“TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER“ A COLUMN ABOUT EC COMICS, PART 5
Chris Buse (RIP)
If there“s one quote which best sums up the terrors and the sense of wistful longing that can only come from a place of a deeply felt loss, artist Joe Orlando managed to evoke, the one creator at EC Comics who influenced the whole industry, it must be this one: “Good readers, know this: Hades is wet, Hades is lonely.”“ What is as remarkable perhaps as his exceptional career, these words accompanied the work of an artist who never existed and were written by a writer who was equally entirely made up. And so was the comic book series in which the quote appeared. This series was presented as fiction which lived in a fictious world. If you consider all this, it isn“t even surprising that this title only came into existence because when translating the words of one very real writer from his native tongue into English, certain liberties were taken, creating something else entirely in the process. In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil“s seminal play “The Threepenny Opera”“ (“Die Dreigroschen Oper”“) had its premier. Among its cast was actress-singer Lotte Lenya, who was married to composer Weil. Lenya performed a song sung by a chambermaid called Jenny. The downtrodden, working-class girl is unhappy with the hand fate has dealt her. Her job is poorly paid, and she isn“t paid any respect either. In her imagination, she conjures up “a ship with eight sails and fifty cannons”“ that “will blow the town to pieces.”“ The siege of the unsuspecting city, which takes place at night, last well into the next day and into the day after, and the next day. And within three days, the city is completely destroyed, except for the run-down hotel where Jenny works and from where she creates a power fantasy for the disenfranchised. Clearly, she is the most important person in the violent world she“s envisioned in a mind which is hungry for the tiniest piece of recognition beyond the penny Jenny receives for services rendered. The crew of the attacking ship is well aware of her importance. The hotel is not touched. And once the pirates come ashore to enslave those among the citizenry who have survived the barrage of attacks, and the man, women and children are shackled with heavy iron chains, they“re presented to her. Unsurprisingly, it is the lowly maid“s call who lives and who dies at the hand of the pirates. Brecht“s lyrics paint a grim picture with words that feel appropriate: “And hundreds will come ashore around noon / And will step into the shadows / And will catch anyone in any door”¦ Which one should we kill? / And at that midday it will be quiet at the harbor / When they ask, who has to die. And then they“ll hear me say: All of them!”“ There is sardonic glee in the words the writer gives Lotte Lenya as Jenny, and the actress-singer nails the mockery of the chambermaid turned pirate princess when she simply says: “Oops!”“ as the heads begin to roll. But this is when Jenny“s reverie turns even darker. Once the bloody deed is done, she sees herself carried away by the pirate ship when the refrain is picked up again: “And the ship with eight sails / And with fifty cannons will disappear with me.”“ However, when Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, an American composer, lyricist and librettist was hired to create the English language version of the songs in Brecht and Weil“s “Threepenny Opera”“, he made some significant changes to Brecht“s original lyrics. It is in his version, that “the ship with eight sails”“ as imagined by Jenny becomes the legendary Black Freighter: “There“s a ship / The Black Freighter / With a skull on its masthead”“. And when the pirates bring the captured townsfolk to Jenny who has become “Pirate Jenny”“ (which is indeed a direct translation from the German “Seeräuber Jenny”“) and who here is much more of a low-dive character (it is implied in both versions that she is a prostitute), there is no longer a question of if: “And the ship / The Black Freighter / Runs a flag up its masthead”¦ And they“re bringin“ em to me / Askin“ me, / ”˜Kill them now, or later?“ And in that quiet of death / I“ll say, ”˜right now. Right now!”“ Blitzstein“s version creates a macabre idea of the ship, yet little is left to the imagination of the listener, as the “skull”“ makes it quite clear, that this is not just any enemy vessel, but one of dreaded pirates who“ve come to claim the lives, bodies and perhaps even the souls of any man, woman and child in the town. And by the end of this version, it is made unmistakably clear that Pirate Jenny has sold her soul to the devil: “And the ship / The Black Freighter / Disappears out to sea / And on it is me.”“ And the song takes on a different meaning as well, when from performance to performance the person singing the song and imagining these grim events is changed up. Originally placed in the first act, it was intended for Polly Peachum, the bride of the main character Mac The Knife. She“s fantasizing about the death of her own parents who oppose her relationship and subsequent marriage to a small-time crook who is a sociopath as it turns out. When the prostitute Jenny takes on the song, Mack“s former lover, who hides him from the police, his life is in her hands, a state she clearly enjoys since she is jealous of Mack and Polly“s relationship. Though both, the original by Brecht and Blitzstein“s translation have seen numerous interpretations, with each performer bringing his or her own sensibilities to the song, which range from the tragic to the sadistic, it is the addition of the black pirate ship with its insignia of death, which might not even be real in Jenny“s imagined world, but a ghost ship, which makes it a much more powerful tale of terror. Whereas in the German version, Jenny clearly has some sadistic fun with her revenge fantasy, in Marcus Blitzstein“s translation, the bodies pile up high, and to Jenny“s amusement, “That“ll learn, ya!”“ It“s unknown which interpretation of “Pirate Jenny”“ ultimately inspired Alan Moore. Perhaps it was the famous rendition by Nina Simone, or Lotte Lenya doing the Blitzstein version on American television in 1966 after she“d done the Brecht original on the stage in the late 1920, and in the German movie version of 1931 (Lenya had turned the English version of “Moon of Alabama”“, another gem by Brecht and Weil, into an instant classic long before The Doors covered it, made even more bizarre by Lenya“s very heavy accent and her out-there performance), but Jenny“s violent vision of murder stuck with Moore. When he and artist Dave Gibbons created their seminal limited comic book series Watchmen in 1986, it was the English writer who made the Black Freighter set sails again. And he told us how it“d all come about.
