STARTLING TERROR TALES
No. 10, May 1952
Star Comics, Inc.
Pencils: Wallace Wood
Inks: Harry Harrison (?)
Script: Unknown
Cover: L.B. Cole
Wallace Wood had a long and very illustrious career in comic books. His work spanned decades, from E.C. Comics titles to his own, self-published creations, and everything in between, including illustrating for the great science fiction digest magazine, GALAXY.
In the early 1950's, Wood put his pencil to paper and created one of the best comic book versions (and there have been a few) of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Published in Star Comics' STARTLING TERROR TALES, it boasts a cover by another great, L.B. Cole. Included in this issue is a bizarre little tale, also by Wood.
Is this how the end of the world begins? If so, I'm mighty impressed!
I think we just might have a winner here. Making noise from an unlikely corner of the comic book industry, Archie Comics is in full tilt at an apparent attempt to re-invent themselves with the re-introduction of their Red Circle imprint superhero line (THE NEW CRUSADERS, THE FOX, THE SHIELD).
Now comes the news that the first issue of their first serious foray into a horror title, AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE, has sold out. Your read that right, folks. An Archie comic books sells out!
The story starts off with the usually affable Jughead Jones bringing his dead dog who has been run over by a car to Sabrina's house with the intent of having Sabrina (you know she's a witch, don't you?) bring him back to life with a spell. Sabrina says she can't because Hot Dog is already dead and the spell won't work right. However, she sees how bad Jughead is traumatized by the event, catches up with him and tries the spell anyway. For her indiscretion, Sabrina is cast down to the netherworld by her sister witches.
The next day, Hot Dog, who has been revived by the spell, begins acting strangely, aggressively. In a snarling fit, he bites his master.
Cut to the Riverdale High School Halloween party. The guys are asking about Jug, who hasn't shown up yet. They suddenly see him approaching and marvel at his zombie outfit -- but Jughead really is a zombie! On his way towards the group, he attacks Mr. Weatherbee who is chaperoning (!) the kids along with Miss Grundy. Jughead then approaches the party, where all Hell is likely to break loose . . . in the second issue, that is.
Frankly, I was quite pleasantly surprised at how well this story (deftly written by Robert Aquirre-Sacasa) plays out. The whole tone of the book is full of an uneasy foreboding and is greatly assisted by the very capable art of Francesco Francavilla, whose work is visually dark, mysterious and full of shadows.
I found the creeps settling in when I realized that all the fear and carnage perpetrated on these pages was a kind of deliberate perversion of the once-wholesome Archie gang. Ironically, the founder of Archie Comics was responsible for the untimely demise of horror comics in the 1950's with his leadership in getting the Comics Code Authority pushed through the political pipeline. Now, they are a willing participant in horror comics publishing. But, perhaps the most unsettling thing of all, is that the "normal" little town of Riverdale has suddenly been invaded by something blasphemous and evil that will undoubtedly leave a taint on it forever. And if AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE continues on in this fashion, that's a good thing!
Here is the press release announcing the sell out of AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #1, from the Red Circle website:
Afterlife with Archie Issue One Sells Out
NEW YORK – October 9, 2013 - Archie Comics is proud to announce the
selling out of AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #1, the debut issue of the ongoing
horror series by Harvey award-winning writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
(Stephen King’s The Stand) and Eisner award-winning artist Francesco Francavilla (Guardians of the Galaxy).
The most talked about launch of the year, Afterlife with Archie
explores what would happen if the zombie apocalypse began in Archie’s
hometown of Riverdale and the results are horrifying.
The issue has received widespread coverage from THE ASSOCIATED
PRESS, DEADLINE, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, TODAY, NEW YORK TIMES, NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS, HUFFINGTON POST, ABC NEWS, MSN, LA TIMES, USA TODAY, COMPLEX
MAGAZINE, MTV, BUZZFEED, YAHOO NEWS, FANGORIA MAGAZINE, BLOODY
DISGUSTING, COMIC BOOK RESOURCES, COMICS ALLIANCE, COMIC VINE,
KOTAKU, NEWSARAMA, BLEEDING COOL, FEARNET, and many more.
Afterlife with Archie owes this victory to its loyal fans,
the supportive retailers who jumped on board, plus the deadly
combination of the creative team Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco
Francavilla for making this a tremendous success."
