Category: Horror Stories

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Melusine volume 5: Tales of the Full Moon


By Clarke & Gilson, coloured by Cerise; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)

ISBN: 978-1-84918-212-6 (album TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Historically, whenever we used to feel out of sorts we’d consult the wise women to pull our fat out of the fire. Thus as we’re still sick and I’m out of pre-completed reviews here’s a sample of that and me being too clever for my own good.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings…

Witches – especially cute, sassy and/or teenaged ones – have a surprisingly long pedigree in all branches of fiction, and one of the most seductively engaging first appeared in venerable Belgian comic Le Journal de Spirou way back in 1992.

Mélusine is actually a sprightly (119 years old) neophyte sorceress diligently studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ School. To make ends meet she spends her off-duty moments working as au pair/general dogsbody to a shockingly disreputable family of haunts & horrors inhabiting and/or infesting a vast, monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau during some chronologically adrift, anachronistically awry time in the Middle-ish Ages…

Episodes of the much-loved feature are presented in every format from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales; each and all riffing wickedly on supernatural themes and detailing Melusine’s rather fraught existence. Our magical maid’s life is filled with daily indignities: skivvying, studying, catering to the appalling and outrageous domestic demands of the master and mistress of the castle and – far too occasionally – schmoozing with a large and ever-increasing circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

The strip was devised by writer Françoise Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humourist Frédéric Seron – AKA Clarke – whose numerous features for all-ages LJdS and acerbic adult humour Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continué… and Le Miracle de la Vie. Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as “Bluttwurst” Les Enqu?tes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical & genre pieces like Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes. He was obviously cursed by some sorceress and can no longer enjoy the surcease of sleep…

Collected Mélusine editions began appearing annually or better from 1995 onwards, with the 27th published in 2019. Thus far thanks to Cinebook, five of those have shape-shifted into English translations, but there have been ads for a sixth…

Continentally released in October 2002, Contes de la pleine lune was the 10th groovy grimoire of mystic mirth and is again most welcoming: primarily comprised of single or 2-page gags starring the enticing enchantress and delightfully eschewing continuity for the sake of new readers’ instant approbation. When brittle, moody, over-stressed Melusine isn’t being bullied for her inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the castle; ducking cat-eating monster Winston; dodging frisky vampire The Count or avoiding unwelcome and often hostile attentions of horny peasants and over-zealous witch-hunting priests, the wily witchlette can usually be found practising spells or consoling/coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

Unlike Mel, this sorry sorceress-in-training is a real basket case: her transformation spells go appallingly awry; she can’t remember incantations and her broomstick-riding makes her a menace to herself, any unfortunate observers… and even the terrain and buildings around her.

As the translated title suggests, Tales of the Full Moon dwells on demolishing fairy fables and bedevilling bedtime stories but also gives proper introduction to Mel’s best friend Krapella: a rowdy, roistering, mischievous and disruptive classmate who is the very image of what boys want in a “bad” witch…

This tantalising tome is filled with narrative nostrums featuring the traditional melange of slick sight gags and pun-ishing pranks highlighting how our legerdemainic lass finds a little heart’s ease by picturing how one day she’ll have her very own Prince Charming. Sadly, every dream ends – usually because there’s something sticky that needs cleaning up – but Melusine absolutely draws the line when Cancrelune (and even her own sweetness-&-light Fairy cousin Melisande!) start hijacking her daydreams…

This fusillade of fanciful forays concludes with eponymously titled, extended episode Tales of the Full Moon wherein Melusine is ordered to read a bedtime story to the Count’s cousin’s son: obnoxiously rambunctious junior vampire Globule, who insists on twisting her lovely lines about princesses and princes into something warped and Gothic… and even that’s before Cancrelune starts chipping in with her own weird, wild suggestions and interjections…

Wacky, wry, sly, infinitely inventive and uproariously funny, this arty arcana of arcane antics is a terrific taste of Continental comics wonderment: a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read well before bedtime – or you’ll be up laughing all night…
Original edition © Dupuis, 2002 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2014 © Cinebook Ltd.

Speaking of Dark Nights, today in 1915 Bob Kane was born. Whatever happened to him?
Today in 1906 Golden Age comics scripter Joe Samachson was born. He’s all over this blog so just initiate a little search dialogue action to know more.

And in 1938 the inimitable E.C. “Elzie” Segar died. We last worshipped at his salty feet with Popeye: The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays volume 4: Swea’Pea and Eugene the Jeep (February 1936 – October 1938); so should you as soon as possible.

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Chas Addams Happily Ever After: A Collection of Cartoons to Chill the Heart of You


By Charles Addams (Simon & Schuster)
ISBN: 978-1-43910-356-2 (PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. It also has Discriminatory Content included for comedic and satirical effect.

Cartoonist Charles Samuel Addams (1912-1988) was a distant descendant of two American Presidents (John Adams & John Quincy Adams). He compounded that hereditary infamy by perpetually making his real life as extraordinary as his dark, mordantly funny drawings.

Born into a successful family in Westfield, New Jersey, the precocious, prankish, constantly drawing child was educated at the town High School, Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York City’s Grand Central School of Art, and apparently spent the entire time producing cartoons and illustrations for a raft of institutional publications.

In 1932 he became a designer for True Detective magazine – “retouching photos of corpses” – and soon after started selling drawings to The New Yorker. In 1937, at the peak of popular fascination in cinematic and literary horror stories, he began a ghoulish if not outright macabre sequence of family portraits that ultimately became his signature creation. However, during WWII, he toned down the terror and served with the US Signal Corps Photographic Center, devising animated training films for the military.

Whether Addams artfully manufactured his biography to enhance his value to feature writers or was genuinely a warped and wickedly wacky individual is irrelevant, although it makes for great reading – especially the stuff about his wives – and, as always, the internet is eager to be your informative friend…

What is important is that in all the years he drew and painted those creepily sardonic, gruesome gags and illustrations for The New Yorker, Colliers, TV Guide and so many others, he beguiled and enthralled his audience with a devilish mind and a soft, gentle approach that made him a household name long before television turned his characters into a hit. This was a substantial part of what generated the craze for monsters and grotesques that lasts to this day. That eminence was only magnified once the big screen iterations debuted. And now we have streaming fun too. He would have loved the sheer terrifying inescapability of it all…

As he worked on unto death, Addams got even wackier: marrying his third wife in a pet cemetery, spending an absolute fortune collecting weapons and torture devices – “for reference don’cha know” – and inventing… recipes…

There will be more on that last one another time but what really matters is that older collections of his oeuvre are finally being unearthed. This one – compiled from Addams’s personal archive, with many previously unpublished gems, explores the widest gamut of emotion, from ecstatic love to disappointed affection to murderous obsession. It’s a creepy corker demonstrating that love really does hurt…

Chas Addams Happily Ever After: A Collection of Cartoons to Chill the Heart of You opens in full scholar mode with ‘Chas Addams’ a photo-essay appreciation by H. Kevin Miserocchi, backed up by an explanation of the work of the ‘Tee and Charles Addams Foundation’ – remembering of course that the Tee here is his truly kindred spirit third wife Marilyn Matthews Miller-Addams (1926–2002).

Then the cartoon carnival commences with early works as ‘In the Beginning’ sets the cultural scene with crime, terror, murder and the ever-lurking supernatural before the remainder of the perilous pictorium offers insights into what used to be called “the war of the sexes”. This socially sensitive selection judiciously deals even handedly with ‘His Side’ and ‘Her Side’ before going on to test ‘His Resolve’ and ‘Her Resolve’…

The matter is naturally settled in revelatory style with ‘The Final Score’…

For clarity and pure knowledge this hilariously judgemental tome closes with a full list of ‘Dates of First Publication’ and the happy confirmation that a goodly proportion of the gags are new/unpublished until this time.

Should you not be as familiar with his actual cartoons as with the big and small screen legacy Addams unleashed, you really owe it to yourself to see the uncensored brilliance of one of America’s greatest humourists. It’s dead funny…
© 2006 by Tee and Charles Addams Foundation. All rights reserved.