Convinced that in the world of Watchmen, in which superheroes and superheroines were real, and not very popular, there wouldn“t be any interest in comic books that featured these colorful characters, it was the artist who suggested the idea of a pirate comic series. Moore, a huge fan of Brecht, latched on to the idea and quickly came up with the name for this book, which Moore named “Tales of the Black Freighter”“. Throughout the narrative of Watchmen, pages from this pirate series appear. What you get in Watchmen issues No. 3, 5, 8, 10 and 11 doesn“t make up the two issues of a twenty-two pages comic, though, these are purported to have come from. As you learned from the “back matter”“ in Watchmen No. 5 (1987), these snippets and fragments came from issues No. 23 and 24. Both issues combined told the story “Marooned”“. Watchmen No. 3 (1986) actually starts with text excerpts from issue No. 23 of Tales. But like with Jenny“s song, we do not see what is going on. There are no pictures from the actual comic, that exists only as a comic throughout the series. But we immediately get a sense of dread which is only increased by the perspective. Like with Brecht“s song, this is a first-person tale, but the roles are reversed. While Jenny was observing the violence and was dishing out some it herself by ordering all of the prisoners to be beheaded, the protagonist of “Marooned”“, simply called “The Sea Captain”“ was on the receiving end of the terrors that came from this ghostly ship. Or to be more precise, he“d just been. Through his words we learn what had just occurred: “Delirious, I saw that hell-bound ship“s black sails against the Yellow Indies sky, and knew again the stench of powder, and men“s brains, and war.”“ Heads have been taken off their owners“ shoulders like in Jenny“s reverie: “The heads nailed to its prow, looked down; those with eyes; gull-eaten; salt-caked; liplessly mouthing; ”˜No use! All“s lost!“”¦”“ And as we learn from The Sea Captain“s words, he“s the sole survivor of an attack launched by this ship. And around him there is only death. His ship is destroyed. And so are his men. And their bodies now suffer the indignity of getting picked apart by hungry seagulls. It is only with the fourth panel of the second page that we“re awarded with a glimpse of the survivor. Not only is he alone and trapped on the island he has managed to escape to, with the bodies of his crew men washed ashore, we encounter him in the confinement of the comic book he lives in, a comic one of the characters in Watchmen is reading. This isn“t even a new comic, fresh of its four-color newsprint presses, mind you. The world of Watchmen is one of the 1980s, set on an alternative world, but not far removed from our past, that those who have lived through these days won“t recognize the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. Tales of the Black Freighter began in 1960 and ran for thirty-one issue until it was cancelled with series writer Max Shea also leaving. The words by Shea were of course provided by Alan Moore, and the artwork by artist Walt Feinberg looked a lot like it came from Dave Gibbons. Moore doesn“t make Shea“s artistic voice different from his poetic style of writing, and he doesn“t need to. Tales of the Freighter, and “Marooned”“ in particular, serve as a comment and a chorus to the main narrative of Watchmen. Both, the fictional comic in the world of a fictional comics series and Watchmen itself are interwoven. As far as the artwork is concerned, at first glance you could well imagine that Dave Gibbons tries to create the impression that here we have one artist, Feinberg, who is emulating the style of another artist with artwork that is both, an approximation of another man“s work and a pastiche thereof. Because in the world of Watchmen, the artist who came before Feinberg on the first nine issues of the series was legendary EC Comics artist Joe Orlando. Driven off the title due to creative clashes and Shea“s increasingly huge ego (Moore wasn“t devoid of irony and introspection it seems), he“d long left the series when “Marooned”“ appeared. The similarities between the very real Joe Orlando and the fictional Walt Feinberg are no coincidence either, nor are they hidden at all. There“s an obvious Orlando influence on Gibbons“ artwork throughout Watchmen. Not nearly as much in the linework, though Gibbons has a tendency to give the faces of his characters the same clean look that Orlando favored, but both artists have a propensity for the use of heavy inks. While Orlando“s linework can be almost as delicate as Al Williamson“s, his use of use of light and shadows with areas of shiny blacks demanding our attention, is more akin to Jack Kamen“s inking style. And Gibbons, especially in Watchmen, uses his blacks in a similar fashion. But this isn“t where the similarities end. While Moore and Gibbons use a highly unusual color scheme, that mostly foregoes primary colors or any colors that are usually associated with superhero comics (a task deftly handled by colorist John Higgins) both men were also scholars of the history of comics, and EC Comics specifically. Marie Severin, EC“s colorist, was wont to use green as the color to mitigate the starkest depiction of horrific images her colleagues threw at readers with their art. But with the same brush, a panel that came with green hues would tell readers to look more closely, that there was something horrible going on here. It is no coincidence that the very first look we catch of The Black Freighter arrives with a panel that feels drowned in green. Yet Gibbons turns this image on its ear. There is nothing frightening to see here. It is just a comic book picture of a “a ship with eight sails and fifty cannons”“, further removed from us the readers once we realize that it is an image in a panel within a panel that shows somebody reading an old comic. Since we follow what is presented to us as a story within a story and from the perspective of The Sea Captain, we know that this ship has long sailed, and what we see here is but a lingering image in his mind. This ship was neither the image of terror our fight or flight lizard brains had already created in our heads, nor whatever Pirate Jenny“s reverie of revenge had made her fantasize about according to librettist Blitzstein. Though there was still the Brecht version. At the hotel, the men treated Jenny as poorly as they always had, but Jenny began making the men uncomfortable, with them detecting a big shit eating grin on the chambermaid“s face. And while they wondered why she was grinning like that, with an aside she let us know: “And you still don“t know in hell who“s talking, / You still don“t know in hell who“s talking.”“ Clearly, she was more than met the eye. And so was this first image of The Black Freighter we see. And like with Brecht“s lyrics, we had the words of The Sea Captain, whispered to him by the writer of Watchmen masquerading as Max Shea: “The Freighter“s murderous onslaught had surprised us. We“d been blasted to fragments”¦ I thought of my family: vulnerable, unsuspecting.”“ The Sea Captain begins to understand his mission. He must find a way to warn his loved ones. With limited resources available to him on the atoll the attack on his ship had stranded him on, he begins to fashion a raft from the bodies of his deceased shipmates.
