This Spooky October: Count Fangor

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« It’s a perfect likeness of the Count… right down to the most celebrated proboscis this side of Transylvania. »

A few months back, while sorting some old magazines, I came across a stack of early issues of Fangoria. Therein, I rediscovered a strip I’d just about entirely forgotten: WOT favourite Howard Cruse‘s short-lived (as a strip, not a bloodsucker) Count Fangor. A fitting topic for a Hallowe’en post, I thought… and so it is!

I haven’t seen issue one, but Howard Cruse was listed among Fangoria’s contributors from at least issue two. Truly a complete artist, Cruse provided lovely headings for various review columns in his distinctive lettering, as well as this subscription advert.
The Count’s — and his family’s — introduction, from Fangoria no. 6 (June, 1980), reportedly the first issue of the magazine to turn a profit though, I hasten to say, not through the strip’s intercession.

At first, Fangoria’s brass got behind the Count, but after a few full colour page appearances, he began his slow fade, his tee-shirt going out of print, his strip losing its full page *and* colour privileges.

From Fangoria no. 7 (August, 1980).
From Fangoria no. 8 (October, 1980).
From Fangoria no. 9 (November, 1980).
From Fangoria no. 10 (January, 1981).
From Fangoria no. 11 (February, 1981).
In the tried-and-true Warren Magazines fashion, a Count Fangor mask even made the rounds. I wonder how scarce these are.
This vestment is apparently quite a collector’s item nowadays. The difficulty of landing the right size only adds to the thrill of the chase. Dixit the Count, « Let No Blood Go Unsucked! »

I suppose Cruse’s bon enfant approach was at odds with the magazine’s ambitions. All too soon, poor Fangor was reduced to page filler panel cartoons, fine as they were.

From Fangoria no. 13 (June, 1981).
From Fangoria no. 14 (August, 1981).
From Fangoria no. 15 (October, 1981).
From Fangoria no. 16 (December, 1981).

Then he was gone… forever.

« Fangoria was a magazine series that ran for 344 issues, from 1979 through 2015. »

Despite my being a small-town teenager, Fangoria’s editorial direction and my interests soon went separate ways. I was more attuned to mood and mystery than the magazine’s average reader, who craved unlimited gore and grue. As slasher films came to predominate the genre’s cinematic palette, I retreated into other interests — à chacun son goût! — and, judging from my collection, the last issue I picked up was no. 23 (November, 1982). In the end, the far subtler Twilight Zone magazine was more my speed.

-RG

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