Panning the murky old print stream for the odd glimmering nugget
Hallowe’en Countdown 2017
October is here at last. For the first time in what we hope will become a yearly ritual, Who’s Out There? presents its fearful and frolicsome rundown of the 31 days of this moodiest of months.
It surely won’t shock you that the most difficult decision, in such a countdown, lies in crowning numero uno. There are, after all, plenty of worthy candidates. But one also seeks to avoid undue repetition. After a couple of false starts, I opted for a long-time favourite that’s never received its due.
Here, then, is Steve Ditko (and an unknown scenarist)’s expertly-paced department store nightmare, “Halloween Scene”, from Scary Tales #7 (Sept. 1976, Charlton). It occurs to me that Mr. Ditko is about to turn 90 in a couple of days… they didn’t call him “Sturdy Steve” for the alliteration alone, as it turns out.
As a bonus (Hallowe’en comes but once a year, after all!), have a peek at the issue’s fine cover and its original art.
Pencils by future “Good Girl” specialist (see his Haunted House of Lingerie series, in the name of research, of course) Rich Larson (with ink and airbrush work by artistic partner Tim Boxell).The published version offers reasonably accurate reproduction, though one misses some of the details hidden behind the logo. Nature of the Beast of Commerce…
Well, that’s it for this year. Happy spookfest to all, and see you next time, hopefully.
I pity inanimate objects Because they cannot move From specks of dust to paperweights Or a pound note sealed in resin Plastic Santas in perpetual underwater snowstorms Sculptures that appear to be moving but aren’t I feel sorry for them all.
Godley and Creme – I Pity Inanimate Objects (1979)
« Thought I’d inject a little excitement into this initiation… do I look any worse for wear? »
When EC überfanRuss Cochran launched his incredibly ambitious series of hardcover sets of the complete EC Comics in the late 1970s, there was simply no way I could afford the lot… so I gathered my shekels and mail-ordered a single volume of Tales From the Crypt (no. 3, midway through the run) and further managed to sweet-talk a nice lady at the local public library into ordering the first volume of Weird Science (years later, I would meet a couple of kids who’d become obsessed with the book, signing it out dozens of times and wondering how it had ever come to be acquired by our small, mostly francophone library).
Since the EC formula (meaning Bill Gaines & Al Feldstein) does wear thin with prolonged exposure, I gravitated to the outliers: Harvey Kurtzman, Johnny Craig, Bernie Krigstein, the Bradbury adaptations… but the true revelation in these volumes turned out to be John Benson and Bhob Stewart’s superb documentary notes, comprising astute analyses and eloquent interviews with the surviving participants… which are nowadays down to, well, colourist Marie Severin.
Anyhow, I was particularly intrigued by Gaines and Feldstein’s early system of “springboards”, which is to say that they based stories upon anecdotes encountered in newspapers and magazines. One title evoked time and again is Try and Stop Me (1944)*.
From John Benson’s documentary notes in Haunt of Fear, Volume 1 (1985):
« ‘House of Horror’ [Tales from the Crypt no. 21, Dec. 1950 – Jan. 1951] is even more directly derivative; the story is merely an elaborated version of an anecdote from the Trail of the Tingling Spine chapter of Bennett Cerf’s Try and Stop Me, which was the source of a number of EC stories. Kurtzman remembers the story as ‘an ass-breaker.‘ It was the first story he did for the EC line and he wanted to make a good impression. ‘It was the effort that got me the EC account.‘ ».
House of Horror was scripted by Ivan Klapper, who contributed a few stories, early in the EC horror titles’ run. He went on to work on John Newland‘s 1959-61 anthology show, One Step Beyond.
If you’re used to the usual rubbery, sketchy (but deceptively spontanous-looking) Kurtzman, brace yourself.