Contrary to what Moore wants us to believe, pirate titles never sold that well throughout the history of comic books. But the writer uses the supplemental prose piece with which he concludes Watchmen No. 5 to great effect for some further alternative worldbuilding and to convince us otherwise. Having a text with four pages as his real estate, Moore has another author talk about the history of pirate comics and their significance in the medium of comics within his fictional universe. Not only do we learn how the series Tales of the Black Freighter had come about, but he goes into the backstory of the publisher who was at the vanguard of this new trend in comics. With two series already established in the market, EC Comics was almost pre-destined to become a success story once this latest fad took off. Moore cleverly builds on two real comic series featuring pirate tales. In our reality, Buccaneers (published from 1950-51) was not a huge hit. It had taken over the numbering from another series as was not uncommon in those days and the title folded after only nine issues. And though Buccaneers featured some great art by Reed Crandall, who did covers and interiors and would join EC Comics“ artist bullpen in 1953, it was published by Quality Comics. The other title Moore has his fictious author mention, was indeed a book from EC Comics, but like the other series, it didn“t last very long. Piracy, which ran from 1954-1955, had only seven issues published, one of the first attempts by EC to find its feet again after the Comics Code of America had been established. Like with every other series the publisher put out as part of their New Direction line with the code“s seal of approval prominently displayed on its covers, this was a fade echo of what had come before but was no longer possible. Though Piracy did feature some fantastic covers and interior art that was superior to the output of any other comic book publisher during that time with the exception of National/DC Comics, it was a bland affair. While the series had some of EC“s best artists working on the title, Al Williamson and his co-inker Angelo Torres, Wally Wood, Graham Ingels, George Evans and Reed Crandall, Joe Orlando was not among them. Yet Moore“s author mentions him as not only one of the artists on this series, but as the most revered and most groundbreaking creator in this genre. So much so, that it would seem logical that National Comics“ editor Julius Schwartz would have motive to hire him away from the competition. And not only would Orlando bring his impressive talent, but he had amassed a considerable fanbase, that would follow him while they eagerly awaited the book he and Schwartz intended to launch. However, this idea of a rock star artist is something that feels very 1980s, the time of Watchmen“s inception. In 1960, the year Tales of the Black Freighter was launched, comic book artists didn“t have that kind of following. While cartoonists who did newspaper strips in the 1930s were certainly well known, and in some instances celebrities in their own right, comic book artists worked in a medium that was considered vastly inferior and most of them went uncredited, though at EC, Feldstein and Gaines did try to build up their artists with their “Artist of the Month”“ pages and fans did discuss the styles of the artists in the letters columns. Moore“s author makes it sound like Orlando was a predecessor to artists like Frank Miller or John Byrne, who not only received the adulation of their numerous fans, but who had their fans follow them from one publisher to the next. Still, this is a reality in the world of Watchmen as far as Orlando is concerned. From the supplemental material, which offers excerpts from the fictional book “Treasure Island Treasury of Comics”“, we learn that the first nine issues of Tales of the Black Freighter hold a special place with readers, since only these feature art by Orlando. Moore, via his fictious author, even offers some summaries for several issues. We quickly find out that though the dread from this ship is to be taken quite literally, within the context of the narrative, there“s a metaphysical element at play here as well. Tales of The Black Freighter No. 3 is about a sailor “who“s drowning, alternating between memories of his past life as they flash before his bulging eyes”¦ [with] horrific descriptions of what it is like to drown.”“ In the end, this particular sailor is another undead who walks across the bottom of the dark sea to take his pre-destined place on board the hellish vessel which is the one element that ties the tales from these thirty-one issues together. Where issues no. 23-24 are concerned and the story “Marooned”“, Moore is careful to not let the author reveal the final twist which he held back until issue No. 11 of Watchmen. It is with this issue that Moore and Gibbons show readers the shocking consequences of what his attempt to warn his hometown and his family about the vessel, which in his mind is approaching, has wrought him. Having shed his last inhibition when he murdered an innocent couple he took for collaborators of the pirates once he and his eerie raft had made landfall on the shore of Davidstown, he runs to his house, where he attacks one whom he takes for a watchman. Once he sees the fear in the eyes of his little children, he becomes aware that he“s threatening his wife. It is then that the narrator of the story within the story that is Watchmen realizes that the pirate vessel has not come to claim the town, but him. “Marooned”“ ends with him slowly wading towards the ship.
