Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS Digest V2 #331

James Rogers (jetan@ionet.net)
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 16:29:21 -0500 (CDT) At 04:34 PM 6/17/98 -0400, Dick Tartow wrote:
>
>
>
>I seem to recall Spillane shooting a transvestite (or transexual -- forget
which)
>right in the gut as he/she tried to seduce and distract him by stripping.
>
>Chester Gould's bullet holes were, to put it mildly, abstract and not very
>horrifying --- if you've ever seen a real bullet would. Not that nice
clean thru
>and thru hole he used to draw, or am I confusing him with Fearless Fosdick, who
>was much much more hardboiled than Tracy.
>
>Dick
>
>
Actually, wasn't that Hammer's girlfriend at the conclusion of _I,
The Jury_? Not that I don't like the idea of her being a
transvestite....this will add a whole new dimension to the book.

The bullet holes were the least of it. Gould never forgot to let the
victims hemmorage so that the body was almost always found with a little
pool of blood coming from the mouth. I also recall one continuity that ended
with the criminal being scalded to death. Gould's art was never close to
realism, but for me his quick impressionistic shorthand was more suggestive
than any number of Alex Raymond "draughtsman". Sort of in the saame way that
the most horrible part of _Psycho, for me, is that imprint of "Mother" left
in the bed. As you point out, actual fatal wounds have the potential to be
pretty mind-boggling, and couldn't be portrayed in any newspaper....Gould
pushed the envelope as far as he could with his half-skelatal remains, etc.
After the 1940s, the strip went badly downhill, but for the first 15 years I
think it represented one of the few artistic achievments in the comics

James
James Michael Rogers
jetan@ionet.net

#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.