« At initiation time it was my idea to take the three neophytes we had selected and brundle them out to a deserted house about fifteen miles from the campus. It had been unoccupied for years, was windowless, sagging and ugly, and was said by the villagers to be haunted. We picked a black, starless night for the initiation, and all the way out to the place poured tales of horror and the supernatural into the ears of our three apprehensive freshmen. »« I watched him enter the deserted house. It was about two hundred yards from where we were gathered. His instructions were to stay inside for a half-hour, and then come back to us. When forty-five long minutes went by without any sign of him, I experienced my first uneasiness, and dispatched the second freshman to fetch him. Ten more minutes went by. Nothing happened. There wasn’t a sound anywhere. The fire was burning low – we just sat there, quietly watching. »« ‘These kids are a little too smart for their own good’, I said at last. ‘Davis, get in there and bring them back fast,’ Davis was our prize conquest – a handsome, two-hundred-pound boy whose scholastic records foreshadowed an almost certain place on the next year’s All-American squad. He had already been elected president of the freshman class. »« The first thing that struck me when I entered was a musty smell like the smell of an attic full of old books and newspapers. I yelled for the boys, and poked my flashlight into every corner but there wasn’t a sign of them. Only a faint, steady tap that seemed to come from the roof. »The relevant illustration, by Carl Rose, from Try and Stop Me’s original version. « I stuck my head through the open skylight. There was Davis, stretched out on his stomach! His hair had turned snow-white. His eyes rolled in his head. He was mad as a hatter. In his hand he held a hammer covered with blood. » « He died in the college hospital the next morning without uttering a single syllable. We never found any trace of the other two boys… »
*I lucked out and found a nice copy in the 1980s… for $4.50, according to the usual lightly-pencilled note on the flyleaf.
« Hasn’t the weather been gray, drizzly, foggy and oppressive? »
« Yes, just lovely! »
Tom Eaton’s Oliver Cool strip appeared in The Saturday Evening Post Company’s Young World. YW had picked up, in 1972, the numbering (but not the title) of Western Publishing’s Golden Magazine. Of writer-illustrator Tom Eaton, little is to be found online, though he’s left a considerable body of work, such as fun books like Chicken-Fried Fudge and Other Cartoon Delights (1971), Captain Ecology, Pollution-Fighter (1974), Book of Marbles Marvels (1976) and The Beastly Gazette (1977). His Fizz & Farra in the Year 2250 comic strip also ran in Child Life magazine in the late ’70s.
A snatch of autobiography found on the back cover of Captain Ecology, circa 1974: « Tom Eaton is probably 30 or 40 years old, and lives with a tribe of baboons in a water tower on the outskirts of Chanute, Kansas. He writes and draws everything himself, with almost no help from his dog, Oscar. This is not his first book. His goal in life is to buy the state of Massachusetts and change its name to something he can spell. »
The issue in question bore a spiffy Halloween-themed cover by George Sears… so here it is.
« I hope I will not be accused of undue vanity if I publicly thank Mr. Addams for immortalizing me in the person of the witch’s butler, to say nothing of the rather hairy gentleman whose clothes are strangely cut and who appears to subsist on a diet of bananas. » — Boris Karloff, from his foreword to the Addams collection Drawn and Quartered (Random House, 1942)
At the risk of being obvious, the ghoulish wit of Charles Addams brings us Hallowe’en on any old day of the year… but it’s no reason to take him for granted when the proper season slinks into view. Here’s a small selection of favourites. I’ve noticed that many latter-day collections have been plagued by terrible reproduction (heads should roll for that particular crime against art!), so I’ve gone back to the original collections in my library. Enjoy, fiends!
A lovely piece originally featured on the cover of The New Yorker‘s November 2, 1963 issue. This logo-free version was reprinted in The Groaning Board (Simon and Schuster, 1964.)Addams at his understated best. A 1953 cartoon collected in Homebodies (1954, Simon and Schuster.)« Well, here’s where I say good night. » A Morticia prototype from an undated cartoon collected in the first Addams collection, Drawn and Quartered (Random House, 1942.)« While you’re here, there’s a squeaky trap-door I’d like you to look at. » That’s the Morticia we’ve come to know. Also reprinted in Drawn and Quartered (Random House, 1942.)
