Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body —
Need a body cry. -Robbie Burns
It's Valentine's Day so let's take a brief pause in my "Hitchcock vs. Radio" series for something a little appropo.
Some years ago I celebrated Valentine's Day on this blog with a series titled "[Redacted] Is Love," wherein I examined a number of pre-code Harvey romance comics which had been republished under the Comics Code Authority and saw how they had been altered.
This year I'm doing the same thing, but with a rather different kind of comic book; a horror story which was edited into a romance story!
The original story was titled "If a Body Kill a Body" and was published in Farrell Comics' Fantastic Fears #9 (September-October, 1954). The creators are not credited but it was probably drawn by someone in Jerry Iger's sweatshop. The reprint, titled "The Mightiest Force in the World!" was published in Midnight #5 (February, 1958).
Let's see how they were altered...
Off the bat, they open as different as day from night; the original begins with the couple embracing as a caption promises "a tale of two betrayed lovers turned to demons by hate and lust for revenge!" In contrast, the reprint shows new art of the hero riding up to a castle.
But although the dialogue has been altered, the two leads have the same names: Angus and Mary. The lad and lass belong to feuding families and their romance is a secret one. However, in the original they want to resolve the feud so they can be married; in the reprint, they were secretly married and want to break the news to their folks. It is interesting to note that in the original Mary is willing to run away "to the ends of the Earth" with Angus, but in the reprint she emphasizes "we must honor them, Angus, they're our parents!" Good ol' fashioned Scottish family values, that's what the readers want!
Just then Mary's father rides up. In the the original, he prepares to murder Angus, but in the reprint he announces he won't fight before a woman, "But we'll meet again!" The image of Angus, dead at the hands of Mary's father was removed, instead Mary rides away with her father. Then, weirdly, a panel of Angus' father reacting to his son's death is repurposed to serve as a panel of Mary's father vowing to drive Angus away.
And here's the panels which alerted me to the fact that the story in Midnight #5 was a Code-neutered reprint of an earlier story: The original two-panel sequence shows an archer murder Mary in revenge for Angus' death. In the reprint, the archer is Angus himself and he's sending Mary a note on the arrow. But the manner in which Mary clutched the note to her chest immediately made me think that originally there was an arrow sticking out of her chest - and so there was! (also notice the more modest clothing Mary wears)
In the original, thus, Angus rises from the dead as a vengeful walking corpse. vowing revenge on Mary's family for killing him and his own family for killing Mary. He goes to the crypt where Mary is entombed and releases her. The reprint had to act very creatively to disguise the tomb in the art - Mary certainly looks awkward without a coffin beneath her. Of course, the original colours the walking corpses rather oddly in pale blue, but otherwise they don't look any different than when they were alive. Good thing, that saved the reprint team some labour in hiding exposed bones or rotten flesh - they simply had to restore the figures to full colour.
The original doesn't explain why the two lovers came back to life - restless dead, I guess. Anyway, they plot the murders of their famllies. "We were young and in love and they killed all that! They must suffer also!" says Mary. In the reprint though, they hatch a secret plot to resolve the family feud - so secret they dare not share it with the readers. In the original, Mary puts poison in the goblet of Angus' father (somehow he doesn't see her; it's as though she's a ghost but again, the story is slight on these details). Angus then throws Mary's mother over the keep wall; but in the reprint he visits his own mother and begs her to make peace with Mary's family.
There's a scene where an archer fires an arrow at Angus and it goes right through him - again, I thought he was a corpse, not a ghost? But in the reprint he simply talks his way out of a fight. Similarly, a scene of Angus stabbing a man in the stomach becomes Angus punching a man in the stomach. Anyway, in the original Mary and Angus' actions are supposed to rile up their families against each other for vengeance so that they'll start a war and kill each other on the battlefield. Angus and Mary then rejoice at their families' deaths. But in the reprint the two families reconcile and play a game of off-panel chess (seriously).
Thoughts: Even the original story was not particularly good but boy, the reprint is a mess. It just barely holds itself together by editing out the violence. Still, it is amusing to see the contortions taken to try and turn a story of bloody vengeance in a love story, of all things!
all images taken from The Digital Comic Museum
No comments:
Post a Comment