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May 18, 2019

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1544: The 3-D Zone #2, March 1987


Basil Wolverton's art is weird. Unsettlingly weird. His creatures are organic in a different way from this pre-Code horror co-horts. Where theirs, often, are liquidy, or melty, Wolverton's are porous. Everything has contour and texture, and on the stranger body parts these creatures sport, it's unpleasant. When we add a really excellent red/blue 3-D process, the effect is amazing.

I will caution, however, that it's not necessarily the sort of thing you want to read at 7 in the morning while eating breakfast. I'll admit, however, that the slight nausea added something to the experience of reading the comic.

Hands down the best part of the issue was a series of illustrations Wolverton did after leaving comics (I think) based on the Book of Revelations. Rather than having much Biblical imagery in the pictures, Wolverton translates ideas from Revelations into atomic age horror. Rains of fire are reimagined as nuclear explosions, the rotting and irradiated unfortunates left in it's wake the legions of the damned.

Again, not light breakfast reading.

I only have a bit more of Wolverton's art that I'm aware of. I'll perhaps try to track a bit more down. But I really do find it unsettling.

"You lie as though collapsed -- then whip up your gun, and with practically the last good spurt of flame left in it, blast the brain-bat atop Bitner's head!"

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