Today in 1897 English writer & cartoonist Charles Henry Ross died. He’s one of the chaps accused of inventing comics with his disreputable rogue Ally Sloper. The closest we’ve got yet to exposing that rapscallion was in Great British Comics.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula


By Bram Stoker & Fernando Fernández (Catalan Communications/Del Rey Books)
ISBN: 978-0-34548-312-6 (Del Rey)
DLB: 18118-1984 (Catalan)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Here a gloriously OTT example of Anglo-European collaboration long overdue for reconsideration and another go-round…

Multi-disciplinary Spanish artist Fernando Fernández began working to help support his family at age 13 whilst still at High School. He graduated in 1956 and immediately began working for British and French comics publishers. In 1958 his family relocated to Argentina and whilst there he added strips for El Gorrión, Tótem and Puño Fuerte to his ongoing European and British assignments for Valentina, Roxy and Marilyn.

In 1959 he returned to Spain and began a long association with Fleetway Publications in London, generating mostly war and girls’ romance stories. By the mid-1960’s he was experimenting with painting: selling book covers and illustrations to a number of clients. He resumed comics work in 1970, creating a variety of strips (many of which found their way into US horror magazine Vampirella), the successful comedy feature ‘Mosca’ for Diario de Barcelona and educational strips for the publishing house Afha.

Increasingly expressive and experimental as the decade passed, Fernández crafted ‘Cuba, 1898’ and ‘Círculos’ before, in 1980, beginning his science fiction spectacular Zora y los Hibernautas for the Spanish iteration of US fantasy magazine 1984. It eventually made it into English via Heavy Metal magazine as Zora and the Hibernauts.

He then adapted this moody, Hammer Films-influenced version of Dracula for the Spanish iteration of Creepy, before (working with Carlos Trillo) moving on to mediaeval fantasy thriller La Leyenda de las Cuatro Sombras. That done, he created illustration series Galería de Personajes Fantásticos, Argón, el Salvaje and a number of adaptations of Isaac Asimov tales in Firmado por: Isaac Asimov and Lucky Starr – Los Océanos de Venus.

His last comics work was Zodíaco, begun in 1989, before mounting heart problems curtailed the series and he returned to painting and illustration. He died in August 2010, aged 70.

For his interpretation of the gothic masterpiece under review here, Fernández sidelined the expansive, experimental layouts and lavish page design that had worked so effectively in Zora and the Hibernauts, opting for a moodily classical and oppressively claustrophobic, traditional page construction: trusting to his staggering mastery of colour and form to carry his luxuriously mesmeric message of mystery, seduction and terror.

The story is undoubtedly a familiar one and the set pieces are all executed with astounding skill and confident aplomb as, in May 1897, English lawyer Jonathan Harker is lured to the wilds of Transylvania and horror beyond imagining wherein an ancient bloodsucking horror prepares to move to the pulsing heart of the modern world. Leaving Harker to the tender mercies of his vampiric harem, Dracula voyages by schooner to England, slaughtering every seaman aboard the S.S. Demeter and unleashing a reign of terror throughout the sedate, complacent British countryside.

Meanwhile, in the seat of Empire, Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray finds her flighty friend Lucy Westenra fading from troublesome dreams and an uncanny lethargy which none of her determined suitors, Dr. Jack Seward, Texan Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood – the future Lord Godalming – seem capable of dispelling…

As Harker struggles to survive in the Carpathians, in Britain, Seward’s deranged but impotent patient Renfield confesses to horrifying visions and becomes greatly agitated. Freshly arrived in England, the Count is already causing chaos and disaster, as well as constantly returning to rapidly declining Lucy. His bestial bloodletting prompts her three beaux to summon famed Dutch physician Abraham Van Helsing to save her life and cure her increasing mania.

Harker survived his Transylvanian ordeal, and when nuns summoned Mina she rushed to Romania where she married him in a hasty ceremony to save his health and wits…

In London, Dracula renews his assaults and Lucy dies, only to be reborn as a predatory child-killing monster. After dispatching her to eternal rest, Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward & Morris – joined by recently returned and much-altered Harker and his new bride – resolve to hunt down and destroy the ancient evil in their midst, following a chance encounter in a London street between the newlyweds and the astoundingly rejuvenated Count…

Dracula, however, has incredible forces and centuries of experience on his side and having tainted Mina with his blood-drinking curse flees back to his ancestral lands. Frantically, the mortal champions give chase, battling the elements, Dracula’s enslaved “gypsy army” and the monster’s horrific eldritch power in a race against time lest Mina finally succumb forever to his unholy influence…

Although translation to English in the Catalan version is a little slapdash in places – a fact happily addressed in a 2005 re-release from Del Rey – the original does have the subtly enhanced benefit of richer colours, sturdier paper stock and a slightly larger page size (285 x 219mm as opposed to 274 x 211mm) which somehow makes the 1984 edition feel more substantial. Of course, this would all be irrelevant if a digital edition were available.

This breathtaking take on the oft-retold yarn delivers fast paced, action-packed, staggeringly beautiful and astoundingly exciting thrills and chills in a most beguiling manner. Being Spanish, however, there’s perhaps the slightest hint of brooding machismo, if not subverted sexism, on display and – of course – plenty of heaving, gauze-filtered female nudity which might challenge modern sensibilities.

Nevertheless, what predominates in this Dracula is an overwhelming impression of unstoppable evil and impending doom. There’s no sympathy for the devil here – this is a monster from Hell all good men must oppose to their last breath and final drop of blood and sweat…

With an emphatic introduction (‘Dracula Lives!’) from comics historian Maurice Horn, this is a sublime treatment by a master craftsman all dark-fearing, red-blooded fans will want to track down and savour.
© 1984, 2005 Fernando Fernández. All rights reserved.

Today in 1894 letterer Ira Schnapp was born. I haven’t even listed most of his work on Now Read This!, but you’ve appreciated some of it every time you saw a golden age Superman logo.

Simultaneously culturally significant and insensitive, today in 1953 saw the first appearance of Leo Baxendale’s Little Plum in The Beano. You can weigh his pros and cons for yourself with Dandy and Beano Present The Comics at Christmas or any 20th century Beano Annual we’ve reviewed.

In 1957 Rumiko Takahashi was born. We covered Mermaid Forest so long ago it’s probably time for a revisit, and we should probably do Ranma ½ while we’re at it…

In 1959 the last episode of Norman Pett’s Jane was published. It had begun in 1932, but once you’ve seen The Misadventures of Jane you’ll probably agree it was best to let her go.

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Secret of San Saba: A Tale of Phantoms and Greed in the Spanish Southwest


By Jack Jackson (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 978-0-87816-080-8 (HB) 978-0-87816-081-5 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

I’m reading most of my graphic novels digitally these days, and it’s clear how much superb classic material – especially genre works with war and western themes – still isn’t much of a priority to content providers yet.

You try tracking down Sam Glanzman’s The Haunted Tank or Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock compilations, or even a relatively well-exposed screen property like Jonah Hex (other than the admittedly superb Justin Grey/Jimmy Palmiotti books of recent vintage) and see what joy you get…

One of the most cruelly digitally excluded omissions is this stunningly impressive western horror mash-up from the inimitable Jack Jackson, still tragically only available in the original oversized (277 x 201 mm) monochrome softcover and hardback album editions, as originally published by Kitchen Sink as part of their Death Rattle Series.

Known as ‘Jaxon’ since his Underground Commix heyday, Jackson’s infectious fascination with the history of Texas is a signature of much of his work even from the earliest days. Here he expertly combines a love of historical documentary with the fabulous Lovecraftian horrors of the cosmic void, resulting in a breathtaking and wonderful period supernatural thriller, skillfully woven into the fabric and lore of the Southwest desert lands…

When a silvery entity crashes to Earth in a blazing fireball, it galvanises the fading dreams of Xotl, a young Faraone warrior who has lost faith in his gods.

