“Heh-heh-heh! It’s me again—the CRYPTOLOGIST and my ghastly little band have cooked up a few more grisly morsels to terrorize you with! Amongst them is ROGER HILL’s conversation with diabolical DON HECK, along with a COMPLETE 1950s STORY by that fabled horror comics artist! For something even more gruesome, STEVEN KRONENBERG slices up his favorite severed hand films! BARRY FORSHAW brings back the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s QUATERMASS, while TIM LEESE spends more Hammer Time on that studio’s output. Then, RICHARD HAND resurrects spooky old radio shows, while editor PETER NORMANTON prepares a viewing of horror-inspired covers from the Shadow’s own 1940s comic book! We’ll cover another Killer “B” movie classic, along with more pre-Code comic books, and PETE VON SHOLLY gives his twisted take on cartoon horror. So peer into the dark side with TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest terror—scribed just for retro horror fans!”
And while this issue fills you with terror, look forward (with dread!) to these upcoming tomes:
CRYPTOLOGY #3
This third wretched issue inflicts the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, the model kits, the despicable comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from the Cryptologist’s vault, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2025
CRYPTOLOGY #4
Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!
appeared as the cover of House of
CRYPTOLOGY™ issue 1, November 2024 (ISSN 2997-416X) is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Cryptology, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.
Greetings fellow Cryptologists, and welcome to the first issue of my devilish new tome, Cryptology. Now gather close, for here’s where I, the Cryptologist, get to spill my guts and let you know what I have in store for you—before the rest of these good-for-nothings try to claim it as their own. But be warned: the contents I have unearthed are not for the faint of heart—so no running off crying to your mother! Not that it would do you any good... heh-heh-heh.
It’s been a long time in the planning, but now it’s here, so there’s no going back. For those with a love for the happy family, we will be calling upon my bosom buddies, The Addams Family and The Munsters. They’ll be blowing the whistle on what really went on all those years ago. If you are still enjoying yourself, you might want to stay a while and play with some of the freaky toys I’ve dug out from yesteryear, each carrying the name Addams and Munster—then maybe enjoy the maniacal mirth once found in the pages of their hideously delightful comics.
That age old consort of mine, a fellow by the name of Poe, urged me to return to some of the films inspired by his deviance, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” an unfortunate occurrence he chronicled so very long ago. And while we are on the subject of unfortunate occurrences, the goatlike demon Baphomet from The Devil Rides Out is once more summoned, specifically for the premiere of our “Hammer Time” section. You never know; after reading this, you just might be tempted to search out some suitable accommodation for your next weekend break—locked away in the bowels of one these crumbling English mansions.
Each and every issue, these pages will dredge up one of those B-movie classics the lousy Oscars chose to forget. Cretins! This time it’s a long lost acquaintance of mine, The Mad Monster—a misunderstood fellow if ever there was one.
Last but not least, for the horror comics devotee, I have delved even deeper into the vault to uncover page upon crumbling page of macabre artwork by the likes of Bernie Wrightson (the hideous cover artist for this issue), Russ Heath, Bill Everett, Tom Sutton, and Richard Corben, amongst many others. Each and every one of these comic book morsels was carefully selected for your heinous delectation.
Now enough of my diabolical drollery; it’s time to open the doors to this, the very first issue of Cryptology!
Now shipping!
IT ROSE FROM THE TOMB
An all-new book written by Cryptology editor PETER NORMANTON
Rising from the depths of history comes an ALL-NEW examination of the 20th Century’s best horror comics, written by PETER NORMANTON (editor of FROM THE TOMB, the UK’s preeminent magazine on the genre). From the pulps and seminal horror comics of the 1940s, through ones they tried to ban in the 1950s, this tome explores how the genre survived the introduction of the Comics Code, before making its terrifying return during the 1960s and 1970s. Come face-to-face with the early days of ACG’s alarming line, every horror comic from June 1953, hypodermic horrors, DC’s Gothic romance comics, Marvel’s Giant-Size terrors, Skywald and Warren’s chillers, and Atlas Seaboard’s shocking magazines! The 192-page full-color opus exhumes BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s darkest constructs, plus artwork by FRANK FRAZETTA, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE KALUTA, STEVE DITKO, MATT FOX, WARREN KREMER, LEE ELIAS, BILL EVERETT, RUSS HEATH, THE GURCH, and many more. Don’t turn your back on this once-in-a-lifetime spine-chiller—it’s so good, it’s frightening! (192-page SOFTCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-123-3
IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB
Just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets again, FROM THE TOMB (the UK’s preeminent magazine on the history of horror comics) digs up more tomes of terror from the century past. IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB (the second “Best of” collection) uncovers atomic comics lost to the Cold War, rarely seen (and censored) British horror comics, the early art of RICHARD CORBEN, GOOD GIRLS of a bygone age, TOM SUTTON, DON HECK, LOU MORALES, AL EADEH, BRUCE JONES’ Alien Worlds, HP LOVECRAFT in HEAVY METAL, and a myriad of terrors from beyond the stars and the shadows of our own world! It features comics they tried to ban, from ATLAS, CHARLTON, COMIC MEDIA, DC, EC, HARVEY, HOUSE OF HAMMER, KITCHEN SINK, LAST GASP, PACIFIC, SKYWALD, WARREN, and more from the darkest of the horror genre’s finest creators! Edited by PETER NORMANTON.