But with no actual involvement from Orlando in any pirate stories in our world, why would Alan Moore ascribe co-authorship for this series to this particular artist in the first place? Beyond the fact that Dave Gibbons not only showed the influence of the artist in his own work and it wouldn“t be much of a stretch to have the artwork of “Marooned”“ resemble the art of an artist who was doing a pastiche of Orlando“s work, Walt Feinberg in this case. A case can be made, that there is a recurring theme in Orlando“s stories that made him an ideal candidate among any other artist, or any other artist who“d ever worked for EC Comics at one point or another, Moore and Gibbons could have chosen. And Joe Orlando was definitely aware of what the two creators intended. During the time Watchmen was published, Orlando had been on DC Comics“ staff for many years and he contributed one drawing to the supplemental material which appeared in issue No. 5, depicting an especially gruesome scene from one of the comics he had created in the world Watchmen took place in. But as far as the theme was concerned, water as a motif of doom, of death and sometimes of re-birth, figures large in some of Orlando“s most powerful tales. And it seems also a bit of ironic, that even though the series had nothing to do with pirates whatsoever, Orlando saw his first published comic book art appear in a title called Treasure Chest in 1949. And while in the world of Watchmen, the first 30 issues of Tales of the Black Freighter had just re-appeared as reprints, Orlando did re-emerge as an artist in our world nearly at the same time. Billed as penciled by “legendary artist”“ Joe Orlando, DC Comics put out The Shadow Annual No. 1 in 1987. This issue, a forty-three pages long extravaganza that was written by Andy Helfer with pencils and colors by Orlando and inked by the great Alfredo Alcala, came as a prelude to a storyline Helfer was telling at the same time in the main Shadow series with one of the most popular comic book artists of the 1980s and beyond, Bill Sienkiewicz. Having been given its own comic series for the first time since the 1970s, Helfer“s version built on the re-boot by Howard Chaykin, who had moved The Shadow to modern day New York. And this world of neon and flashy greed was perfect for Sienkiewicz“ highly idiosyncratic art style which the artist, who had started out as yet another Neal Adams clone, was developing. The annual however, was set in the 1940s, with a stylish cover by Howard Chaykin. A fan of Orlando“s work, Chaykin straddled the line between the 80s and the 1940s with a perfect synthesis of hyper-stylization and pastiches of bulky matinee-idol-like men in three-piece suits and impossibly glamorous ladies in seamed stockings and high heels. Readers might have expected another issue in the vein of Chaykin“s Shadow mini-series “Blood & Judgement”“. A story that came with plenty of over the top violence in every issue, earning it a “For Mature Readers”“ warning. By then, this relative new disclaimer had already become a euphemistic short-hand for what you could expect: flying bullets, gore, blood-shed, sexy situations and, if you were lucky, sophisticated stories as understood by most readers, during this period of time, to mean stories with bleak and violent content. The annual was that, but times ten, though most readers who saw Orlando“s name or had read that he would be doing interiors on the double-sized issue, probably did not know who he was in the first place.
By the time this issue appeared, the artist who was born in Italy in 1927, the year Steve Ditko and Wally Wood were born, had stopped doing interior art nearly two decades earlier. Joe Orlando had just begun teaching art at the School of Visual Arts, helping a fresh generation of artists to hone their craft. He had trained his own talent by learning the necessary artistic techniques at the School of Industrial Art during the early 1940s before entering the U.S. Army. However, Orlando had long since held an office job, but at publisher DC Comics. He had come to DC as an artist, after stints at Atlas Comics (soon better known as Marvel Comics) and Warren Publishing and yet another very brief tour of duty at Marvel (where he worked on titles written by Stan Lee such as Daredevil). But Orlando quickly switched to the role of an editor when after sixteen years as freelance artist, Creative Director Carmine Infantino offered this job to him. Infantino and Joe knew each other from school and Orlando had already done some editing for James Warren earlier in the decade. With the artist soon responsible for a whole line of books (western titles, horror series such as The House of Mystery and The Witching Hour, and even war titles that were really ghost stories), Orlando no longer had the time for art. On top of that, Infantino and he went on a huge recruitment drive which took them to the Philippines at the end of the 1960s. While it was not an uncommon thing for older artists to discover new talents like Graham Ingels had gotten Frank Frazetta one of his earliest jobs in the industry, they did this on a much larger scale. They brought Tony DeZuniga, Ernie Chan, Alex Niño, Nestor Redondo, Gerry Talaoc and his future collaborator Alfredo Alcala to DC, a virtual who“s-who of late 1960s and early 1970s talent who“d infuse many comic titles with their raw energy and a look that felt unusual and pleasantly rough around the edges. In the meantime, the artist who had started out in 1949, moved up the corporate ladder. When his mentor, Carmine Infantino was promoted to the rank of publisher, and then unceremoniously fired by DC“s new corporate owners, this did not harm Orlando who was quickly made Executive Editor. Equally interesting though, he had heard some rather astonishing news. Kinney National Services, the little firm that could under the leadership of Steve Ross, DC“s new owner and very soon also the owner of a run-down movie studio called Warner Brothers, had purchased MAD Magazine, the last remaining publication from EC Comics. It might seem bizarre that Ross, the Morgan Edge like CEO who“d soon run Warner Communications, would enter into a sweetheart deal with MAD“s publisher Bill Gaines that not only saw Gaines sign a contract that pretty much guaranteed him free reign at MAD even after the purchase, but Bill also gained a seat on Kinney“s board of directors. Not a bad move for a man whose father, comics founding father Max Gaines, always had considered a failure. With him having worked for Gaines and writer-editor Al Feldstein on a number of EC“s titles during its short glory days in the early 1950s, including their humor comics, Joe and Gaines knew each other well. Though Orlando would contribute a bit of artwork to MAD from time to time, he made yet another career jump when Jenette Kahn was made the new publisher of DC Comics. Not only was she the first woman to ever hold such a prominent position in the world of comic book publishing, Kahn was only twenty-eight when she took office. Orlando was moved up to Vice President and Creative Director of DC Comics, with fellow artist turned editor Dick Giordano taking his job as Executive Editor. As for MAD Magazine and to explain Gaines remarkable rise after the Comics Code had almost put him out of business entirely in the mid-50s, the satire magazine not only sold three million copies each issue on a monthly basis, an unprecedented volume of units for anything related to comics or any comic-type magazine. Gaines had grown MAD into a world-wide empire by selling licenses to publish its content to many territories and markets around the globe. Surprisingly, the MAD world wasn“t done with Joe, yet.