As years pass, native worship of the fearsomely fulgent power exhibited by the star-fallen thing grows, and when the mighty Apaches conquer the Faraone, the twice-defeated tribe turn to the newly arrived Europeans for help. This is a tragic, fatal mistake, albeit revealed too late… after the tribe finds that Priests and Colonists might speak of God but only truly worship wealth…

Crucially, when the newcomers learn of the Cosmic Slug that fell from the stars, all they can see is the overwhelming wealth its silver mantle represents…

The decades-long battle between Apaches and Missionaries to control the slimy silver wellspring makes for a powerful – if cynical – tale; one full of the intoxicating artistry, spellbinding storytelling, and the mesmerising aura of authenticity that is Jackson’s most telling narrative tool. It’s all based on the ancient Texas stories and legends of ‘Blanco’ and ‘Negro Bultos’ (supernatural treasure mounds): a most fantastic story which should be, has to be true, if only because Jackson has drawn it. Moreover, it has inexplicably dropped out of print and has never been picked up for a movie. That alone is something really strange and sinister…

Superbly compelling, this is a must-read item for any serious fan of both comics and horror fiction, so let’s have it back and out in every format possible, pretty please?
© 1989 Jack Jackson. All rights reserved.

Today in 1897 Enid Blyton’s Noddy illustrator was born. Sadly we’ve got nothing on Dutch master Harmsen van der Beek so you’ll need to buy one of the books if you can. We can however recommend a bunch of stuff by Harvey Pekar, who was born today in 1939: gems like American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar. Contemporary graphic novelist James Sturm was born today in 1965; he authored The Golem’s Mighty Swing and other stuff like The Revival, Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules and Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight which I’ll get around to one day.

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Adam Eterno book 2: Grunn the Grim


By E. George Cowan, Chris Lowder, Tom Tully, Francisco Solano López, John Catchpole, Eric Bradbury, with Jack Le Grand, Geoff Kemp, Tom Kerr & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-470-6 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-83786-480-5 (Exclusive edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: History in the Unmaking… 9/10

British comics had a strange and extended love affair with what can only be described as “unconventional” (for which feel free to substitute “creepy”) heroes. So many of the stars and potential role models of our serials and strips were just plain “off”: self-righteous, moody voyeurs-turned vigilantes like Jason Hyde, sinister masterminds like The Dwarf, deranged geniuses like Eric Dolmann, so many reformed criminals like The Spider or just outright racist supermen like Captain Hurricane…

… And don’t get me started on our legion of lethally anarchic comedy icons or that our most successful symbol of justice is the Eagle-bedecked jack-booted poster boy for a fascist state. Perhaps that explains why these days we can’t even imagine or envision what a proper leader looks like and keep on electing clowns, crooks and oblivious privileged simpletons…

All joking aside, British comics are unlike any other kind and simply have to be seen to be believed and enjoyed. One of the most revered stars of the medium has finally begun to be collected in archival editions, and perfectly encapsulates our odd relationship with heroism, villainy and particularly the murky grey area bridging them…

Until the 1980s, comics in the UK were based on an anthological model, offering variety of genre, theme and character on a weekly – or sometimes fortnightly – basis. Humorous periodicals like The Beano were leavened by thrillers like Billy the Cat or General Jumbo and adventure papers like Lion or Valiant always included gag strips such as The Nutts, Grimly Feendish, Mowser and a wealth of similar quick laugh treats. Thunder and Jet were amongst the last of this fading model. Fleetway particularly was shifting to themed anthologies like Shoot, Action and Battle, whilst venerable veterans like Lion, Valiant and Buster hung on and stayed fresh by absorbing failing titles.

Thunder ran for 22 weeks before being absorbed by a stronger title to become Lion & Thunder. The merger/acquisition brought Black Max, The Steel Commando, The Spooks of Saint Luke’s and Adam Eterno to the new combined roster. With Steel Commando, time travelling tramp Adam would survive and thrive, as the periodical later merged into Valiant & Lion (June 1974) until the ultimate end in 1976. He also appeared in numerous Annuals and Specials thereafter.

Eterno was initially devised by Thunder assistant editor Chris Lowder – AKA “Jack Adrian” – and editor Jack Le Grand, with top flight artist Tom Kerr (Monty Carstairs, Rip Kerrigan, Kelly’s Eye, Charlie Peace, Captain Hurricane, Steel Claw, Kraken, Mary-Jo, Tara King/The Avengers, Billy’s Boots) initially designing and visualising the frankly spooky antihero. He also drew the scene-setting first episode. The feature was scripted by equally adept and astoundingly prolific old hand Tom Tully (Roy of the Rovers, Heros the Spartan, Janus Stark, The Wild Wonders, Dan Dare, Johnny Red, The Leopard from Lime Street), who only finally left it in 1976. Kerr, Donne Avenell, Scott Goddall &Ted Cowan would also write subsequent adventures. In fact, Tully might have scripted some of the material in this collection including the first instalment here: a handy recap/catchup limned by Francisco Solano López (and his family studio) that swiftly shifts to a gripping tale of “Conquistadore” atrocity…

Thanks to spotty record keeping, like so much in life and comics, it’s all a big mystery…

Gathering episodes from weekly Lion & Thunder spanning March 20th through August 28th 1971, plus pertinent material from Lion & Thunder Holiday Special 1971 & 1972, the chronal calamities and dark doings resume following Chris Lowder’s informative flashback essay ‘A Writer’s Trip Through Time’.

What you need to know: Delivered in stark, moody monochrome, the saga tales of tragic immortal chronal castaway Adam Eterno began life in the 16th century. He was an ambitious apprentice and less than sterling moral character, indentured to alchemist Erasmus Hemlock. When Adam’s master perfected an immortality serum, the headstrong, impatient acolyte sampled the potion against the sage’s express command. This precipitated the ancient’s death and a fiery conflagration that gutted the house. Hemlock’s last act was to curse his faithless student to live forever and “wander the world through the labyrinths of time”. Surcease would come from a mortal blow struck by a weapon of gold…

The curse was truly effective and as centuries passed, Adam became a recluse: his never-changing appearance driving him away from superstitious mortals and perpetually denying him simple contact with humanity. He fought in all of Britain’s wars, but hard-earned combat comradeships always ended whenever a seemingly fatal blow or wound left him unharmed…

Everything changed and the second part of the alchemist’s curse came true in 1970 when the traumatised, barely sane 421-year-old tramp staggered into a bullion robbery. He was shot by the thieves who rapidly realised that their victim was invulnerable, and attempted to use him in a raid on the Bank of England. When that went sideways too, Adam was struck by a fully-gold-plated limousine of a speeding millionaire…

The impact would be fatal for any other being, but for Adam Eterno it was the beginning of redemption as the shock hurled him into the timestream to land over and again in different eras…

The drama continues in that opening recap as Adam drops out of the timestream and is immediately cut down and hurled into quicksand by rapacious Spaniard Don Morto and his pitiless mercenarios, seeking the Incas fabled City of Gold. Dragging himself out of the mire, soon Adam is sought out by an Inca shaman and undergoes outrageous trials (many involving bonds and weapons of gold!) to become their champion in defeating the merciless invaders and liberating hostage king Tazuma Capa…

The resistance is long and bloody but ultimately triumphal after Eterno introduces and mass-produces a weapon from the future that turns the tables on the armour, powder and shot of the invaders…

The bittersweet victory – after all, the traveller already knows more invaders will follow and ultimately succeed – sees Adam returned to chronal limbo only to rematerialise for the first time in the far future: a totalitarian dictatorship policed by brutes and thugs in armour of gold led by a monstrous tyrant: Grunn the Grim. The extended war to liberate tomorrow ends successfully but with the wanderer again returned to falling through eras, with the first hints that the penitent troubleshooter is not randomly drawn to rising manifestations of evil and crossroad moments of menace…

The latest stopover is Dark Ages Eastern Europe where a struggle for the throne sees an evil yet trusted relative seeking to usurp Duke Ctharmis of Carathia, after abducting the prince and true heir. Now as a local wild-child terrorises the populace, and packs of (were?)wolves congregate everywhere, a tatty stranger arrives and starts making trouble. Nobody knows Adam has been recruited by local wizard Mageis to set destiny aright and end the schemes of wicked Baron Draxa, before being deposited in far more familiar territory: England during the Civil War…