Since 2000, FROM THE TOMB has terrified readers worldwide with stellar writing and intensely frightening illustrations from the best talent in the industry. Produced in the UK, issues have been scarce and highly collectible in the US, and here’s your chance to see what you’ve been missing! This “BEST OF” COLLECTION compiles the finest features of FROM THE TOMB’s ten years of terror, along with new material originally scheduled to see publication in the NEVER-PUBLISHED #29. It celebrates the 20th Century’s finest horror comics—and those they tried to ban—with a selection of revised and updated articles on BASIL WOLVERTON, JOHNNY CRAIG, RICHARD CORBEN, LOU CAMERON, RUDY PALAIS, MATT FOX, ALVIN HOLLINGSWORTH, plus publishers including ACG, ATLAS, EC, FICTION HOUSE, HARVEY COMICS, SKYWALD, WARREN, HOUSE OF HAMMER, A-BOMB COMICS, CANNIBALS, and others! Edited by PETER NORMANTON.
(192-page Digital Edition) $10.99 • Print edition is currently sold out!
BERNIE
WRIGHTSON
MACABRE MASTER b y Peter Normanton
Long before The Overstreet Price Guide and The Comic Book Price Guide for Great Britain had found a welcome place on my bookshelf, any tidbits of information relating to key comics would have been sourced from dealers’ lists. This was a time when these lists could be picked up for the price of a self-addressed stamped envelope, while the slightly more affluent would get to see them in the pages of the fan press, with Alan Austin’s Comics Unlimited, Mike Cruden’s Fantasy Trader and Dez Skinn’s Fantasy Advertiser immediately springing to mind. In 1990, Dez turned to publishing the British news and review magazine Comics International. In-between the news columns and comic related articles appeared adverts aplenty from dealers across the country, amongst them Wonderworld Comics, Flip’s Pages, and a chap by the name of Ken Harman, whose enthusiasm not only saw my collection snowball in a way I could have never dreamed, but for countless other reasons swiftly made him a very good friend.
The more lists that came my way, the easier it became to track down the artwork of my preferred artists. As a rule, their names were highlighted in brackets adjacent to the issue in which they appeared. These creators I am sure will be oh so familiar: Adams, Brunner, Byrne, Ditko, Golden, Gulacy, Jones, Kaluta, Kirby, Nino, Ploog, Rogers, Russell, Smith, Starlin, Steranko, Sutton, and a fellow by the name of Wrightson. With only his pocket money to spend, there was just one drawback for the comic-crazed teenager looking to acquire these desirable additions for his collection—these issues invariably commanded a significant price tag. Furthermore, there was seldom an indication as to the number of pages allotted to the contribution made by these artists. If it was an early issue of Conan the Barbarian or a later edition of Amazing Adventures, then you were onto a winner, as the delineation of Barry Smith and P. Craig Russell would have filled the entire issue. For those of us
1. We open with Bernie’s original art depicting the exhumation of a grave, for a purpose left to our debased imaginings. This image was later seen on the inside front cover of Eerie #67, dated August of 1975.
tracking down the voluminous array of horror titles from those years, it wasn’t always the same. We would have to make do with little more than a few pages of our favourite artist’s work in the eerie anthologies of the day, principally Creepy, Eerie, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and Unexpected
Over time we would find ourselves grateful for these scant offerings, and in turn there came an appreciation for the artistry of their lesser known
1. My first purchase from Bernie’s time at DC, the one-page story “The Hound of Night” from Unexpected #121 (October-November 1970), alongside another of its tantalising ilk. 2. “Dark as Death”, published just a few months before in the pages of Challengers of the Unknown #74 (June-July 1970). 3. The first of the four prefaces to the DC
colleagues, whose mention in these lists was somewhat remiss. However, how often would disappointment have ensued when that coveted issue arrived in the post, containing just a single page of artwork, usually a frontispiece in one of Jim Warren’s chilling magazines or a cryptic prologue to a DC mystery title? If you had shelled out an appreciable sum for one such issue, it would have been a hard one to swallow, for without a copy of The Overstreet Price Guide, the novice would have had precious little to consult with in assisting him in his purchase. Similarly, such an occurrence could arise if a few moments weren’t taken to inspect a comic at a fair or in one of the scattering of comic shops springing up around the country during the 1970s.
