Oh, I have always loved everything about this story. SHOCK was EC's best all-around "serious" book and, in my opinion, as MAD is a precursor of undergrounds, these were a precursor of alternative(i.e. Clowes or Los Bros) comics.

What I like best about this and many others is that they don't fit neatly into a genre--they're just short stories, period, and it's too bad Gaines couldn't succeed in developing them into a fully-adult framework.

And is it just me that thinks Crandall was looking at THE BICYCLE THIEF a bit before doing the art?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Shock is my favourite EC title too (along with MAD). Also not bad is Impact, a sort-of successor but toned down to conform with the just-established Comics Code.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Those reprints of the individual issues of IMPACT were the first time I'd seen anything but "Master Race." I was struck by the quality of the work, but even more so that the stories suddenly seemed very safe and prone to happy (but still twist) endings. Then again, some of those are very good, the sweetest of all these sort of stories having to do with a poor little girl selling lemonade, a cranky shopowner trying to make her go, and a mysterious benefactor who keeps giving her more lemonade to sell. The ending is guaranteed to give even the most cynical person a lump in their throat.

I'll bet some of you are assuming, "Well, then, that's GOT to be Jack Kamen." Actually--it's Graham Ingels.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I know! It takes some getting used to, seeing Ingels illustrating a sweet, down-to-earth, non-gory story. But he did a few good ones during Impact's short run.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

I recall seeing the TV version of this; They made the dad less sympathetic by having him be the one who sold the baby in the first place.

(Reply to this)

Whoa! Nobody does it like Shock SuspenStories. I won't be leaving any babies of mine out on the street while I eat lunch!

(Reply to this)

Wow, that's fucked up. Two thumbs up, these old stories create more of an emotional response in me than most of the stuff coming out today.

(Reply to this)

This is a pretty intense story, all right, but I'm afraid it was somewhat spoiled for me by the writing style. There are almost no contractions in this dialogue - there are four, in fact. Four contractions in six pages of dialogue! Who the hell talks like that? "Come, Teresa. I am hungry. We will eat now." I mean, maybe if this were set five hundred years ago it would make sense, but this is set in what was then modern times. I've never in my life heard anybody talk like that, especially not a poor couple whom one can reasonably assume haven't had much access to higher education. It's really distracting.
Oh, and one more thing - WHO THE HELL LEAVES THEIR BABY OUT ON THE SIDEWALK WHILE THEY HAVE LUNCH? I mean, come on, people! 'Catching the sunlight' or not, that's just asking for trouble. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they deserved to get their baby snatched, but they came perilously close.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Agree with you on the annoying avoidance of contractions. Fortunately, Feldstein and the other EC writers did that very rarely.

In the discussion of a post on the old s_d (it was a story from Impact), someone said that the writer was imitating a particular prose author who wrote that way. Since comments aren't preserved in the old s_d archive, I couldn't tell you who that author was.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I suppose it could be Damon Runyon - he rarely used contractions in his stories - but he had a florid, tough-guy style that was usually applied to gangsters and detectives and suchlike, to show that they were tough buys. In fact, if I remember correctly, that post was in reference to a somewhat hard-boiled story, so it made a bit of sense there, even if it didn't work very well - it does not work here.

(Reply to this) (Parent)