Obsessive anti-royalist Captain Raker ravages the locality searching for Lord Benham and the funds he holds in the King’s name. His brutal acts draw the immortal man into the pointless conflict, despite persistent, prophetic visions of doom hampering the antihero… until a final face-to-face duel ends matters and catapults Adam into the New World and a new kind of wickedness. In 1920s New York City, money not power motivates mobster Rikki Delgano, but his tactics are just as cruel and just as ineffectual against an enemy who will not die…

The crook’s hash soon settled, Eterno next appears in the skies over London amidst a storm of ack-ack fire and Luftwaffe planes. Furious and fighting mad, the traveller captures a Nazi bomber and follows the raiders back to their base, delivering a deadly dose of “how do you like it?” before ghosting on to land in the wild west and exonerate unjustly accused drifter the Durango Kid when both are charged with stagecoach robbery. Dodging gunplay and lynchings, Apache tortures and worse, Adam deftly exposes the real bandit before moving on to save all of humanity…

Lost in the early years of the stone age over 35,000 years before his own birth, Eterno roams amidst mammoths, neanderthals and dawn men, but must battle beast men armed with ray guns to foil a plan by alien colonisers. They seek to eradicate emerging humankind and take the world for their own, but Adam is greatly aided by prescient sage Kathon-the-Wise, who seems to see all his past and future secrets… and bears a remarkable resemblance to so many other wizards and mages the nomad of the ages has met…

After a cataclysmic pitched battle, humanity is saved and the spacers defeated, but there’s no rest for the (gradually redeeming) wicked and Eterno lands in shark-filled waters just in time to become the latest target of pirate lord Blackbeard. On foiling that felon, the winds of time waft him to a Viking raid in Anglo-Saxon England where pitiless reiver Geflin One-Eye seems set on taking the kingdom, unless some brave soul can retrieve the fabled Gold Sword of Wulfric from the abbey where it lies and lead the counterattack. Obviously, Adam is not keen on getting that close to his metal nemesis but if the situation demands it…

Bombastic, blood-soaked, inspirational and creepier than you’d imagine possible or permissible in a kids’ comic. the exploits of Adam Eterno are dark delights impossible to put down, so it’s fortunate that there are two more longer complete yarns still to come here.

Taken from Lion & Thunder Holiday Special 1971, the first sadly uncredited yarn (as regards the writer at least) was illuminated by veteran comics illustrator John Catchpole. He was the first to draw Kelly’s Eye – in 1962 for Knock-Out – and limned The Shadow of the Snake & sequel serial Master of Menace between 1972-1974 in Lion where he was part of a rotating team crafting Adam Eterno. As well as Annuals material like Black Bedlam (1975) he inked Jack (Charlie Peace) Pamby on The Potters from Poole Street in Valiant (1976) and was also a book illustrator.

Here all that skill and aplomb is used to detail a moody Victorian mystery as the immortal nomad helps the last of the Calcott line locate a lost family fortune and avoid murder by a monster…

Wrapping up proceedings on a true high (and also lacking a writer credit) the 1972 Adam Eterno special tale was illustrated by the magnificent and prolific Eric Bradbury (1921-2001) began in 1949 in Knockout.

Frequently working with studio mate Mike Western, Bradbury drew strips like Our Ernie, Blossom, Lucky Logan, Buffalo Bill, No Hiding Place, The Black Crow and Biggles. He was an “in-demand” illustrator well into the 1990s, on landmark strips such as The Avenger, Cursitor Doom, Phantom Force 5, Maxwell Hawke, Joe Two Beans, Mytek the Mighty, Death Squad, Doomlord, Darkie’s Mob, Crazy Keller, Hook Jaw, The Sarge, Invasion 1984, Invasion (the unrelated 2000 AD strip), Mean Arena, The Fists of Jimmy Chang, The Dracula Files, Rogue Trooper, Future Shocks, Tharg the Mighty and much more…

All that imagination and experience are seen here, when Adam appears in ancient Atlantis: a dinosaur-infested paragon of human ingenuity and political depravity where a tyrannical queen and audacious space shot lead to the destruction of Earth’s first human civilisation…

Closing with biographies on the creators featured herein and ads for other British lost wonders Adam Eterno – Grunn the Grim is enthralling astonishment awaiting your gaze: a riotously rewarding rollercoaster ride to delight readers who like their protagonists dark and conflicted and their history in bite-sized bursts.
© 1971, 1972, & 2025 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1952 the last weekly instalment of Will Eisner’s Spirit Comics Section was published, whilst in 1974 the final Shiver and Shake entertained diehard UK readers.

In 1994, comics and animation giant Doug Wildey went to the final roundup. Remembered for Tarzan, The Saint newspaper strip and Jonny Quest, he’d prefer you read his elegiac westerns like Doug Wildey’s Rio: The Complete Saga.

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Addams and Evil


By Charles Addams (Methuen/Mandarin)
ISBN: 978-0-413-55370-1 (Album PB) 978-0-413-57190-8 (Album HB) 978-0-413-55370-6 (Mandarin TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content included for comedic and satirical effect.

Charles Samuel Addams (1912 – 1988) was a cartoonist and distant descendant of two American Presidents (John Adams & John Quincy Adams) who made his real life as extraordinary as his dark, mordantly funny drawings.

Born into a successful family in Westfield, New Jersey, the precocious, prankish, constantly drawing child was educated at the town High School, Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York City’s Grand Central School of Art, and apparently spent the entire time producing cartoons and illustrations for a raft of institutional publications.

In 1932 he became a designer for True Detective magazine – “retouching photos of corpses” – and soon after began selling drawings to The New Yorker. In 1937 he began creating ghoulish if not outright macabre family portraits that become his signature creation. During WWII, he served with Signal Corps Photographic Center, devising animated training films for the military.

Whether he artfully manufactured his biography to enhance his value to feature writers or was genuinely a warped and wickedly wacky individual is irrelevant, although it makes for great reading – especially the stuff about his second wife – and, as always, the internet awaits the siren call of your search engine…

What is important is that in all the years he drew and painted those creepily sardonic, gruesome gags and illustrations for The New Yorker, Colliers, TV Guide and so many others, he managed to beguile and enthral his audience with a devilish mind and a soft, gentle approach that made him a household name long before television turned his characters into a hit and generated a juvenile craze for monsters and grotesques that lasts to this day. That eminence was only magnified once the big screen iterations debuted. And now we have streaming fun too. He would have loved the sheer terrifying inescapability of it all…

This stunningly enticing volume is a reissue of his second collection of cartoons, first published in 1947, and semi-occasionally since then. It’s still readily available if you’ve a big bank book, but the time is ripe for a definitive collected edition, or better yet a reissue of his entire canon (eleven volumes of drawings and a biography) either in print or digitally.

Should you not be as familiar with his actual cartoons as with their big and small screen descendants you really owe it to yourself to see the uncensored brilliance of one of America’s greatest humourists. It’s dead funny…

© 1940-1947 the New Yorker Magazine, Inc. In Canada © 1947 Charles Addams.

Today in 1909, fearless campaigner/cartoonist turned arch conservative Al Capp was born. Slightly less contentious than Li’l Abner, his Fearless Fosdick might be more to your taste.

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Vlad the Impaler: The Man Who Was Dracula


By Sid Jacobson & Ernie Colón (Plume/Penguin Group USA)
ISBN: 978-1-59463-058-3 (HB) 978-0-452-29675-2 (PB)

Here’s a handy Heads-Up and Horrible History hint if you’re looking for something to set the tone for the Halloween we’re probably ALL NOT GOING TO ENJOY THIS YEAR. It’s available in hardback, soft cover and digital editions and well worth staying in with.

As writer and editor, Sid Jacobson masterminded the Harvey Comics monopoly of strips for younger US readers in the 1960s and 1970s, co-creating Richie Rich and Wendy, the Good Little Witch among others. He worked the same magic for Marvel’s Star Comics imprint, overseeing a vast amount of family-friendly material, both self-created – such as Royal Roy or Planet Terry – and a huge basket of licensed properties.