As with a fair few of you reading this, I fell hook, line and sinker into this trap when I picked up my first story rendered by Bernie Wrightson in the pages of Unexpected #121, cover-dated October-November 1970. It would have been in the winter of 1983 when I was a student in my
final year, eager to spend a portion of my grant at John Freeman’s comic stall on Lancaster market. John had a reputation for being exceptionally reasonable in his pricing, being a fellow enthusiast himself, and was always good for a chat. Convinced I had done my homework, I knew this issue played host to one of Bernie’s highly prized stories, but was oblivious to the fact “The Hound of Night” was a solitary page in length. It may have been gifted with a striking Neal Adams cover, but when I got back to my room to savor Bernie’s tale, I was somewhat crestfallen. Thankfully by and by, I did come to appreciate this issue’s finer points, notably Jerry Grandenetti’s surreal artistry for the lead story “Daddy’s Gone A-Haunting.” As my mood lightened, I began to realize this one page of Bernie’s tenebrous design was indeed worth the price of admission, which as I have already disclosed would have been
uncommonly fair. Okay, so my purchase that day gave me a mere six panels of his artwork, yet they engendered a sense of foreboding rarely encountered in the work of his contemporaries, supplementing the disquiet in Murray Boltinoff’s tale with a distinctly caliginous edge. The pair had teamed up for a similarly minatory outing some months before in Challengers of the Unknown #74 (JuneJuly 1970) for “Dark as Death,” when this, alongside several other DC superhero titles, found themselves experimenting with the supernatural.
It would be another few years before Bernie came to the attention of Jim Warren; only then would he come to the fore as the masterly embellisher of the frontispieces for Jim’s terrifying twosome Creepy and Eerie. For the time-being the comic book world would have to wait. His reputation was destined to blossom elsewhere, beginning with a series of darkly humorous preambles for DC’s increasingly popular mystery line from as early as 1971. With the fourth appearance of the Joe Orlando edited DC 100 Page Super Spectacular, heralding the soon-to-be-published Weird Mystery Tales, one of Bernie’s monsters made his presence felt on the cover, insisting the would-be reader part with the pennies burning a hole in his pocket. While the contents were made up of reprints sifted from the company’s immense back catalogue of mystery and science fiction tales dating back to the 1950s, this compilation entertained four single page illustrations from Bernie’s imagining, each the preface to the chapters making up this collection. Anyone picking up this issue would have been hoping to see these prelusions emulate the air permeating the cover, but just for a moment, they may have been somewhat underwhelmed, for these were an unusually simplistic miscellany of illustrations, which— when compared to his creativity of a few months hence—can only be explained as the work of an artist just starting to find his way in the commercial world of professional comic books. It could also be, he created them fairly quickly in between more pressing assignments. There can be little doubt they would have had an immediate appeal for the younger readership, and as history has shown, they have stood the test of time, making this issue an acquisition worthy of any horror aficionado’s trove of terror.
Shortly after this bumper-sized treasure debuted, Joe Orlando invited Bernie to provide the artwork for Gerry Conway’s typically droll curtain raiser leading into House of Secrets #92, almost two years after this title’s drift into the recondite. The after dark capers amidst the shadows of this sinister necropolis were Bernie’s initiation to the bumbling Abel’s festering anthology, cover-dated for June July of 1971. On this occasion, the unsuspecting reader would have been anything but disappointed with Bernie’s contribution. In addition to this cemeterial buffoonery, came the eight-page advent of Len Wein’s “Swamp Thing,” a character whose repute, unbeknownst to either of them, would see him live on into the next century. The reaction to this short piece was unbelievable, yet for all the plaudits, this was the only story Bernie ever drew for this title. Joe Orlando had an eye for Bernie’s menacing covers, procuring ten of them for House of Secrets between 1971 and 1976.
As Cain rambled on in his introduction to House of Mystery #206, he was observed clutching an arcane volume, signed by Bernie himself. Oh, to have unearthed this tome hidden away amidst the dust shrouded shelves of an antiquarian bookshop! Its arcane companion was observed a matter of months later in the preface to House of Mystery #209, December 1972. While still a relatively nascent period in his career, these portrayals demonstrated an artist at ease in this eldritch domain, savoring every second of those hours that deigned to shun the penetrating light of day. The hilarity cajoling the reader into House of Secrets #99, August 1972, had been penciled a couple of years before, around the time he created the highly accomplished one-pagers for Unexpected #121 and Challengers of the Unknown #74. Even then, his line in each was remarkably assured,
already distanced from that single panel of fan art previously presented in the pages of Creepy #9 back in 1966. It is only when you see these amusing introductions set alongside one another, do you realize there were less than a dozen of them in total produced during his brief stay at DC in the early 1970s.
