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Manny Stallman's "REVENGE" in this issue is one of the more blatant steals in comics history- lifted wholesale from Samuel Blas' 1947 story of the same title from Collier's magazine, that Blas himself adapted for the first episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, directed by Hitch himself in 1955, a year-and-a-half after this story appeared. Or IS it a steal? Blas wrote scripts for EC's crime titles, and GCBD lists no scripter for Stallman's "adaptation," ...does anyone know if Blas himself did the script? If so, it marks a unique distinction for Harvey, too often criticized for its slavish following the trail blazed by EC; whereas EC got caught swiping stories (by the author himself) from Ray Bradbury (by the author himself), it would be amusing if Blas adapted his own prose for Harvey, before adapting it for Hickcock and television.
A side note: Myron Fass' low-end Eerie Publications magazine line was notorious for copying both art and stories from b-grade and c-grade funnybook publishers stories of the 1950's, sometimes photocopying the artwork and adding gory details, and their early 1970's swipe of THIS story, duplicated word-for-word from the Harvey tale, is re-drawn from Stallman's story almost EXACTLY, panel for panel, literally copying the compositions, with cosmetic changes and of course the addition of Eerie's requisite cheese and unnecessary gore, such as the eyeless corpse head in the story's splash panel. |