In latter years, he worked closely with fellow Harvey alumnus Ernesto Colón Sierra, aka Ernie Colón, on such thought-provoking graphic enterprises as The 9/11 Report: a Graphic Adaptation and its sequel, After 9/11: America’s War on Terror. In 2009 their epic Che: a Graphic Biography was released: separating the man from the myth of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, universal icon of cool rebellion.

Colón was born in Puerto Rico in 1931: a creator whose work has been loved by generations of readers. Whether as artist, writer, colourist or editor his contributions have benefited the entire industry from the youngest (Monster in My Pocket, Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost for Harvey, and a ton of similar projects for Star Comics), to the traditional comic book fans with Battlestar Galactica, Damage Control and Doom 2099 for Marvel, Arak, Son of Thunder and Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, the Airboy revival at Eclipse, Magnus: Robot Fighter for Valiant and so very many others.

There are also his sophisticated experimental works such as underground/indie thriller Manimal and his seminal genre graphic novels Ax and the Medusa Chain. From 2005 until his death in 2019 he created the strip SpyCat for Weekly World News. Working together Jacobson & Colón are a comics fan’s dream come true and their bold choice of biography and reportage as well as their unique take on characters and events always pays great dividends.

Vlad the Impaler is by far their most captivating project: a fictionalised account of the notorious Wallachian prince raised by his mortal enemies as a literal hostage to fortune, only to reconquer and lose his country not once, but many times.

The roistering, bloody, brutal life of this Romanian national hero and basis of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula is a fascinating, baroque, darkly funny yarn, capturing a troubled soul’s battle with himself as much as the Muslim and Christian superpowers that treated his tiny principality as their plaything.

With startling amounts of sex and violence this book makes no excuses for a patriot and freedom fighter driven by his horrific bloodlust and (justifiable?) paranoia to become a complete beast: clearly the very worst of all possible monsters: a human one.

Sharp, witty, robust and engaging, with a quirky twist in the tale, this is a good old-fashioned shocker that any history-loving gore-fiend will adore.
Text © 2009 Sid Jacobson. Art © 2009 Ernie Colón. All rights reserved.

Today in 1927 graphic novel trailblazer Jack Katz was born. If any of us live, expect us to finally cover his epic First Kingdom sometime soon. Also making their first appearances in 1927 and 1955 respectively were Italian Disney cartoonist Romano Scarpa – as seen in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck Volume 2: The Diabolical Duck Avenger – and the inestimable Charles Burns whose Black Hole is only one of many Must-Read-Before-You-Die classics.

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DC Finest: The Spectre – The Wrath of the Spectre


By Gardner F. Fox, Bob Haney, Mike Friedrich, Steve Skeates, Dennis J. O’Neil, Mark Hanerfeld, Jack Miller, Michael L. Fleisher, Paul Kupperberg, Mike W. Barr, Roy Thomas, Murphy Anderson, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Neal Adams, Jerry Grandenetti, Jack Sparling, Bernie Wrightson, José Delbo, Jim Aparo, Frank Thorne, Ernie Chan, Michael R. Adams, Rick Hoberg, Jerry Ordway, Richard Howell, Larry Houston, Gerald Forton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3417-1 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

This stunning compilation is another long-awaited full colour chronolgically curated compilation delivering “affordably priced, large- paperback collections” highlighting DC’s past glories. Sadly, none are yet available digitally, as were the last decade’s Bronze, Silver and Golden Age collections, but we live in hope…

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sublime Seasonal Spookfest for Comics Addicts… 10/10

Created by Jerry Siegel & Bernard Baily in 1940 and debuting via a 2-part origin epic in More Fun Comics #52 & 53, The Spectre is one of the oldest characters in DC’s vast character stable. Crucially, just like Siegel’s other iconic creation, the Ghostly Guardian soon began suffering from a basic design flaw: he was just too darn powerful. However, unlike Superman this relentless champion of justice is already dead, so he can’t really be logically or dramatically imperilled. Moreover, in those far off early days that wasn’t nearly as important as sheer spectacle: forcibly grabbing the reader’s utter attention and keeping it stoked to a fantastic fever pitch.

Starting as a virtually omnipotent phantom, the Astral Avenger evolved over various revivals, refits and reboots into a tormented mortal soul bonded inescapably to the actual embodiment of the biblical Wrath of God…

The story is a genuinely gruesome one: police detective Jim Corrigan is callously executed by gangsters before being called back to the land of the living. Commanded to fight crime and evil by a glowing light and disembodied voice, he was indisputably the most formidable hero of the Golden Age. He has been revamped many times, and in the 1990s was revealed to be God’s own Spirit of Vengeance wedded to a human conscience. When Corrigan was finally laid to rest, Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan and murdered Gotham City cop Crispus Allen replaced him as the mitigating conscience of the unstoppable, easily irked force of Divine Retribution. Last time I looked, Corrigan had the job again…

However, the true start of that radically revitalised career began in the superhero-saturated mid-1960s when, hot on the heels of feverish fan-interest in the alternate world of the Justice Society of America and Earth-2 (where all their WWII heroes retroactively resided), DC began trying out solo revivals of 1940’s characters, as a counterpoint to such wildly successful Silver Age reconfigurations as Flash, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman…

This colossal compilation documents the almighty Man of Darkness’ resurrection in the Swinging Sixties, his landmark reinterpretation in the horror-soaked, brutalised 1970s and even finds room for some later appearances before the character was fully de-powered and retrofitted for the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe. As such, this Spectre-acular tome of terror (660 subtly sinister peril-packed pages!) re-presents material from Showcase #60, 61 & 64; team-up tales from The Brave and the Bold #72, 75, 116, 180 & 199; The Spectre #1-10; lead strips from Adventure Comics #431-440: a tryptich serial from horror-anthology Ghosts #97-99 and a wartime-set saga from JSA retro hit All-Star Squadron #27-28: cumulatively channelling January/February 1966 to December 1983.

Back in the Sixties DC had attempted a number of Earth-2 team-iterations (Starman & Black Canary – with Wildcat – in The Brave and the Bold #61-62, whilst Showcase #55 & 56 spotlighted Doctor Fate & Hourman, with a cameo from the original Green Lantern), but inspirational editor Julie Schwartz & scripter Gardner F. Fox only finally achieved their ambition to relaunch a Golden Age hero into his own title with the revival of the Ghostly Guardian in Showcase. It had been hard going and perhaps ultimately happened only thanks to a growing general public taste for supernatural stories…

After three full length appearances and many guest-shots, The Spectre won his own solo series at the end of 1967, just as the superhero craze went into steep decline, but arguably Showcase #60 (cover-dated January/February 1966 but actually on sale from Novenember 25th 1965) anticipated the rise of supernatural comics by re-introducing Corrigan and his phantom passenger in ‘War That Shook the Universe’ by Earth-2 team supreme Fox & illustrator Murphy Anderson. This spectacular saga reveals why the Heroic Haunt had vanished two decades previously, leaving fundamentally human (but dead) Corrigan to pursue his war against evil on merely mortal terms – until a chance encounter with a psychic investigator frees the spirit buried deep within him. A diligent search reveals that, 20 years previously, a supernal astral invader broke into the Earth plane and possessed a mortal, but was so inimical to our laws of reality that both it and the Grim Ghost were locked into their meat shells until now…

Thus began a truly Spectre-acular (feel free to groan, but that’s what they called it back then) clash with devilish diabolical Azmodus that spans all creation and blew the minds of us gobsmacked kids…

Showcase #61 (March/April) upped the ante as even more satanic Shathan the Eternal subsequently insinuates himself into our realm from ‘Beyond the Sinister Barrier’: stealing mortal men’s shadows until he is powerful enough to conquer the physical universe. This time The Spectre treats us to an exploration of the universe’s creation before narrowly defeating the source of all evil…

The Sentinel Spirit paused before re-manifesting in Showcase #64 (September/October 1966) for a marginally more mundane but no less thrilling case after ‘The Ghost of Ace Chance’ takes up residence in Jim’s body. By this time, it was established that ghosts need a mortal anchor to recharge their ectoplasmic “batteries”, with this unscrupulous crooked gambler determined to inhabit the best frame available…