By the time his last one-page opener appeared in the 100-page edition of House of Mystery #225, cover-dated July of 1974—which probably rates as his most ominous—his frontispieces had started to appear in Jim Warren’s horror magazines. His design for the board game “Werewolf! The Amazing Game of Detective Skill!” had garnered considerable favor when it appeared in Eerie #52, coverdated November 1973, but Bernie’s fans would have to wait until Creepy #62 made it to the newsstand, dated May 1974, to feast their eyes on any more of his work. Their patience was duly rewarded, for this was an entry few will ever forget. His depiction of Uncle Creepy definitely embraced the mood of this well established magazine, the original no doubt seized by this cackling jester of a host, framed and then placed over his mantelpiece; but then who could blame him, for it was after all a rather becoming image. Once within these contents, the reader was bequeathed yet another 12 pages of Bernie’s artistry in his celebrated adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” As seasoned as they may have been, editors Bill Dubay and Archie Goodwin must have been staggered by the embellishment laid before their eyes. A couple of months later, issue #63 went on sale, this time opening with a perfectly stunning study of Uncle
1. & 2. Atop the page, the frontispiece to Creepy #62 (May 1974) with Uncle Creepy looking the part as mein host, is presented with the prologue from Dark Horse’s premiere of their Creepy (July 2009), introducing Sister Creepy.
Creepy, his bearing appearing more haggard than ever before, perched to the fore of a breathtaking backdrop redolent of a print from the previous century. He then went on to apply his brush strokes to one of the most poignant stories of the decade, Bruce Jones’ “Jenifer.” In all but two appearances at the onset of his tenure at Warren, Bernie was taking comic book art to a new level, elevating it to assume a legitimate place in the lofty world of contemporary art.
His precise understanding of anatomy was exquisitely illustrated in the introductions he conceived for issues #64, 66 and #67 of Creepy in 1974. Macabre, they most certainly were, a reflection of an artist whose ability to shape the human form into an object of utter terror was beyond compare. Eerie #58, dated July 1974, would see Cousin Eerie come to a strange semblance of life on his drawing board. On first viewing, this rendering fell slightly short of his portrayal of Uncle Creepy, yet he won both Cousin Eerie and his readers over with the self-scripted ten-page story “The Pepper Lake Monster,” returning a couple of issues later with
1. & 2. Bernie’s introduction to Creepy #63, coverdated July 1974, came with a rather moody looking sky, followed just one issue later by the mocking humor of Creepy #64’s prelude, from August 1974.
1. The board game Bernie created for Eerie #52, dated November 1973, soon became a collector’s item in the making. 2. There was no way Bernie was going to get away with ignoring Cousin Eerie, but his introduction to Eerie #58, from July 1974, was less than auspicious.
the beautifully composed “Nightfall” written by Bill Dubay. Jim Warren’s horror magazines had emerged from the doldrums of an erratic few years to take their place in the pantheon of comic book terror; now with Bernie in the fold, they were going to get even better. Sadly, Cousin Eerie’s horrible little magazine would play second fiddle to his work for Uncle Creepy; nonetheless, his artistry shone on both. Unfortunately, in all too short a space of time, his stories in these titles were no more, his creative spirit channeled into the introductory waggery of these sardonic chaperons.
From his time with DC until his departure from Warren, Bernie’s frontispieces became ever more polished. As this evolution in his style thrived, the world of comic books was going through a remarkable period of transition. A new breed of creator was about to take these humble four-colored publications into a whole new dimension, Bernie standing proud as one of the foremost of this innovative band. The illustrations he produced for Jim Warren would pave the way for the posters he would pour his creative energy into for the duration of the decade. Then would come his eminently collectible portfolios, each revealing a man of incomparable vision with an unsettling knack for distorting the once familiar human body, a vision that would astound all those with the good fortune to behold his impressive volume of work. ■
Which came first: The Addams Family or The Munsters?
Both television shows premiered in September 1964, with The Addams Family airing first. Both were announced in the trades in February of that year. For two years, they were locked in a ratings battle as furious as Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman in the Universal film of that title.
