It’s easy to see why Lou Cameron was Ace Periodical’s star artist.
Although the small publisher provided work for such future hall of famers as Gene Colan, Mike Sekowski and L.B. Cole, Cameron’s imaginative splash pages, crisp story-telling and ability to evoke the proper mood lent his stories a unique edge.
Despite his prodigious abilities, however, Cameron is better known as a novelist than a comic artist. Since 1960, he has written dozens of stories under his own and a variety of pseudonyms and received a Golden Spur for his work in the Western genre.
The following story, which originally appeared in Web Of Mystery #19 (Ace, 1953), mixes elements of film noir with the traditional monster-of-the-week format. There’s the requisite hard-boiled narrator, shadow-filled alleyways and suspicious characters.
Oh, yes … and there’s also the small matter of museum statues coming to life and embarking on a murder spree. The fact that Cameron is able to keep such disparate elements together and tell an entertainingly chilling story is testament to his artistic skill.
The 13 Days Of Halloween continue with “The Night The Statues Walked.”
Eh, I don’t s’pose that anyone will be shocked to read that the invocation, whatever it might have been, wasn’t Greek.
Don’t think historical accuracy was a big priority for Ace Periodicals …
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