Try-out run concluded, the editors sat back and waited for sales figures to dictate the next move. When they proved inconclusive, Schwartz orchestrated a concerted publicity campaign to further promote Earth-2’s Ethereal Adventurer. Thus The Brave and the Bold #72 (June/ July 1967) saw the Sentinel Spook clash with Earth-1’s Scarlet Speedster in ‘Phantom Flash, Cosmic Traitor’ (by Bob Haney, Carmine Infantino & Charles “Chuck” Cuidera). This sinister saga sees the mortal meteor arcanely transformed into a sinister spirit-force and power-focus for expired but unquiet American aviator Luther Jarvis who returns from his death in 1918 to wreak vengeance on the survivors of his squadron – until the Spectre intervenes…

Due to the vagaries of comic book scheduling, B&B #75 (December 1967/January 1968) appeared at around the same time as The Spectre #1, although the latter had a cover-date of November/December 1967. In this edition it follows the debut of the haunted hero in his own title…

‘The Sinister Lives of Captain Skull’, by Fox & Anderson, divulges how the botched assassination of American Ambassador Joseph Clanton and an experimental surgical procedure allows one of the diplomat’s earlier incarnations to seize control of his body and, armed with mysterious eldritch energies, run amok on Earth. These “megacyclic energy” abilities enable the revenant to harm and potentially destroy the Grim Ghost, compelling the Spectre to pursue the piratical Skull through a line of previous lives until he can find their source and purge the peril from all time and space. Meanwhile over in the Batman team-up tale – scripted by Haney and limned by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito – Ghostly Guardian joins Dark Knight to liberate Earth-One Gotham City’s Chinatown from ‘The Grasp of Shahn-Zi!’: an ancient oriental sorcerer determined to prolong his reign of terror at the expense of an entire community and through the sacrifice of an innocent child, after which the Astral Avenger proceeded on Earth-Two in his own title…

With #2 (January/February 1968) artistic iconoclast Neal Adams came aboard for Fox-scripted mystery ‘Die Spectre – Again’ wherein crooked magician Dirk Rawley accidentally manifests his etheric self and severely tests both Corrigan and his phantom lodger as they seek to end the double-menace’s string of crimes, mundane and magical. At this time, the first inklings of a distinct separation and individual identities began. The two halves of the formerly sole soul of Corrigan were beginning to disagree and even squabble…

Neophyte scripter Mike Friedrich joined Adams for #3’s ‘Menace of the Mystic Mastermind’ wherein pugilistic paragon Wildcat faces the inevitable prospect of age and infirmity even as an inconceivable force from another universe possesses petty thug Sad Jack Dold, turning him into a nigh-unstoppable force of cosmic chaos.

Next, ‘Stop that Kid… Before He Wrecks the World’ was written & illustrated by Adams with a similar trans-universal malignity deliberately empowering a young boy as a prelude to its ultimate conquest, whilst #5’s ‘The Spectre Means Death?’ (all Adams again) appears to show the Astral Adept transformed into a pariah and deadly menace to society, until Corrigan’s investigations uncover emotion-controlling villain Psycho Pirate at the root of the Heroic Haunt’s problems…

Despite the incredible talent and effort lavished upon it, The Spectre simply wasn’t finding a big enough audience. Adams left for superhero glory elsewhere and a hint of changing tastes emerged as veteran horror comics illustrator Jerry Grandenetti came aboard. Issue #6 (September/October 1968) saw his eccentric, manic cartooning adding raw wildness to the returning Fox’s moody thriller ‘Pilgrims of Peril!’ Anderson also re-enlisted, applying a solid ink grounding to the story of a sinister quartet of phantom Puritans who invade the slums of Gateway City, driving out the poor and hopeless as they hunt long-lost arcane treasures. These would allow demon lord Nawor of Giempo access to Earth unless Spectre can win his unlife or death duel with the trans-dimensional horror…

As the back of #7 was dedicated to a solo strip starring Hourman (not included here), The Spectre saga here – by Fox, Grandenetti & Anderson – was a half-length tale following the drastic steps necessary to convince the soul of bank-robber Frankie Barron to move on. As he was killed during a heist, the astral form of aversion therapy used to cure ‘The Ghost That Haunted Money!’ proves not only ectoplasmically effective but outrageously entertaining…

Issue #8 (January/February 1969) was scripted by Steve Skeates and began a last-ditch and obviously desperate attempt to turn The Spectre into something the new wave of anthology horror readers would buy.

As a twisted, time-lost apprentice wizard struggles to return to Earth after murdering his master and stealing cosmic might from the void, on our mundane plane an exhausted Ghostly Guardian neglects his duties and is taken to task by his celestial creator. As a reminder of his error, the Penitent Phantasm is burdened by a fluctuating weakness – which would change without warning – to keep him honest and earnest. What a moment then, for desperate disciple Narkran to return, determined to secure an elevated god-like existence by securing ‘The Parchment of Power Perilous!’…

The Spectre #9 completed the transition, opening with an untitled short from Friedrich (illustrated by Grandenetti & Bill Draut) finding the Man of Darkness again overstepping his bounds by executing a criminal. This prompts Corrigan to refuse the weary wraith the shelter of his reinvigorating form and when the Grim Ghost then assaults his own host form, the Heavenly Voice punishes the spirit by chaining him to the dreadful Journal of Judgment: demanding he atone by investigating the lives inscribed therein in a trial designed to teach him again the value of mercy.

The now anthologised issue continued with ‘Abraca-Doom!’ (Dennis J. O’Neil & Bernie Wrightson) as The Spectre attempts to stop a greedy carnival conjurer signing a contract with the Devil, whilst ‘Shadow Show’ – by Mark Hanerfeld & Jack Sparling – details the fate of a cheap mugger who thinks he can outrun the consequences of a capital crime. The Spectre gave up the ghost, folding with #10 (May/June 1969), but not before a quartet of tantalising tales shows what might have been. ‘Footsteps of Disaster’ (Friedrich, Grandenetti & George Roussos) follow a man from cradle to early grave, revealing the true wages of sin, whilst ‘Hit and Run’ (Steve Skeates & Jose Delbo) proves again that the Spirit of Judgment is not infallible and even human scum might be redeemed. Jacks Miller & Sparling asked ‘How Much Can a Guy Take?’ with a shoeshine boy pushed almost too far by an arrogant mobster before the series closed with a cunning murder mystery involving what appeared to be a killer ventriloquist’s doll in Miller, Grandenetti & Roussos’ ‘Will the Real Killer Please Rise?’ With that the Astral Avenger returned to comic book limbo for nearly half a decade until changing tastes and another liberalising of the Comics Code saw him arise as lead feature in Adventure Comics #431 (January/February 1974) for a shocking run of macabre, ultra-violent tales from Michael L. Fleisher, Jim Aparo and friends

‘The Wrath of… The Spectre’ offered a far more stark, unforgiving take on the Sentinel Spirit; reflecting the increasingly violent tone of the times. Here, a gang of murderous thieves slaughter the crew of a security truck and are tracked down by a harsh, uncompromising police lieutenant named Corrigan. When the bandits are exposed, the cop unleashes a horrific green and white apparition from his body which inflicts ghastly punishments horrendously fitting their crimes.