Technically, The Addams Family was in development for two years before its debut. But The Munsters appears to have gotten an earlier production start. Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis were announced in their roles while their counterpart producers were still searching for their stars. The duo had previously appeared together in Car 54, Where Are You? Learning of their rival network’s plans, ABC and CBS rushed their creepy concepts into production.
But the Munsters idea dated back to the early 1940s. Animator Bob Clampett pitched Universal a premise called The Monster Family for a series of theatrical cartoons that never moved forward. The concept revolved around Frankie Monster and his vampire wife— essentially The Munsters.
Love Thy Monster
A television proposal called Meet The Munsters first came from writers Allan Burns and Chris Hayward in the early 1960s. This proposal was handed to writers Norm Liebman and Ed Haas, who wrote a pilot script, Love Thy Monster.
“We sort of stole the idea from Charles Addams and his New Yorker cartoons,” admitted Burns. “Because Universal owned the Frankenstein character and the Dracula character for movie rights, they decided to take their characters instead of the characters we had written.”
The Munsters was produced for television by the team that had created the hit sitcom Leave It To Beaver, Joe
Connolly and Bob Mosher.
As star Fred Gwynne revealed, “Connelly and Mosher established the premise that, instead of the old adults–only horror approach, this would be off-beat comedy, something that would make the kids laugh rather than give them nightmares, and still have something to offer adults.”
Gwynne was understandably reluctant to take the role. “I had a hunch the makeup would be tough on this series, but whenever I asked, they changed the subject. Flattery finally got me. They said they had examined 1,000 pictures of actors, and I would be the easiest to make up as the Frankenstein Monster. It takes two hours to get me ugly every morning, even with my natural predisposition.”
Gwynne’s initial challenge was to reinterpret Frankenstein’s monster as the head of a household of freaks who thought of themselves as normal.
“The best way to do that was to make him fallible,” he explained, “much more than the average person. There are times when Herman is the perfect caricature of the clumsy oaf, as likely to fall over a chair as to walk past it. But beneath that horrendous exterior beats a secondhand heart of pure gold.”
In early episodes, the towering actor struggled with the clumsy Karloffian Frankenstein rig.
“First, I was just a man in a funny suit,” Gwynne recalled, “and I was wallowing. Then, I found if I kept my neck stiff whenever I turned, I suddenly became believable. In this way, I was showing controlled muscular strength. But, if I turned my head like everybody else, the illusion was gone. The stiff neck was the secret to Herman. I was so happy when I found it.“
Charles Addams’ Children
Producers for years had tried to convince New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams to let them adapt the
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
Herman and Grandpa Munster behind the scenes in 1964. To the right: who could resist the well groomed Fred Gwynne?
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
property. He refused until David Levy came up with a script he liked.
“We have made them full-bodied people, not monsters,” Levy explained. “They are not grotesque and hideous manifestations. I’ll admit that they are rather weird. At the same time we are protecting the images of Mr. Addams ‘children’, as he refers to them. We are living up to the spirit of his cartoons. He is more than just a cartoonist. He’s a social commentator, and a great wit.
“I believe viewers will identify with the characters because people usually like to think they are different,” added Levy. “No, we won’t try to explain their ghoulish appearances. The bizarre quality comes only from the way they live, in high luxury.“
The first order of business was to name the previously nameless characters.
“Gomez was a name that just came to me, and seemed right,” mused Addams. “But I was having trouble with the wife’s name. Finally, I started looking in the telephone book—and I ran across ‘Morticians’ in the yellow pages. All I had to drop were the last two letters and there it was. I found Pugsley—the son—one day when I was looking at an old map of the Bronx. It is, or was, a creek. And Lurch just seemed right for the enormous butler.”
The producers wanted the rename Pugley Pubert, but fears of network censorship chilled that idea.
John Astin was the first to be cast. He auditioned for Lurch, but David Levy had a better idea.
“This is actually Father Knows Best, but with different people,” the producer told Astin. “And we want you to be the father.”
Astin, who had collected Charles Addams cartoons in college, was intrigued. “So we discussed it further, and I realized I could make up a character, because there were really only a couple of clues from Charles Addams’ cartoons.”
The actor approached the part with gusto. “I had long sessions with its creator, cartoonist Charles Addams, who gave me free rein to enlarge on the faintly suggested strain of Latin–lover blood in Gomez’s veins. And the producer of the television series, David Levy, went along with me on every idea that I projected. From long, thin cigar and pinstriped suit to the sneering mustache, flashing teeth and heavy eyelids, Gomez struck me as a man composed of equal parts pixie and mystery, with a touch of fire and ice.“
Unlike Herman Munster, Gomez was not a creation of makeup wizardry.