The water motif that can be found in some of Orlando“s best stories as an artist, is right there from the opening page of The Shadow Annual No. 1. The issue begins on July 1, 1946 with a group of seamen on a heavily armed vessel of the U.S. Navy. The raging sea at the Bikini Atoll is once again not blue but has a sickly greenish hue like the water on the panel when we first meet The Black Freighter in the comic in a comic story of Watchmen No. 3. The guys are having a smoke while suddenly they get word that the time for the second nuclear test is nigh. In total, the U.S. testing program which ran from 1946 to 1958, would detonate twenty-three weapons of mass destruction at seven tests sites near the tropical island, raining down the destructive power of 42.2 mega-tons of explosive power on the region. The Navy had forced the indigenous population of the atoll to evacuate their homes, while warships of the destroyer class with their crews aboard were stationed around the respective test sites. While in reality, many of those men developed severe medical conditions just a few years after they had been exposed to various forms a radiation during these tests, the men aboard the ship we see at the beginning of “Fragment of the Sun”“ make it out alive. Though once the atomic bomb is set off in the second test called “Baker”“ (in what must have been one hell of a strange coincidence, Baker was also the last name of the artist who“d soon take over art duties on The Shadow once Sienkiewicz left), the Pacific Ocean around the ship goes red according to Orlando“s color guide and for the water to eerily and impressionistically reflect the red glow of the rapidly expanding mushroom cloud that begins to darken the sky. Lincoln Brundle, a seaman we see right before the other sailors on the crew run below deck, just wants to finish his smoke. Despite the guys shouting a warning, he“s cool as a cucumber. But he“s hit by the wave from the blast. He quickly goes overboard. Then the action cuts to a suburban street with a red car approaching. An officer steps from the vehicle and rings the doorbell of a nice house. A young woman who is dark-haired and rather lovely opens the door. This is when Mrs. June Brundle learns that her husband “is believed dead.”“ June is in tears, but she says she“ll be fine. And this is when we discover that she is the member of a religious cult. And while one of her congregation asks her to rejoice and have faith, June goes all Scarlett O“Hare: “For whatever fate once befell him. He“s in the Lord“s hands now!”“ Though she isn“t wrong, her husband is very much alive, the Lord doesn“t seem to have anything to do with it. Like The Sea Captain in Moore“s Tales of the Black Freighter comic, Lincoln has made it ashore. And like he, Lincoln sheds his inhibitions fast. He drinks water from a little pond while he notices that he is surrounded by death. The little atoll in the ocean seems to have been cooked in the heat from the nuclear blast. There is a dead sheep, and he digs his teeth into its flesh until he discovers that its boiled flesh is full of maggots which he spits out violently. When he spies a live animal, he quickly pulls out his knife. Lincoln, with one arm and the hand holding the sharp blade raised near his head on which he still wears his white cap, his muscular torso all tense and ripped, does look like an archaic warrior now or a crazed man. Alcala“s heavy inks fit nicely to Orlando“s smooth, yet very expressionistic pencils, and we see flashes from Alcala“s work with John Buscema on Savage Sword of Conan. And this is the beginning of a sequence of three panels that turn these events into a very personal horror story. The animal itself is feasting on the carcass of some other unfortunate creature, with blood dripping from its mouth and teeth. And as the camera pushes closer in the next panel, we see the animal“s red eyes and they stare right at Lincoln with intelligent intent. He is naturally freaked out. Like The Sea Captain, who sees a reflection of a pirate, of The Black Freighter and of himself in every citizen of Davidstown, the sheep is Lincoln Brundle“s mirror image. With art that does not look like anything else during his tenure on The Shadow, the highly talented Helfer next begins to spin a tale that carries the hallmarks of his satirical wit, but ultimately proves very uneven and is but a hodgepodge of many pulp elements blended together. Lincoln takes an exit for a while, which is a real pity, since these early sequences are perfect for Orlando. June is selling the gospel according to her cult leader who is Julius Strait, a former writer of science fiction stories turned church founder. We next see the spiritual leader when he talks to a planning committee like some chairman of the board. Strait needs a messiah, but fast. Though he did not shy away from having his doctors do some experiments, he isn“t pleased with the results. But alas, we have already guessed where the story is going. June receives word that Lincoln is still alive. But his flesh is now red all over and blistering. His one good eye is as red as the eyes of the sheep had been. Tasked with a mission by her spiritual father Strait, she“ll stop at nothing, and even without Orlando and Alcala“s rather explicit artwork (remember, “Mature Readers”“) one gets the idea of what“s going on from the words Helfer gives to June: “It“s been ordained, we“re his vessels, Lincoln”¦ from this sickness, his glory will spring forth. Believe, Lincoln”¦ this is our destiny!”“ Indeed, this is pretty gruesome material, and in a way, with many people in the 1980s very nostalgic for the 50s that seemed so innocent in the rearview mirror, Helfer, Orlando and Alcala deliver a perfect EC pastiche that is as reminiscent of Feldstein and Wally Wood“s “Spawn of Mars”“ as was Bruce Jones and John Bolton“s “The Well”“, which was published four years earlier in the short-lived series Twisted Tales which in itself was paying homage to EC“s series like Tales from the Crypt. Like Tales of the Black Freighter is a comic in Watchmen, the annual featured one of Strait“s science fiction prose stories, yet adopted into the new medium of choice, comic books. This was what Al Feldstein had done with about two dozen short stories by Ray Bradbury. And with a handful of the Adam Link stories, originally written by Otto Binder for pulp magazines to critical acclaim, and all of which rendered with beautiful, wistful melancholy by Orlando. For the comic story in the comic, Orlando offered a subtle wink to the audience. Whereas Gibbons does his best Orlando in Tales of the Black Freighter and throughout Watchmen, the art for the comic in The Shadow Annual isn“t handled by Orlando, but by Bill Wray, a young artist with a deep love for this period of time and EC Comics. Bill Wray, who called Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood and a handful of other artists from this era among his heroes, was also working for MAD during the time the annual saw print. And Wray had contributed three stories to Bruce Jones“ Twisted Tales as well. Like with the pirate comic, the comic series in the annual, called Weird Strange Science, serves as a subtext and as commentary on the main story. It is also interesting that Helfer chose a genre in which Orlando had seen his own start.