With art continuity (and no, I’m not sure what that means either) from Russell Carley, the draconian encounters continue in #432 as in ‘The Anguish of… The Spectre’ assassins murder millionaire Adrian Sterling and Corrigan meets the victim’s daughter. Although the now-infallible Wrathful Wraith soon exposes and excises the culprits, the dead detective has to reveal his true nature to grieving Gwen. Moreover, Corrigan begins to feel the stirring of impossible, unattainable yearnings…

Adventure #433 exposed ‘The Swami and… The Spectre’ with Gwen seeking spiritual guidance from a ruthless charlatan who promptly pays an appalling price when he finally encounters an actual ghost, whilst #434’s ‘The Nightmare Dummies and… The Spectre’ (with additional pencils by Frank Thorne), reveals a plague of department store mannequins running wild in a killing spree at the behest of a crazed artisan who believes in magic – but cannot imagine the cost of his dabbling. AC #435 introduces journalist Earl Crawford who tracks ghastly fallout of the vengeful spirit’s anti-crime campaign in ‘The Man Who Stalked The Spectre!’ Of course, once he sees the ghost in grisly action, Crawford realises the impossibility of publishing this scoop…

Adventure #436 finds Crawford still trying to sell his implausible story as ‘The Gasmen and… The Spectre’ sets the Spectral Slaughterman on the trail of a gang who kill everyone at a car show as a simple demonstration of intent before blackmailing the city. Their gorily inescapable fate only puts Crawford closer to exposing Corrigan…

Meanwhile elsewhere, Haney & Aparo reunite Batman, Detective Corrigan and a far kinder Spectre for Brave and the Bold #116’s ‘Grasp of the Killer Cult’, as the heroes hunt WWII veterans targetted by the spirits of dead Kali worshippers on a murder spree to generate enough arcane energy to resurrect their goddess, before Adventure #437’s ‘The Human Bombs and… The Spectre’ (pencilled by Ernie Chan with Aparo inks) sees a kidnapper abduct prominent persons – including Gwen – to further a mad scheme to amass untold wealth… until the Astral Avenger ends both financial aspirations and deadly depredations forever.

Despite critical acclaim – and popular controversy – the weird writing was on the wall for the grimmest ghost ever and AC #438 heralded the beginning of the end in Fleischer, Chan & Aparo’s ‘The Spectre Haunts the Museum of Fear’. Here a deranged taxidermist turns people into unique dioramas until the original spirit of vengeance intervenes. The end was in sight again for the Savage Shade and #439’s ‘The Voice that Doomed… The Spectre’ (all Aparo art) turns the wheel of death full circle, as the Heavenly Presence who created him allows Corrigan to fully live again so that he can marry Gwen. Sadly, it’s only to have the joyous hero succumb to ‘The Second Death of The… Spectre’ in the next, last issue (#440, July/ August 1975) before tragically resuming his never-ending mission. This milestone serial set a stunning new tone and style for the Ghostly Guardian which has informed each iteration ever since…

By the early 1980s, the latest horror boom had exhausted itself and DC’s anthology comics were disappearing. As part of the effort to keep them alive, Ghosts featured a 3-part serial starring “Ghost-Breaker” and inveterate sceptic Dr. Terry 13 who at last encounters ‘The Spectre’ in issue #97 (February 1981, by Paul Kupperberg, Michael R. Adams & Tex Blaisdell). Here, terrorists invade a high society séance and are summarily dispatched by the inhuman poetic justice of a freshly-manifested Astral Avenger. Resolved to destroy the sadistic revenant vigilante, recently converted true beliver Dr. 13 returns in #98 when‘The Haunted House and The Spectre’ finds the Ghost-Breaker interviewing Earl Crawford and subsequently discovering the long-sought killer of his own father. Before 13 can act, however, the Spectre appears to hijack his justifiable retribution…

The drama ends in Ghosts #99 as ‘Death… and The Spectre’ (inked by Tony DeZuñiga) sees scientist and spirit locked in one final furious confrontation. Then more team-up classics from Brave and the Bold follow, beginning with ‘The Scepter of the Dragon God’ (by Fleisher & Aparo from #180, November 1980). Although Chinese wizard Wa’an-Zen steals enough mystic artefacts to conquer Earth and destroy The Spectre, he gravely underestimates the skill and bravery of merely mortal Batman, before #199’s ‘The Body-napping of Jim Corrigan’ (June 1983 by Mike W. Barr, Andru & Rick Hoberg), depicts the undead investigator baffled by the abduction and disappearance of his mortal host. Even though he cannot trace his own body, the Spectre knows where the World’s Greatest Detective hangs out…

This staggering compendium of supernatural thrillers concludes with a two-part saga from revivalist treat All-Star Squadron #27 & 28 as Roy Thomas, Jerry Ordway, Richard Howell, Larry Houston & Gerald Forton take us back to embattled 1942 where America’s greatest superheroes strive against the last outbreak of fascist tendencies.

Here the Golden Age Superman, Batman and Robin join Doctor Fate, Tarantula, Firebrand, The Atom, Hawkman, Phantom Lady, Amazing Man, Commander Steel, Dr. Mid-nite, Starman, Sandman, Flash, The Guardian, Johnny Thunder, Green Lantern, Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle and Wonder Woman go in search of a missing ghostly Guardian only to learn ‘A Spectre is Hanting the Multiverse!’ with the mightiest being in creation enslaved to pan-dimensional tyrant Kulak, High Priest of Brztal and facilitating a long-anticipated scheme to eradicate Earth, it’s no small mercy that humanity has other uncanny defenders – such as Sargon the Sorceror – to call upon…

Although an incongruously superhero-heavy tale to end on this compilation covers much of the darlest corners of DC legend and fable. With covers by Anderson, Infantino, Jack Adler, Adams, Grandenetti, Nick Cardy, Aparo, Tatjana Wood, George Tuska, Anthony Tollin & Jerry Ordway, and ranging from fabulously fantastical to darkly, violently enthralling, these comic masterpieces perfectly encapsulate the way superheroes changed over a brief 20-year span, but remain throughout some of the most beguiling and exciting tales of the company’s canon. If you love comic books you’d be crazy to ignore this one.
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1983, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

On this day in 1867 strip pioneer Winsor McCay was born. Check out Daydreams and Nightmares – The Fantastic Visions of Winsor McCay for more.

Today in 1938 Belgian giant Raoul Cauvin was born. Bluecoats volume 18: Duel in the Channel was the last book of his we covered, whilst in 1946, the first issue of Le Journal de Tintin went on sale. Stuff from there like Blake and Mortimer is all over this site. Just use the search box and see…

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My Dad Fights Demons


By Bobby Joseph & Abbigayle Bircham (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-34-8 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and comedic effect.

Here’s a short, sweet and sarcastically sharp poke at modern culture’s transient nature, mayfly attention-spans and perennially parlous state, delivered in a delicious ribald and deceptively irreverent tone and stylee (not a typo). The deed is done by street-wizened South Londoner and incumbent Comics Laureate Bobby Joseph (Dazed and Confused, Vice, The Guardian, Skank Magazine, Scotland Yardie) and rising star Abbigayle Bircham (Soaring Penguin Press, The Rat Pack Collective).

Anarchic, subversive and definitely NOT for little kids – unless they live inside the heads of adult-seeming types – here is a potent close-up peep at little Londoner Rye who is navigating the already-too-much-to-bear life of a kid trying to find themselves in a world of constant confliction and change-made-for-profit. The often overwhelmed and undervalued young ’un is just about coping with being vegan, addicted to sprout flavoured vapes, embarrassed by mum and her man, unappreciated by peers and schoolmates and generally not digging life when another body blow lands…

Mum and her manly beau – overly eager for a little intimate alone time – suddenly spring the news that Rye’s biological dad is in town and will be exercising visitation rights for the weekend. That’s when Rye first learns that Mr. Mantriks is not actually deceased (as was previously believed) but is in fact a wizard – “greatest sorcerer in the world” – who has been defending reality from inside a hell dimension for most of Rye’s short life.
Such reunions are always a bit uncomfortable, but this one is more fraught than most as daddy (and his appalling goblin familiar “Gobby”) are criminally unaware of how life has moved on, and are fact only really here to retrieve a lost spell of catastrophically evil potential.

However, like all such odd couple yarns, there’s the promise of reconciliation and a happy ending in store, but only if the long-parted in loco parentis pair – and Rye! – can mend long-ignored fences, avoid waves of disembodied body-parts, the allure of parallel universes (and fried chicken shops), totally solve the mystery of the lost cantrip and foil the cunning convoluted schemes of demonic social influencers who shouldn’t be here and SHOULD know better…

Manic-paced and wildly imaginative, this yarn might be impenetrable to certain ossified sections of the readership were it not for the absolutely indispensable aide memoire ‘Gobby’s Guide to UK Slang!’ Moreover, once an ending is reached, you can learn a little of the how and why thanks to ‘Sketches and development work’ provided by the creators…
Text and images © 2025 Bobby Joseph and Abbigayle Bircham. All rights reserved.