“We did a number of tests without makeup,” Astin recalled, “and some felt I was too straight. There was a suggestion to do things with the eyes, but we stopped that.”
So the emphasis was placed on body language, with minimum makeup.
“You can tell about Gomez from the way he walks,” explained Astin. “The legs shoot out. And when he stands, the feet are apart, like a cigar smoking New York businessman, only Gomez is a successful nonconformist.”
Ideal Leads
Both leads were perfect because they did not fit Hollywood conceptions of stars.
John Astin observed, “I wasn’t good looking enough to be the leading man or ugly enough to be the heavy. I was neither fish nor fowl. I was nobody’s perception of anything.”
“When I come into people’s homes,” lamented Fred Gwynne, “I’m always a goon. Television directors take one look at me… I can now recognize that look… and cast me as the dope.”
Rounding out the casts of both shows proved to be a challenge.
“We tested many people for Morticia,” recalled Astin. “And we really had trouble finding the right person. Then
No makeup required here, the man who was part pixie, part mystery: John Astin as Gomez Addams.
one day someone came up with the idea of ‘What about seeing if Carolyn Jones will do it?’”
Carolyn received the offer through her exhusband, Aaron Spelling, who called to ask, “Would you like to do a series?” After she declined, he said: “Would you like to do a series based on the Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons?”
Jones once described her character as “Wild as a reindeer… but very grand, very elegant.”
Rounding out the cast were Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester, Ted Cassidy as Lurch the butler, Blossom Rock as Grandmama, Lisa Loring as Wednesday, with Ken Weatherwax playing Pugsley.
“Character development took place on the stage with John Astin and Charles Addams, of course, working in conjunction with David Levy,” remembered Weatherwax.
A Horrifying Resemblance
In the Munsters presentation pilot, Joan Marshall played Herman’s vampiric wife, Phoebe. “Happy” Derman played young werewolf Eddie.
During pre-production, the Munsters producers were horrified to discover that Phoebe closely resembled publicity shots of Carolyn Jones’ Morticia, right down to the slinky black dress.
Marshall was replaced—as was Derman’s Eddie, who was deemed too nasty.
Phoebe was rethought. She was renamed Vampira and finally Lily. Casting about for a replacement,
Charles Addams
Charles Samuel Addams (1912-1988) was a cartoonist whose creepy, yet cozy ink wash panels, stood out from the more conventional New Yorker contributors across his long career.
“Like everyone else, I suppose, I had some perfectly outrageous and evil ideas and I fooled around for a long time trying to figure out a way to transform them into humor,” explained Adams. “The first one, I think, had Morticia, the wife, and Lurch, the butler, watching a sales demonstration by a nervous vacuum–cleaner salesman.”
That panel appeared in August 6, 1938. More members of Addams’ family of graveyard ghouls were added in subsequent cartoons.
All Addams family gags evoked a sinister gothic tone. In one, the as-yet unnamed Morticia informs a houseguest, “This is your room. If you need anything, just scream.”
Another depicted members of the Addams family pouring boiling oil from a balcony onto the heads of innocent Christmas carolers.
“Hundreds of people wrote to me,“ recalled the cartoonist, “asking permission to reproduce it—for their Christmas cards.”
Beginning with Drawn and Quartered in 1942, ten collections of Charles Addams cartoons were released during his lifetime, including Addams and Evil and Monster Rally.
Of his 1,300 published cartoons, only 150 featured the Addams family.
Yet Charles Addams admitted, “There are certain characters I enjoy using in my cartoons—British explorers, archaeologists, monsters, ghouls–-but the Addams family are my favorite. I see them as my own children... my own disreputable children.”
– Will Murray
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
Carolyn Jones was always so composed as Morticia Addams, a character she considered, “very grand, very elegant.”
the MUNSTERS
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs
Connolly and Mosher duplicated Ed Levy’s approach to hiring Morticia. They sought a film actress. Yvonne DeCarlo was their first choice.
“I thought it over for quite a while before I accepted the role as Lily,” DeCarlo admitted. “But I liked the idea of a suburban couple—I’m several hundred years old— appearing this way. I know children will love us. The only problem will be the scripts. They have to be good.”
When they heard this, Gwynne and Lewis were aghast. They didn’t think an actress of DeCarlo’s stature could stand the weekly rigors of television shooting. They later admitted that they had been wrong.
As Grandpa Munster, Al Lewis was a 16th century alchemist and vampire. He claimed that he only took the part to keep an eye on Fred Gwynne, but the truth is that they had wonderful chemistry together.
