(Blue Ribbon Comics 012, 1941)
Here’s a story about my powers of observation: I immediately noticed that our friend Rialb here had a backward name and spent a good half hour trying to figure out which Blair he might be named in reference to (a 1940s spiritualist? a famous skeptic?) before my eyes drifted slightly to the left and I took in the fact that the story was written by Joe Blair. I still have no idea why Joe Blair named the wet-rag villain of the story after himself, but let’s all be happy I figured it out before moaning about it here.
Speaking of wet rags: let’s discuss Rialb. He’s a fake medium who accidentally discovers that he can actually summon the spirits of the dead but seems to have a knack for bringing back spirits who wish their descendants harm. Further, the first time he does so is witnessed by crooked politician Paul Ventresco, who puts the easily pushed-over Rialb to work as his personal ghost-powered hitman.
The real stars of the story are the extremely grody ghosts that Rialb manages to conjure up. Just look at this gross old misogynist.
Shadow imp, skull-faced spectre, pointillism lizard-man… this comic has it all!
The real star is absolutely this skeleton-limbed hair-face who gets his bony ass kicked back to the netherworld he came from by Mr Justice before he can get up to any mischief. I really enjoy how the unchanging expression on his face reads as both menacing and sad depending on which side of the ass kicking he is.
Just a regular ghost.
It’s a bit of a letdown that the last ghosts we see are three sad sack victims of Ventrusco who Mr Justice calls up to cow the pair into surrendering, though he really only needed them for Ventrusco, given that Rialb shows no actual evidence of having a spine during the story – Mr Justice could have just thrown a sheet over a chair and gotten the same result.
