Last Respectsart by Graham Ingels, story by Al Feldstein
Tales From the Crypt #23[#7] (1951)
A nice example of the early EC horror, with Ingels doing a great job creating the mood with shadows and layouts, while keeping the actual extreme bits of horror off-panel.
This is the story of Anna, a wealthy young heiress living with her uncle, who falls in love with and secretly marries her chauffeur, Tony. Since she's underage, her uncle will disown her and annul the marriage if he finds out. Of course the uncle finds out, and keeps the lovers apart, causing Anna to waste away and die. Off panel, Tony kills the uncle in revenge, and visits Anna's body in the mausoleum with a doll he'd won for her at a fair. Unfortunately he gets locked in, and no one hears his cries until he's found dead a month later. Oddly he's only been dead for a day, as he was able to survive by resorting to cannibalism. Tasteful comics, weren't they? He finally died having been poisoned by the embalming fluid, meaning each of our trio of characters directly or indirectly killed one of the others, as the Old Witch explains in the conclusion, full of awful puns about getting "choked up" over the "meaty little tale".
As I said, a nice example of Ingels' skill at creating atmosphere, with a lot of panels in dark shadows, in the rain and the wind. He keeps the gore off-panel, which wouldn't always be the case, but gets the point across nicely in some of the facial expressions.
Wow, this ones interesting......it seems quiet differnt to EC's other stories. I like the way they someitmes use self-cannibalism as well. It is an interesting concept....although, it's a bit odd that almost EVERYBODY is willing (and courageous) enough to "eat" themselves. But why am I complaining. Its a good yarn
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