Working with Roberto and Francesco on Afterlife has been
an incredible experience,” said Archie Comics Publisher/co-CEO Jon
Goldwater. “Our expectations at Archie are always extremely high but the
work they’ve done in bringing Afterlife with Archie alive has
exceeded them. Thank you to all the retailers and fans for supporting
Archie’s first ever direct market only comic book.”
Aguirre-Sacasa is also scripting the highly publicized live-action
Archie feature film, previously announced in DEADLINE. Francavilla won
an Eisner last year for best cover artist in part for his work on Archie Meets KISS, which lead to the creation of AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE.
Even Archie's All-American town of Riverdale had a dark side -- albeit in a lighter shade of gray. MLJ/Archie Comics publisher John Goldwater was one of the masterminds behind the Comics Code Authority which effectively spayed and neutered the industry of its best-selling horror and crime titles. In this pop culture microcosm was an analogy that perfectly shows how overreaching regulation can kill out private industry. The proof of this is the many comic book companies employing hundreds, if not thousands of employees, that were forced out of business by the new draconic rules. Even the popular EC comics line was gutted, forcing publisher William Gaines to adapt to other, more "acceptable" forms.
By the 1970s, the Comics Code began to lighten up its restrictions a bit, thanks mainly to James Warren who flipped the bird at the establishment and began publishing full-size magazines that were the black and white, spitting image version of the EC horror line. Warren even went so far as to hire as many of the old EC guard that would work for him. The result was the epitome of horror comics Neo-Classicism.
Like any other institution, time eroded the facade of the Almighty Code, and comics began to get more in step with the times. The boldest move was from Marvel Comics, who published a Spider-Man comic that dealt with drug abuse without the ubiquitous Comics Code Authority "Stamp of Approval" on the cover. The Big Bad Stan Lee huffed and puffed and blew a raspberry right at the Code and the walls began to crumble.
The folks at Archie Comics seemed to conveniently forget that their company was the benchmark of comics conservatism and introduced a couple of titles that were obviously intended to compete in the newly-hot horror comics market.
MADHOUSE was a horror comics anthology title under the "Red Circle" imprint that was fairly tame, but nevertheless was a serious attempt at gaining market share. Contributing pros like artist Gray Morrow allow these comics to be viewed with a little more appreciation than they would have otherwise. The final irony is that the same company that destroyed hundreds of comics titles in the mid-1950s, would 20 years later publish their own horror comic and with the same anthology format as many of their targeted enemies.
Included in the series were one-page Essays Into the Supernatural, which were patterned after the short features used in many of the pre-Code horror comics and resurrected by the Warren publications, CREEPY and EERIE.
The following examples are from MADHOUSE #'s 96 and 97 from 1974.
Despite the pleasing to the eyes on-screen presence of Mary and Madeline Collinson -- better known by the collective name, "The Collinson Twins" -- the 1971 Hammer Production TWINS OF EVIL was somewhat anemic compared to some of their earlier vampire film fare.
Peter Cushing was luckily on hand to prop up the proceedings as usual, and billed as the next big Hammer thing, Egyptian-born Damien Thomas played the dark and handsome vampire bad guy. Alas, he must have found greener pastures as this was his only appearance in a Hammer horror film.
Brit monster movie magazine maker and all-around monster fan Dez Skin published the first issue of THE HOUSE OF HAMMER in October 1976. It was originally an homage to the great Hammer Productions with both photo features and illustrated comics stories (the first issue was an adaptation of HORROR OF DRACULA), but later widened its focus with material on other productions besides Hammer.
Issue #7 (Jan/Feb 1977) of THE HOUSE OF HAMMER featured a cover (by Brian Lewis) as well as a full-length, black and white illustrated story that adapted the TWINS OF EVIL film.
In 1982 appeared a magazine with the title of DRACULA'S SPINE CHILLERS ANNUAL, published in the UK by the oddly-redundant named World International Publishing Ltd. It contained a partially colorized, or more properly in Brit Lit, "colorised", version of the TWINS OF EVIL comic adaptation. It was the same story that had appeared five years earlier in THE HOUSE OF HAMMER, but had been shortened by the exclusion of the one-page prologue.
The TWINS OF EVIL comic adaptation was scripted by Chris Lowder and drawn by Blas Gallego. In the MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD version shown here, I have combined the two versions by preserving the excised prologue of the original and including the colorised pages from the DRACULA'S SPINE CHILLERS ANNUAL.