Zany Debuts
The first Addams episode introduced the audience to the family when a truant officer (Mr. Hilliard) pays a call on their creepy Gothic mansion. The local school board demands that young Wednesday and her older brother Pugsley must attend school. After meeting Morticia in her rather poisonous hot house, Hilliard is brought to Gomez, who is playing with his model trains, wrecking them with great relish. Gomez kicks the problem to Grandmama, who’s playing darts with Uncle Fester. When a dart nearly impales Hilliard, he runs for his life.
Having established the characters, the episode veers into unexpected territory. Wednesday comes home from school crying because a dragon was slain by a mean knight in a Brothers Grimm story. Everything about the Addams Family and their approach to life is either inside out or
Yvonne de Carlo as the amiable vampire, Lily Munster, while below, Herman looks set to do himself more harm than good with that trident.
upside down—that is the point of the satire. Gomez and Morticia are especially fascinating because they are so eccentric, yet so oblivious to their eccentricities.
By contrast, The Munsters debut, Munster Masquerade, plays like a slapstick version of The Addams Family, but with recognizable monsters. One wrinkle has the beautiful blonde niece, Marilyn, seen as the family freak. After Marilyn’s new boyfriend invites the family to a masquerade party, confusion arises when Herman, dressed in armor as King Arthur, is introduced to the father, who just happens to be made up like Frankenstein’s monster. Herman unmasks, revealing his own Frankensteinian face. Partygoers applaud him for wearing a second disguise. Insulted, Herman and family head home in disgust. The episode ends when the boyfriend drops off Marilyn and sees Herman and Lily without their disguises on. Terrified, he runs off.
The second episode, My Fair Munster—a reshoot of the original presentation pilot—opens the same way. Another Marilyn beau drops her off, only to be greeted by Herman at the door. He too flees in fright. The crux of this episode is: What do we do with Marilyn, who can’t hold on to a boyfriend? Grandpa whips up a love potion meant for Marilyn, but it ends up in everybody else’s oatmeal. Confusion ensues, as a neighbor falls in love with Herman and the postman falls in love with Lily. Through it all, the Munsters are oblivious to the fact that they are different from their new neighbors.
Donna Reed With Monsters
The same off-beat conceit drives The Addams Family. Given that most episodes are set in their respective mansions full of bric-a-brac, a lot of throwaway lines ended up sounding similar. But the shows are quite different in their respective tones. The Addams Family played it mordantly deadpan. The Munsters was all over the place—sight gags and slapstick was where it was most at home.
In spite of their tonal differences, The Addams Family and The Munsters were take-offs of then-popular TV sitcoms. While The Addams Family looked to Father Knows Best as its model, the producers of The Munsters often referred to their approach as “The Donna Reed Show, with monsters.”
“There won’t be a single problem on our series that couldn’t be handled by Donna Reed’s television family,” insisted Al Lewis.
They stuck closely to their models, too. Gomez Addams was the lynchpin of this demented twist on Father Knows Best, while Lily Munster was a weird version of Donna Reed.
“It became clear that in spite of her origins and appearance,” stated Yvonne DeCarlo, “Lily Munster was to be a very warm and identifiable person, with all of the finer inhuman instincts.”
Both casts made every effort to make their weird
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
A couple of comely snapshots for the family photo album: the residents of 1313 Mockingbird Lane to the left, and the Addams Family at home to the right. They were just ordinary everyday people; who could wish for better neighbors?
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
family palatable to Middle America, outward appearances notwithstanding.
“Philosophically,” noted Al Lewis, “the format is that in spite of the way people look to you physically, underneath there is a heart of gold.”
“We believe we’re normal people on the show,” explained DeCarlo. “Outside influences come into our lives accidentally. Then things begin to happen. Grandpa turns himself into a bat when he’s unhappy. There’s also a creature that shows up only as a shadow.”
“We’re quite normal really,” insisted Carolyn Jones. “We have the same problems everybody else has, but we use a slightly different attack. The main point is that we’re not funereal or ghoulish. As Morticia, I’m madly in love with my husband. In one scene, Gomez is brushing my long, black locks while I apply a bit of perfume before bed— believe. Gomez sniffs, strokes lovingly and says, ‘You know what me, stop it.’”
“In many respects we are the only normal family on TV,” echoed Astin. “No other situation comedy show has as much romancing between a husband and wife. And Gomez isn’t the typical television husband, the patsy who always does everything wrong.”
Relatively Normal People
Premiering so close together naturally led to questions and comparisons. It wasn’t long before the casts were fielding tricky questions.
Fred Gwynne was diplomatic in defending The Munsters. “It’s the only monster series with already identifiable characters: mine, a Frankenstein sort of fellow, and Al Lewis’ kindly Dracula-like creation.”
