Never Enough... #5 (Krigstien and Motion)
There's never enough people talking about Bernie Krigsteien's "The Master Race."A couple of years ago, I contributed to a podcast a piece on "The Master Race," an old EC story about a man having to confront his past and the atrocities he was part of during World War II. It's an 8 page story from 1955, written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Bernie Krigstein. Feldstein's story is a perfect suspense story, showing the paranoia that can build up in one man's mind and that could drive him to his own death. Krigstein's artwork on this story is simply amazing. Krigstein captures time and motiohn like almost no artist before or since has done. In the first tier of panels on the final page of the story, the four panels which show a character running and stumbling practically stop time. It's a quick action but, almost like you'd see in a movie, Krigstein slows down time so you see each stage of his final fall. What's going through the characters's mind at this point? Does he know he's dead or is there still some glimmer of hope in his mind that he'll get out of the subway station and escape the black suited man that's chasing him. And then there's the final panel of the second tier, showing a train speeding by the man in black. This panel perfectly echoes the first page of the story, showing the comings and goings of the subway but look at how he once again slows down time. It's not slowed down so you see a single image of the train but Krigstein manages to practically create a doppler effect in art as the train whizzes by. It's a fantastic panel and one that I'm kind of surprised hasn't been lifted and used repeatedly in the last 50+ years. You can find scans "The Master Race" here.
