Today’s offering features plenty of colour… which in my humble opinion does not detract in the slightest from a sombre, autumnal atmosphere with chills as palpable as thick mist. While you would not be amiss in deciding that this art comes from a European hand, it’s not a French one, despite the language most of the following pages are in.

Josep Maria Beà i Font, usually shortened to and credited as José Beá, is a Spanish comics artist — born in 1942 — who’s happily still with us. Fans of Warren-published comics may recognize his distinctive style, as he wrote *and* illustrated quite a few (around thirty) stories published in Vampirella, Creepy and Eerie, starting with The Silver Thief and the Pharoah’s Daughter published in Vampirella no. 13 (Sept. 1971). It seems that he is another of those love-’em-or-hate-’em artists, as while doing some research for this post, I stumbled upon more than one instance of opinions such as ‘my least favourite Warren artist‘ or ‘passable art‘. This is fortunately balanced out by those who seek out Beà’s stories, going as far as delving into Spanish comics while not being able to speak the language.

Beá’s collaboration with Spanish publishing house Buru Lan Ediciones starting in 1970 marked his return to comics after a 8-year break taken to focus on his painting. Specifically, it’s within the pages of its anthology Drácula that Beá started first scripting his own stories. These became available to an anglophone audience when The New English Library reprinted a number of its issues under the name Dracula (now there’s an easy translation).

A post from Very Creepy Blog explains:

« New English Library issued 12 English-language versions of the publication, which was originally produced by Buru Lan in Spain.  The New English Library publication ended after 12 issues, although it continued for many issues afterwards in Spain. Only the first 6 issues were included in the Dracula book produced by Warren, but one can probably track down the remaining 6 English language issues if they try hard enough. »

The following pages are taken from a French-reprint collection title Les nuits de l’épouvante, published by Dargaud in 1973 (I stumbled upon it years ago in a used bookshop, and instantly took to the art despite having no idea who Beá was). The dates I provide for their publication in English are from The New English Library’s Dracula, not the Spanish Drácula.

The following two pages are taken from Le serpent (written by Beà and Sadko*, illustrated by Beà), or The Snake, originally published in Dracula no. 3 (Oct. 1972):

La momie (written by Maroto, illustrated by Beà), or The Mummy, published in Dracula no. 4 (Nov. 1972) features some more memorable strangling scenes:

Finally, I would be remiss not to include some pages from Beà’s Sir Leo series, originally created for Drácula. Handsome Sir Leo is an English aristocrat who, in typical fashion, has walked away from his birthright… and walked into the arms of the supernatural, many dangerous adventures ensuing. The following two pages are from Sir Leo – le chat (written by Luis Vigil, illustrated by Beà), or The Cat, originally published in Dracula no. 8 (Dec. 1972). Read it here.

~ ds

* Amusingly, ‘Sadko’ is the name of a medieval minstrel in Russian lore, but in this case it’s actually the nom de plume of Luis Gasca.