the Nazis, while right in front of his face, a venomous snake rears up, ready to strike. This scene was indelibly etched in my brain, and over the years I repeatedly thought of it when reminiscing about the comics of that era.

So in 2011, when I was going through a box of $2 comics at a convention and I found a copy of Our Fighting Forces #150, I had to buy it. After 37 years, I could finally find out how this GI got into this horrific situation, and more importantly, how he could possibly get out of it. So I bought the comic and took it home, and took it out of its bag and read it . . . 

. . . and nothing even remotely resembling this scene occurs anywhere in the story.

Why "The Pottsylvania Creeper"?

Because pottsylvania.blogspot was already taken.