Marvel’s Dynamite Magazine ersatz, Pizzazz (15 issues, 1977-79), despite ratcheting its model’s celebrity coverage by several notches, while providing the House of Ideas’ usual rabid circle-jerking… wasn’t all bad. For one thing, there was its inspired recycling of Harvey Kurtzman’s splendid Hey Look! one-pagers from the 1940s, lovingly recoloured and presented with painstaking attribution. Fan on board!
And when Pizzazz reached beyond the Bullpen for ink slingers, it often struck paydirt, landing a heady mix of established and burgeoning talent, such as Jon Buller, John Holstrom, Bobby London, Ken Weiner (aka Ken Avidor), Rick Meyerowitz… and Graham Hunter.
The original caption: « Have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN! PIZZAZZ SAYS THANKS… Look at this picture. If you’ve ever written us, you may find your name in it. If not, take a look next month, or a few months after.PIZZAZZ says a big, warm THANK YOU to everybody who’s written us. And KEEP THE MAIL COMING – some month maybe your name will be in the picture! » The feature ran for the final seven issues of the magazine (including a gorgeous Xmas double spread.) This was Pizzazz no. 13 (October, 1978, Marvel). Say, is that your name in there?
Hunter was a bafflingly brilliant pick: his career in comics, as far as I know, consists in the main of a string (1946-47) of one-pagers featuring early soft drink product placement shill/mascot, the prosaically-named Pepsi, the Pepsi-Cola Cop. Guess what he was pushing!
This is Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact vol. 17 no. 4 [310] (October 26, 1961). The issue features TC’s strident screed This Godless Communism, illustrated by EC veteran Reed Crandall. It still sucks. I said they were entertaining, but I draw the line at reactionary politics. Read it for yourselfright here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.Of greater interest is the handful of covers Hunter created for the surprisingly entertaining Catholic comic book Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact, and this is what must have landed him the Pizzazz gig, a couple decades down the pike.
Nailing this sort of humorous bird’s-eye-view crowd action scene requires some rather astonishing artistic chops. Perspective, proportions, movement, comic exaggeration… and that’s just the basics. This sort of thing was popularized by Dudley Fisher’s Right Around Home strip, which débuted in 1938.
A Right Around Home Sunday from 8-20-39 (King Features Syndicate). Here’s a fine, informative article about the strip, from the indispensable comics mag Hogan’s Alley.
« I’m doing some new phony ghost effects and these hicks just eat it up! Show ‘em a ghost and they’ll swear they recognize it! »
Is it just me, or are horror covers more effective when they’re basically wordless? EC and DC and Charlton got it, but Marvel never did, with its protagonists/victims standing around uselessly pointing out the obvious: “Oh no! We’re trapped with… the Thing that walks!” “Uh, honey, I think it’s more of a Thing that shambles!”
This is House of Mystery no. 236 (October, 1975, DC) and it’s quite an issue on the inside too: Steve Ditko with Mike Royer inks (“Death Played a Sideshow“), and Paul Kirshner with Neal Adams inks (“Deep Sleep“.) Lest we forget: this fine cover palette brought to you by Tatjana Wood.
… and since this is our first, sadder Hallowe’en without the macabre Bernie Wrightson (1948-2017) to inspire us, let’s have one more shot, shall we?
This is the frontispiece ushering us into issue 219 (Nov. 1973) of DC’s House of Mystery.
Interestingly, BW’s signature (at bottom, on the spine of a book in the centre) is reversed, which makes one wonder whether the image was flipped before dialogue was added. On the other hand, perhaps it made for better arcane lettering for a dusty grimoire.