And speaking of girlfriend material, of course, Denton isn“t lacking in that department. He“s dating sassy girl-reporter Maeve Mallroy. Though the fiery redhead is on equal footing with the dashingly handsome hero like Dot Keey was with Rod Hathway in the Space Detective series the art team worked on, Maeve is introduced to the story while she“s under the shower. And indeed, her introductory panel shows her in the nude, with her upper arms and Orlando“s heavy shading effectively hiding what cannot be shown in a comic book market to a kid audience. Maeve clearly possesses a lot of agency of her own. Having learned about these pirate attacks on space vessels carrying valuable goods, she has boarded a cruiser herself in search of a story. And quickly after she“s found the time to change into a green dress, her ship encounters the sirens. But being young and strong-willed, Maeve still manages to send a distress call to Dave Kenton, who“s filling the time during her assignment with checking out the goods at a sleazy table dance bar in Marsport. Spurred into action, Captain Denton commandeers a space rocket and off he is into space. Since the rocket is not fully functioning and noisy as hell, he puts in some ear protection. As any guy would though, when he sees the lovely sirens out in space, he invites them aboard. This is when he meets Lura. And to show her that he is a guy willing to listen to what she has to say, he removes his protective gear, which of course proves a mistake. The way Wood shows Lura, her stance is wide with her knees turned slightly inward, her hands are placed on her pelvis and her feminine hips which sharply contrast with her small waist, she displays a self-assuredness which was normally the prerogative of a male character only, and with Orlando“s inks she gains a sleekness that only further highlights the strong sexual energy her body radiates. Consequently, Dave Denton is collared and chained, with Lura leading the charge once they arrive on their home world, Jupiter“s moon Mimas. And like any villain, she shows off her bounty, the spaceships she and her crew of female pirates have captured and the men and girls they have not only put into chains but have pumped full of drugs to sap “their will to resist.”“ This is the point when Denton has heard enough. He breaks free but is quickly detained once again by the pirate girls, and then he gets bitch slapped by Lura personally right across his ruggedly handsome face. He is brought to a chamber that reveals a fate worse than being a slave. The Captain is confronted with rows of exquisitely dressed men and women, quick-frozen like they are but beef from slain cattle. And among them, Denton spies his girl Maeve. Naturally, he is shocked, with the pirate queen standing behind him in her accustomed posture, mocking his plight with her words and her body language. Again, the space hero who hadn“t met his match so far, violently lunges at her. Wally Wood“s hero crackles with kinetic energy and testosterone, but clearly Lura is an experienced fighter as well. She quickly adapts her stance to afford him less of a target and to compress and focus her own energy. And with the camera behind her, Wood and Orlando get to show her ample posterior, dangerously straining the delicate fabric of her overly tight catsuit. Like a wound-up coil, Lura springs into action when she mercilessly pistol-whips Denton right across his face with grip of her blaster while her lipstick lips are almost black. Then, left to his own devices in the freeze chamber, Denton whips up some technical mumbo-jumbo to keep himself from freezing into a human icicle like Maeve. While Dave breaks free once again and he displays physical prowess, it is by poisoning the drinking water of the women with lactic acid, that he eventually defeats all of them. It is interesting, that a male hero resorts to a trope that is often given to female characters, namely employing duplicity and subterfuge, the avenues of deceit chosen by a woman or a coward in similar types of stories. But in the end, all is well. Dave is reunited with a thawed Maeve who welcomes him with open arms. The story offered Wood, and to a smaller degree, Joe Orlando, many opportunities to showcase gorgeous women in midriff-baring, very short outfits. But with the struggle Captain Denton faces when he goes up against the beautiful pirate queen Lura, one cannot help but be reminded of a series that was still ways off in Wood“s future, namely Cannon, with the beautiful, tough as nails agents from behind the iron curtain and the bamboo curtain Sue Smith and Madame Toy, the latter played like a pirate of the high seas especially. As far as his collaboration with Orlando was concerned, he and Joe both worked on the cover for the next issue, with both men doing pencils and inks this time. The cover offers interesting contrasts when compared to the cover for the previous issue for which Wood did the pencils alone. The raw eroticism is gone and, in its place, stands a polished, smooth sheen that Orlando gives to both the man and the woman we see on the cover. The couple looks like they have class, versus the in-your-face sex appeal that drips from Wood“s solo work. Everything feels a bit more dialed down and static, as if these two were quick-frozen by Lura. Though there is action, the blonde woman virtually has nothing to do, but to look pretty and afraid. They move like somnambulists, despite being attacked by a fierce alien creature which is huge. With that, both artists were not only gone from Strange Worlds, but from Avon. Orlando followed Wood“s lead and he began to work more or less exclusively for Gaines at EC Comics, who not only offered him more sophisticated stories, but the stately sum of $25 per page.
