A FORGOTTEN HORROR COMIC STORY

Overlooked by virtually all historical writings on the evolution of the horror comic is this obscure entry in MOVIE COMICS #1 (April 1939). Not a traditional illustrated comic story, it is instead rendered in the style known as fumetti, that is, photo panels with text captions and word balloons. Still, how much more horror can you get with an adaptation of Universal Pictures' SON OF FRANKENSTEIN? It was released just a few months before, and the folks at MOVIE COMICS got the go ahead and the materials to include Karloff's last appearance as the monster for Universal as one of their stories in their first issue. It was published by Picture Publications Inc., a division of DC Comics. Max Gaines was the managing editor, C. Elbert was the editor and Sheldon Mayer was the assistant editor. Jack Adler and Emerich "Emery" Gondor are credited with the art "corrections" using inks and airbrush.

Adler was a cover artist and colorist and became a full-time staff member at DC in 1946. He and Gondor were assigned the task of turning popular movies into the comic book format. The job has its challenges as Adler explained in an interview in 2008:

"The Movie Comics were done this way: They got the script from Hollywood along with photographs and they put together six pictures per page. The problem with it was that there was no sequentiality with the photographs. They were scattered photographs and it meant that somebody had to straighten them out, which meant that sometimes you had to add a hat or change a tie or change a uniform. Sometimes you had to draw somebody from the back, because you didn’t have a photograph that fit the picture.  That required a great deal of art work and it required people who were able to do that. And one of the tools that was required for that was an airbrush.

". . . Now I knew nothing about any of that, and he decided that he [Emil Strauss, the engraver, who was Adler's boss] had to have somebody do the retouching; the airbrushing. Immediately Emil Strauss ordered the airbrush and pointed to me and said, “You’re my airbrush artist.” I knew nothing about how to hold the airbrush. You hold it sort of like a pencil.  I held it upside down. 

". . .  I learned how to do it upside down, and I became very proficient at it. But I didn’t know anything about it. I wrecked the airbrush the first day and there was no problem about that. He immediately had it fixed and I puttered around with it and never really learned how to do it. Emil Strauss saw that and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to hire somebody to teach you.” So, he hired a Hungarian Jew who was a famous newspaperman in Germany. But he was Jewish, and he was having a great deal of trouble making a living. So, Emil decided to bring him over and he did. He hired him. And he hired a man called Emory Ghondor [sic]. Now Emory Ghondor was a tall, thin guy who looked like a stalk, and his emblem was a stalk, and he made his living by doing demonstrations with paper and scissors. He’d call out to the kids and say, “What kind of an animal would you like?” They might say an elephant and he’d make a couple of snips in the paper and would have a four-footed elephant with a trunk that was able to stand up.

"He was just a whiz at it. That’s how he had to make his living. He couldn’t make a living because he was Jewish in Germany. Anyway, Emil hired this guy and this guy was going to teach me, and I was puttering around with it and never really learned how to use the airbrush and time started to pass and nothing was happening, he didn’t do anything. One day I said to him, “Emory, I’ve got to start doing the airbrushing. When are you going to start teaching me? I’ve got to start doing the work.” He said, “Okay.” So, he takes the airbrush, put some black wash in it, makes a splat; does it again; makes another splat, and again. My heart sank. I realized that he didn’t know how to use it! So, I looked at him and asked him how I was going to learn to do this and here’s what he said to me, in his heavy accent, “Don’t vorry, Jackie dear, ve vill learn togezzer!” And so, we did."

[Source: https://www.nerdteam30.com/]

Purists might say that this does not qualify as a comic story because it was not drawn and inked like a typical comic. For me, I believe it is a valid entry in the early history of horror comics.

Art by Walter Galli.

The great makeup artist Jack Pierce shows how its done.
Art by Jack Adler and Emory Gondor.