Cool Ass Cinema

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Cool Ass Comics: Monsters, Ghosts & Other Things That Go Bump In the Night

I figured I'd run off another entry while I had some of the comics out this evening. Most of the books featured here are one's I bought with my allowance when I was a kid and are presented here "uncut", warts and all complete with worn and crinkled covers.

HOUSE OF MYSTERY #279

HOUSE OF MYSTERY started out as a horror comic akin to the EC comics of the day. When the controversy surrounding those grim, yet artistic endeavors brought an end to such lurid storytelling, DC's series morphed into a superhero book such as DIAL H FOR HERO. Later on, it returned to strictly terror tales. It lasted 321 issues.

SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE was another DC horror title that ended in 1982. This issue, #43, was one of the last. The run ended with issue #46.

GHOSTS #71

GHOSTS was yet another horror title from DC, the home of such famous characters as BATMAN and SUPERMAN. GHOSTS ran for 112 issues ending in the early 80's around the time some of their other horror titles finished up there runs. Below are two additional GHOSTS covers as well as a look at the back covers for retro reasons.

GHOSTS #86

GHOSTS #89

Below is the back cover of GHOSTS #86 advertising a poster for something called STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979).

And then the back cover for GHOSTS #71 features a cool ad for some BATTLESTAR GALACTICA model kits. Anybody have these?

Charlton Comics had their own line of horror titles and they were told in the same style as everyone else's. All seemingly inspired by the trailblazers at EC comics, the Charlton series of spooky stories consisted of titles such as GHOSTLY TALES, GHOST MANOR, HAUNTED and BEYOND THE GRAVE. Below are a series of covers for some of them.

GHOSTLY TALES (#131)

GHOSTLY TALES (#158)

HAUNTED #75 (1984 reprint)

BEYOND THE GRAVE #7 (January 1983 reprint)

GHOST MANOR #71

GHOST MANOR #76

Comic book movie adaptations were a regular occurrence back in the day. Here's one for the movie THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986). Sometimes, movie adaptations would be broke up over several issues and other times, they'd be crammed into one 60 to 80 page comic book. The latter is the case with this one. The comic ends with the theatrical ending and not the original, downbeat ending.

Lastly, it's a couple of horror themed CONAN style comic books. One from DC and the other from Marvel.

This is ARAK, SON OF THUNDER issue #12. This issue obviously took inspiration from CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981; there's also a multi headed dog creature). This series featuring a Native American hero lasted for 47 issues.

This is CREATURES ON THE LOOSE #22. It featured the first of eight appearances by THONGOR, a character modeled after CONAN. This Marvel series frequently dealt with stories about monsters and fantasy characters. The series lasted for 37 issues. There was also to have been a live action movie in the 1970's from Amicus, the lead rival to Hammer Films, but the company went bankrupt before the film could be mounted.

UNTIL NEXT TIME...

Cool Ass Comics: Zombies, Leatherface and Things From Another World

This is a new column that focuses on various comic books. I figured I'd start this one off by sharing some cool horror comic covers I found while going through a bunch of comics I have in my collection. There'll be other horror comics featured here in addition to Marvel and DC comics from the 60's (my uncle gave me a huge lot of classics from the Silver Age of comics) up to the mid 90's when I ceased collecting. There were so many I never even read. I just bought them and bagged and boarded them.

This is the excellent Dark Horse Comics two part sequel to the Carpenter film. It has surreal artwork by John Higgins. It picks up right where the film ends wherein both Macready and Childs end up aboard a submarine where The Thing continues to wreck havoc leading up to something of a downbeat ending. I also got two or three of the 'Climate of Fear' series from Dark Horse based on THE THING. The cover to issue #2 is below.

This is DEADWORLD number 1 from Caliber Press. It's the first issue of volume 2 since the previous series from Arrow ceased. It's a B/W comic with color cover front and back. Those that like zombies will dig this series. The artwork is really quite nice.

This is Northstar Comics loose version of LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3. I only ever got issues #2 and #3. The artists were working from David Schow's original script for this four issue series. These comics are in color and contain spectacularly gory artwork that far outweighs anything seen in the movies.

These two LEATHERFACE comics were my first experience with comic books with such gruesome artwork in color. I used to draw a lot myself, and a lot of the pictures I drew were often kind of morbid not unlike some of the images seen in these books.

Here's FantaCo's first issue of a graphic comic of George A. Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The stark and brooding B/W art is the work of Carlos Kastro. Unfortunately, I never got around to picking up the remaining three parts to this series.

This is FantaCo's first two issues of the cult comic, GORE SHRIEK. I first seen them in a lot of my Fangoria magazines, but bought these two at an Acme Comics in Greensboro. The artwork is all B/W.