« No, obese one. I am not dead… not in a manner you would comprehend. »
Here we present Luis Angel Dominguez’s (born 1923, Argentina) splendiferous cover painting for Marvel’s Dracula Lives no. 5 (March, 1974). Pure velvety ambiance.
… and the printed version, bogged down with the usual Marvel ’nuff said (as if) hard sell copy. Now you know what you were missing. Sorry about that… it can be disconcerting.
To give credit where credit is due, the colour reproduction is fairly faithful (as these things go) and quite a bit of detail is retained. That hardly ever happened!
« If you didn’t have a shootin’ iron, I’d give you a fust class spankin’! »
I bet you say that to all the boys.
Here’s a nostalgic entry cover-featuring the official bogeymen of Hallowe’en ’43: Adolf, Benito and Hirohito (Uncle Joe was still our “friend”.)
This is 4Most vol. 2 no. 4 (Novelty Press, Fall, 1943). This anthology ran for 36 issues, published between 1942 and 1949. Cover artwork by longtime Superman chronicler Al Plastino.
Gorsh dagnabbit, you can read the whole consarned issue right here, thanks to comicbookplus.com.
« Join the Group Gripe by sending in your own Bummer, and our Dynamite artist might pick your idea to illustrate. »
Bummers was a long-running feature (from the first to the final issue, in fact) in the pages of Scholastic’s Dynamite Magazine (165 issues, 1974-92), whose success was due, in no small part, to the winningly wobbly style of its illustrator, Jared Lee (b. 1943).
Here’s a selection of the finest Halloween-themed bummers from issues 4 (Oct. 1974) and 65 (Oct. 1979). Was any one of these yours?
It was bound to happen: two kids groused about the very same thing, and someone lost track. Well, kids, just be thankful the apples weren’t spiked with needles or razor blades. Left: the 1974 version. Right: the 1979 reprise. Note that Mr. Lee wasn’t about to repeat himself visually.
« Newly dead, the gases of decomposition moving in the stomach… moving the body like a rag doll whose lips flutter and belch… »
Atlas anthology Men’s Adventures (25 issues, 1950-54) was a pretty schizoid entity, with an editorial emphasis waffling from your typical would-be rugged he-man stuff (issues 4* to 8) to battle action (9 to 20) to mild horror (21-26) to, as a last resort, superheroes (27-28).
Russ Heath delivers his usual fine job for Men’s Adventure no. 26 (March 1954, Atlas). I like the matching green outfits on the cadavers. Yay, team!
In the mid-1970s you could tell that Marvel was running low on reprintable pre-Code material when items from Men’s Adventure began to pop up in its mystery anthologies.
Our cover story turned up then in Chamber of Chills no. 20 (Jan. 1976) announced by this ridiculous Ron Wilson/Dan Atkins cover. There’s a Broadway musical in there, I swear.
Since this was 1970s Marvel, the corpse is not only well-preserved, he’s buff as it gets. For comparison, read “Midnight in the Morgue” (writer unknown, art by Dick Ayers), with our thanks and a fond tip of the hat to The Horrors of It All blog.
A more haunting variation on the “trapped in the morgue with the not-quite-dead” theme is Nostalgia Press’ historically significant Horror Comics of the 1950’s (1971, edited by Bhob Stewart, Ron Barlow and original publisher Bill Gaines), which gathered, in full colour, 23 EC classics, including one previously unpublished story, An Eye for an Eye. The cover revives (ha!) Al Feldstein’s Tales From the Crypt no. 23 art from 1951.
Like many fellow modern-day EC Fan-Addicts, this book first came to my attention through the Captain Company catalogue that occupied the back pages of Warren Magazines. So many elusive, haunting grails… many of them turning out to be great beyond all reasonable expectations.
*the actual first issue… typical 1950s comics numbering scheme.
To give credit where credit is due, the colour reproduction is fairly faithful (as these things go) and quite a bit of detail is retained. That hardly ever happened!
– RG
Who's Out There? 