Today in 1911, artist Charles Paris was born. Although he probably inked every great pre-Silver Superman & Batman story you’ve ever read, I’d recommend checking out DC Finest: Metamorpho – The Element Man for a wilder ride.

In 1922, unsung comics icon & secret weapon Roz Kirby entered the world, whilst six years later comic strip pioneer Richard Outcault left it. I’m sure you already know all about him, but just in case why not look at Buster Brown: Early Strips in Full Color?

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Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories


By Johnny Craig, with Ray Bradbury, Bill Gaines & Al Feldstein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-658-4 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Forgotten giant Johnny Craig died today in 2001. He was a graphic titan and should be remembered for more than a stellar run on Iron Man in the 1960s – although that alone is worth your attention…

From 1950-1954 EC was the most innovative and influential comic book publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, adventure, war and science fiction. They even originated an entirely new beast: the satirical funnybook. After a shaky start, following the death of his father (who actually created the modern comic book in 1933), new head honcho William Gaines and his trusty master-of-all-comics trades Al Feldstein turned a slavishly derivative minor venture into a pioneering, groundbreaking enterprise which completely altered the perception of the industry and art form.

As they began co-plotting the bulk of EC’s output together, intent on creating a “New Trend” of stories aimed at older and more discerning readers – and not the mythical 8-year-old comic books ostensibly targeted – they shifted the ailing company’s emphasis towards dark, funny, socially aware and absolutely more adult fare. Their publishing strategy also included hiring some the most gifted writers and artists in the field. One of the very best, most undervalued and least remembered today was writer, artist, editor John Thomas Alexis “Johnny” Craig (1925-2001).

This lavish and eternally appealing monochrome hardcover/digital volume is part of Fantagraphics’ EC Library. It gathers a chilling collection of Craig’s supernatural suspense and especially his superbly Noir-drenched crime stories in a wonderful primer of peril packed with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with the informative and picture-packed ‘Brilliant Good Guys, Even More Brilliant Bad Guys’ by lecturer Bill Mason. A parade of classic genre tales begins with ‘One Last Fling!’ from Vault of Horror #21 October/November 1951. Craig was a sublime master of pen-&-ink illustration, and his scripting was just as slick and deceptively, hilariously seductive.

In his initial yarn here, a circus knife-thrower refuses to let the fact that his beloved assistant has become a vampire drive them apart, whilst from Crime SuspenStories #8 (December 1951/January 1952), ‘Out of the Frying Pan…’ is a wry gem of deception and misdirection, with a temporarily blind killer allowing the wrong little old man to plan his escape from hospital for him…

Originating in Vault of Horror #22 (December 1951/January 1952), ‘Fountains of Youth!’ is a straightforward supernatural thriller about a vitality-leeching monster, but ‘Understudy to a Corpse!’ (Crime SuspenStories #9, February/March 1952) offers a brilliantly twisty murder-plot involving a penniless actor who kills his uncle and diverts subsequent police attention by impersonating the victim post mortem. It does not go according to plan…

‘A Stitch in Time!’ (Vault of Horror #23, February/March 1952) is a grotesque classic in which a tyrannical sweatshop boss pays a ghastly price for abusing desperate seamstresses in his employ, before ‘…Rocks in His Head!’ (Crime SuspenStories #10, April/May of the same year) sees a harassed, hard-pressed surgeon with a greedy young wife making a disastrous choice when faced with a jewel-bedecked corpse to autopsy. In that same month prolific Craig graced Vault of Horror #24 with ‘A Bloody Undertaking!’, taking the same theme into supernatural territory when a pretty young thing turns the head of an old country doctor… who really should know better…

Regarded as one of the company’s slowest creators, Craig nevertheless found time to illustrate scripts by Gaines & Feldstein such as ‘…On a Dead Man’s Chest!’ (Haunt of Fear #12, March/April 1952) wherein, after a sordid affair and brutal murder, retribution from beyond the grave seeks out the victim’s wife and philandering brother…

Cover-dated June/July 1952, Crime SuspenStories #11’s ‘Stiff Punishment!’ is all Craig, and again dealt with avaricious ingenues who wed staid old doctors. This time, though, when the medical lecturer finally snaps, his assumption that he’d found the perfect way to hide the body proved utterly erroneous. In ‘Séance!’ (Vault of Horror #25, June/July) a couple of conmen kill a mark who learns too much, but are ultimately undone when his widow consults their own spiritualist for answers, after which Gaines & Feldstein script a shocking tale of gluttony and a vengeful sword-swallower in gloriously macabre fable ‘Fed Up!’ from Haunt of Fear #13 May/June.

The riveting tension of ‘The Execution!’ (Crime SuspenStories #12 August/September 1952) – wherein a death row inmate waits for the witness who could save him from the chair – came from one simple shocking fact. In Craig’s stories the good guys didn’t always win, and justice was frequently derailed and even cheated. ‘Two of a Kind!’ (Vault of Horror #26 August/September 1952) offered a sexually charged love story of the most extreme kind of sacrifice, whilst in ‘Silver Threads Among the Mold!’ (VoH #27 October/November 1952) an avaricious model regrets making a fool of a sculptor who adores and supports her, and ‘Sweet Dreams!’ (CSS #14, December 1952/January 1953) reveals the dire lengths an insomniac will stoop to in search of a little rest.

As first seen in VoH #28 (December 1952/January 1953) ‘Till Death…’ is, for many fans, the ultimate zombie story, as a besotted plantation owner loses his new bride to disease and soon learns to regret using voodoo to restore her to his side, whereas ‘When the Cat’s Away…’ (CSS #15 February/March 1953) is pure undiluted Crime Noir. Here a cuckolded husband attends to his wife and best friend with finesse and grim finality, whilst ‘The Mausoleum!’ (VoH #29, in the same month) sees an English landowner sell his family castle to a ghost-crazy American; lock, stock and damning evidence of the murder he committed to inherit everything…

‘Rendezvous!’ (Crime SuspenStories #16, April/May 1953) brilliantly outlines the sheer dumb luck that scotched a perfect murder/insurance scam, before ‘Split Personality!’ (VoH #30 April/May) details the incredible lengths to which a con artist strives to deprive identical twin sisters of their fortunes. Then, ‘Touch and Go!’ (CSS #17 June/July) delivers Craig’s sublimely paranoiac and compulsive adaptation of the Ray Bradbury vignette about a killer who leaves damning fingerprints whilst in the same month romantic obsession underpins the tragic tale of an artist-turned-mugger who only stole to pay for true love’s medical bills in ‘Easel Kill Ya!’ (VoH #31).

This awesomely addictive compilation concludes with the devilishly convoluted tale of a Private Eye set up to take the blame for a perfect crime. Written by Gaines & Feldstein, eponymous epic ‘Fall Guy for Murder!’ comes from Crime SuspenStories #18 (August/ September 1953) and is the quintessential 1950s crime story: smart, scary, devious and utterly morally ambiguous…

The comics classics are followed by more background revelations via S.C. Ringgenberg’s in-depth personal history in ‘Johnny Craig’ – complete with a stunning selection of Craig’s most eye-catching and controversial covers – and a general heads-up on the short-lived but world-shaking phenomenon in ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ courtesy of author/editor/critic/comics fan Ted White. Also Educating Consumers is comprehensively illuminating feature ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ by Mason, Tom Spurgeon & Janice Lee.

The short, sweet but severely limited comics output of EC has been reprinted ad infinitum in the decades since the company died (or was it murdered?). These titanic tales revolutionised not just our industry but also impacted the greater world through film and television and via the millions of dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Fall Guy for Murder was the fifth Fantagraphics compendium highlighting contributions of individual creators, adding a new dimension to aficionados’ enjoyment whilst providing a sound introduction for those lucky souls encountering the material for the very first time.

Whether an aged EC Fan-Addict or the merest neophyte convert, this is a book no comics lover or crime-caper victim should miss…

Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2013 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2013 the respective creators and owners.

Also today in 1982 the legendary Reed Crandall passed away. His presence was seen all over the Golden and Silver Age of Comics, but some of his finest work appeared in Piracy: The Complete Series 1-7 (The EC Archives Library).