Once at the publisher of titles such as Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science, Orlando“s favorite motif carried through. In fact, the theme of being shipwrecked on a small island with which Tales of the Black Freighter opens, and The Shadow Annual No. 1, comes right with his first story for EC Comics. Published in The Haunt of Fear No. 9 (1951), an issue that actually came out two months prior to Strange Worlds No. 5, “Forbidden Fruit”“ (co-plotted by Gaines and Feldstein and written by the latter), opens with two people in a life boat who have survived a plane crash. They are Dick Baker, a young industrialist, and his lovely secretary Rita Simon, a dynamic that was similar to that of Rod Hathway, the wealthy aristocrat who was dating his blonde assistant Dot Keey in the Space Detective series from Avon, especially since once the shipwrecked pair makes it to a small island, Dick suggests that they should dispense with the formalities. Which he does entirely when he kisses Rita just a few panels later. With Rita confessing that she had been in love with him for a long while, they are an item now. Surely glad they made it to a place that offers them shelter from the open ocean, they make a startling discovery. There are no animals on the island, and while there is plenty of vegetation, the trees do not bear any fruit. But Dick managed to save a gun from the plane, for all the good it does them now. Then they discover a man-made fireplace. Surely somebody must be around on the island. And there are footprints which lead to the jungle. With his gun drawn, Dick follows the trail with Rita at his side. There is a man clearly, but he doesn“t want to be seen. The hidden guy tells them that they must go back to their raft and leave the island. Starved as they are, naturally they won“t listen. Once deeper into the jungle, they arrive at a clearing with a man-made stockage, and behind its high, wooden fence Rita glimpses what they had been looking for: “Look, Dick! Growing inside the stockade! A fruit tree, laden with fruit!”“ Again, the attractive couple hears the man“s voice and once again he urges them to “leave this cursed place!”“ The lovely Rita suspects that he is simply unwilling to share with two complete strangers any supply that seems so scarce on the island. It is the man behind the fence who introduces himself by telling them his sad tale. He used to be a sailor on a tanker. When the huge vessel exploded, with him as the only survivor, he was stranded here. Like they he discovered that there was no food on the island, except for this one tree that was already kept behind the wood fence when he discovered it while exploring the island. With no one around to either warn or stop him, he moved past the barricade and eat the sweet fruit. Soon he learned why the natives had built the stockage, and it was a hard lesson: “Little sores, like moldy growths, began to appear on my hands and face”¦ in a week, it had grown worse, yet, I could not stop eating the tasty fruit. Soon the ugly slime covered my whole body! My skin began to rot! Today”¦ six months later, well”¦ now you know why I won“t let you see me!”“ Dick and Rita leave the clearing, but they are not convinced. Being all by himself on this tropical island has either turned the man into a total looney or he“s simply antisocial and greedy. In any case, Dick vows that they“ll return in the night. And they do. With the man asleep in his little hut, they make it inside the stockage. Though Rita is a bit perturbed by the hidden man“s wheezing respiration, this doesn“t stop them from digging in. And with them munching on the sweet fruit noisily, the man rises from his slumber. He runs from his hut towards them and finally they see him. And he is as horrific to behold as he“d told them he“d be. These are his final seconds: “He“s”¦ dissolving into a pool of pulsating putrescent slime!”“ And this was how the story ended: “Rita started at the half-eaten piece of fruit in her hand”¦ then at Dick! Dick stared back! Feelings of nausea and revulsion swept over them.”“ Interestingly, there are some surprising parallel to the man“s story and Lincoln Brundle. Both are sailors who survive the open sea to find themselves changed after they“ve made it to a little island. In a bizarre twist, like Lincoln had passed on his sickness against his will to his offspring, the young couple is infected now as well. All of these characters find their humanity taken from them like The Sea Captain had found his inhibitions falling by the wayside. In his attempt to protect his family, he too, had shed his humanity.
After a science fiction story and a crime story, Al Feldstein wrote an interesting horror tale for Orlando which once again involved water. “The Thing in the Jar”“ first appeared in Weird Fantasy No. 11 (1952). The story started with an old farmer alerting a scientist to some strange occurrences having to with his pond. When his dog fell into the water, it got eaten alive. And the same happened to one of his horses. And when the old guy discovers too late that a young man thought it a good idea to cool himself off in the pond, he shares the same fate. There must be something in the water that eats flesh. The scientist belongs to the county“s health board, and like he has been trained to proceed in a case such as this one, he collects a sample of the water from the pond. It is only later in his lab that he and his assistant learn that the whole pond houses one alien life form sent to Earth to gather information for an invasion. The men succeed in destroying the pond, but the sample in the scientist“s lab tricks the cleaning lady into putting it into the sink so he can merge with the oceans, one large pond indeed. This was a very effective little horror story and a nice showcase for Orlando“s art with the artists displaying some strong work on the faces of the various characters involved who came from very different walks of life. It is interesting that with Orlando, Feldstein did not go his usual route of telling tales about gender conflicts of the new middle class in suburbia. There was something very classical, handsome in Orlando“s art, a folksy quality for the depiction of quirky people with lots of personality that Feldstein may have been inclined to use Orlando“s talent for a very different set of stories altogether, tales like “Who“s Next?”“ notwithstanding, which did feature the unfaithful wife of an older man. Whereas with Wood and Williamson he took his stories into the furthest reaches of outer space, Al Feldstein let Joe Orlando make good use of the places the artist had seen during his time in the army, the harbor towns of France and Greece, locations which must have been as alien to a ten-year-old child in America in the 1950s like the planets Mars and Venus. And this is exactly where one of Orlando“s best stories for EC takes place. Like every so often during his career, it was a story about a captain and his ship and about an island. With such a deep bench of highly talented artists like the one Gaines and Feldstein had begun putting together, it was a tale of contrasts. “A Rottin“ Trick, Tales from the Crypt No. 29 (1952), takes place in an unknown, far off locale which feels like it comes from a tale by Milton Caniff. American Clint Aston is running through the crooked, winding streets of a small Greek harbor town. The cobblestones of the pavement echo his fast footsteps. While he shoots quick glances over one shoulder to monitor the progress of his unseen pursuers, he needs to pay close attention to the arching entrances leading into narrow alleys. Everything about this town feels old and lived-in. The leaning two-story brick-houses have been around for centuries. By contrast, Clint is as young as the country he comes from, and he is financially independent while everyone in this little fishing town is dirt poor. But as we soon find out, Clint is no hero like he had stepped from Caniff“s Terry and the Pirates newspaper strip. While the citizens of this town have a code they live by, he has neither morals nor scruples. He is handsome, but to most of the people in this town he is a perfect example of an ugly American. The reason Clint is running now has to do with a married woman. Her husband is one of those jealous, proud townspeople, and he and his friends are chasing Aston since the man“s honor needs to be restored. But Clint knows a guy with a boat who can smuggle him out of town. But he needs to lose the crowd that is chasing him first. He makes it to the water and hides under the tarpaulin of a skiff that is tied to the dock. His thoughts about Nick, the fisherman who can help him, now let his mind travel back to the more recent past. With the American dollar paying handsomely in these backwaters, he had taken a touring car from Athens to the seacoast, where one night he stumbled into a bar. There was a girl on the stage who crooned a local tune into a microphone while the air was thick with the gray smoke of too many cigarettes. She was a local girl, but far prettier than most. Immediately, Clint invited her to his table. It is then that we see how beautiful she is, in an exotic way that bears some resemblance to Caniff“s Dragon Lady, but Essie is not the bad guy here. Right away Essie figures Clint for an American, one of the rich kind, at least comparatively speaking, though she“s not interested in his dollars or in his affections. At least not at first. She is engaged to Nick, a simple fisherman who does not own much, but who has his own boat. But still, Clint manages to woo her. He is good looking, of course, and he knows the way of the world. And while Essie believes in love, Clint lets the readers in on a secret: this is all one big game to him. What is interesting about this tale from an artistic perspective, “A Rottin“ Trick”“ is the story with which Orlando finally and rather strikingly establishes his own voice as an artist. While there is an “anything goes”“ sense of adventure, the atmosphere is foggy and foreboding. The colors are dark and dull to match the linework perfectly that creates a feeling of claustrophobia. And when it comes to Essie, she is as alluring as a classical Hollywood star of the 1940s. She“s most certainly sexy, but she also possesses a sense of class and humanity that feels real and earned. And whereas Orlando“s women are real, Wood“s women, who cannot help it with the way they are always front and center, are hyper-real.
Then one of the alien capturers appears to darken their door. But not only is the beast friendly with the men, and not only does it speak perfect English, the men are now presented with plenty of food. Indeed, the abundance and richness of the meal makes most of the men complacent if not even compliant. But the cowboy keeps raising the alarm, which annoys the other men. Once they get to the alien planet and they“re herded to a building, the men are surprised when they see that their living quarters are as richly decorated as they are opulent, and the food is even better than on their journey across the stars. This is the life. And most of the men grow accustomed to their new circumstances rather quickly. And to all of their amazement, things keep getting better when the girl from the splash panel enters their quarters with her womanly presence and her alluring scent. As one could have expected, the men go near crazy and well-nigh fall over each other. Eventually, one of them asks the question that isn“t the most obvious one, but the most important one to them: “Are there any more like you?”“ As the girl keeps toying with them, and her body language and her facial expressions conveys a carefully designed spiel of seduction, she tells them, yes, there were others like here. They were waiting in the next room, but the guys need to get into an orderly line, lest somebody might get hurt. With these men now buzzing with excitement as they are eagerly getting in line, the cowboy figures it all out. This is exactly how it works in his job. A group of cowboys rounds up the cattle. They are fed and then they are led to the slaughterhouse where they are lined up and stunned with a sledgehammer. They get hung up by their feet and their throats are slit with a long knife “so“s they bleed to death”¦”“ To get the steers into the slaughterhouse, and to avoid any panic among them, which would delay the process and cause an adverse effect to the quality of the meat, there is one animal to trick them, to distract their instincts, to serve as a decoy. There is a name for such an animal, one that comes with a religious connotation and thus promises salvation, but only for the Judas goat itself, or herself in this case, as he suspects with a glance to the beautiful young girl. Clearly, like Dick and Rita would not heed the warning of the sailor, they think him crazy. And there is still the girl who promises them more of her kind. But alas, her name might have been Jenny with the way she has them now all lined up nicely as each of them are about to lose their heads. With a smile on her painted lips and her soul already pledged to the devil who is the Captain aboard a ship with eight sails and fifty cannons called The Black Freighter, she simply says “oops”“ once the heads begin to roll rather quickly: “As each Earthman came through the doorway, following the well-trained decoy, one of the alien creatures stunned him with a blow from a blunt hammer-like weapon! Another quickly knelt and slit his throat with a razor-sharp instrument, not unlike a knife!”“ And true to form, Orlando depicted all this with the goriest details, not even leaving out the poor souls who had already had their throats slit and were now hung up by their feet to bleed to their death. It is the final panel which depicts these alien beasts at their scariest. Indeed, this was a crew of foreign-looking, cut-throat pirates who“d taken civilized sailors from England or Spain as their captives, but not to enslave them, but to kill them like all of them had received word from their pirate princess. This story was of course Feldstein playing on one of his favorite themes, namely men being led to their doom by a beautiful, treacherous woman, but it also lined up as the men had, with the themes Orlando would repeat throughout his career as artist. In fact, despite his obvious lack of any real pirate stories, it is no coincidence that Moore and Gibbons had Orlando in mind once they decided to make inter-textual references to pirate comics in their series that was one for the ages like Orlando himself was an exceptional artist, editor and mentor for generation of young, upcoming talent. And though Orlando never worked on Watchmen, his work is in the series, and to a much larger degree than his influence on Gibbons or the one panel he did contribute after all. The scene at the end of “A Rottin“ Trick”“, when Clint slowly, but purposefully wades to the shore of an island inhabited by the walking dead is an eerie precursor to the scene in Watchmen No. 11 when The Sea Captain turns his back on Davidstown and he wades through the water and towards a ship that has the dead as its crew, a ship called The Black Freighter. Stranger even, in a career that saw Joe Orlando manage to do what only a select number of artists ever achieved within the comics industry, going from freelancer to one of the highest positions in publishing, when the sweetheart-deal Bill Gaines had with Steve Ross ended with the former“s death, Orlando was named Associate Publisher of MAD Magazine. But then again, like a true pirate captain, or a first mate at that time, Joe, together with Infantino, gave a whole crew of highly talented artists a shot at the big table, like Bill Gaines had done with his artists.
Author Profile
Chris Buse (RIP)
A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.