“Their show,” observed Al Lewis, “is about relatively normal people who do abnormal things. Our show is about abnormal people doing normal things. Our approach, I believe, is a much better one.”
“None of us enjoy being compared with the Munsters,” admitted John Astin. “You see, the Munsters are monsters on the outside, but perfectly normal people in every other respect. The Addams Family, on the other hand, are not monsters at all, but terribly daffy in almost every respect. There are no horrors on this show. About the only person who couldn’t go out into the street is Uncle Fester. Of course, with her dress, Morticia might have to stay indoors until dark.”
“They’re not monsters or ghouls,” insisted David Levy. “They’re simply a rather peculiar
Asked if the two shows would create a trend in offbeat series, Carolyn Jones replied, “I doubt it. They’re too difficult to write, produce and act. Such shows require just the right touch. In the theater there was a successful comedy of this type, Arsenic and Old Lace, which had many imitators. But none of the imitations duplicated the success of the original.”
“Like the Addams cartoons,” Astin pointed out, “our show is an attack on the clichés of life, a reverse joke. We are a family of non-conformists who live the way most people don’t, but I think we have a positive approach to things.”
Here comes the Munster Koach, all 18 foot of it. This luxurious roadster appeared in more than 20 episodes.
While the family butler Lurch was created by Charles Addams, Cousin Itt was the brainchild of one of the show’s producers.
“The casting has been superb—Carolyn Jones and John Astin as heads of this household, are beyond my reproach,” praised Charles Addams. “Of course, we’re lucky in our timing, too. We arrived in television for the year of the monsters. I think that our family is less scary than the others—they are sort of cozy monsters. Anyway, children seem to love them and laugh at them.“
A problem arose 13 episodes into The Munsters Beverley Owen, the initial Marilyn Munster, wanted out of her contract to marry her boyfriend. Seeing her distress, Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis pleaded on her behalf. Owen was released. Lookalike Pat Priest replaced her.
“I don’t think people will mind,” Priest said at the
time. “I think people like shows as a whole. You couldn’t replace a star such as Dick Van Dyke, of course, but with supporting players, it is much different. I’d be happy to play the role even if the writers didn’t give me a line to say. Just becoming a member of the Munster family is important to a budding career.” Many viewers failed to notice the switch.
With its more macabre and adult approach, The Addams Family seemed to be more popular at first.
“I receive letters from kids who are mad at me because the characters on the TV show aren’t mean enough,” Charles Addams revealed. “It’s almost like a typical suburban family… not half as evil as my original characters. My people have that togetherness too— but in a different way.”
“The real charm, and the comedy of the show is that we have continued Charles Addams’ attack on the cliché,” added John Astin. “Any neighbor can go next-door for a cup of sugar; but Morticia goes over to ask, ‘May I borrow a cup of cyanide?’”
It’s Murder to be a Monster
By contrast with The Addams Family cast, who appeared happy with their success, The Munsters actors struggled with their heavy makeup rituals.
As makeup man Bud Westmore explained, “We originally filmed the show in color, and I’ve continued with the green makeup, as the stars have a tendency to perform better wearing it. They feel psychologically closer to the offbeat characters they portray.”
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
This truly loving couple, who saw themselves as just another typically suburban family. But would you really wish that on them?
A candid shot of Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis sans makeup. Fred had to endure a two-hour ordeal in makeup before they would let him on set.
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
With his elaborate two-hour makeup ordeal, Fred Gwynne suffered tremendously playing Herman Munster.
“Whenever I get low on the show,” he quipped, “with all the fitting and makeup and whatnot, the sight of Al Lewis, hanging by his feet, which he has to do quite often, revives my morale to no end.”
Gwynne admitted, “But I’m really very curious to see if I’ll make the end of the first season.”
“When I look back on the past year,” DeCarlo revealed, “I wonder how we got through it. Fred had a pinched nerve for a while, Al caught the flu, and I came down with nervous exhaustion this Spring during our last two months of shooting. I tell you, it’s murder to be a Munster!”
DeCarlo was also getting fed up with her role. While Lily was central, it was also limiting.
“I told our producer I’ll do no more Munster shows after this season,” she stated. “The parts I’m getting are not good enough to warrant the effort. I’ve always been a star and I’m just not made to get up in the morning and go to the studio, only to have lines like ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good night.’ I don’t care if it means a lawsuit.”
By the time season two rolled around, DeCarlo had been placated.
“There will be no changes or additions as far as I know,” she announced. “You don’t fool with success.”
In truth, in order to keep The Munsters fresh, and to further differentiate their show from their chief rival, a decision was made to make the comedy much broader.
This was not well received by the stars.
“Fred and I were in constant battle with Joe Connolly and Bob Mosher,” Al Lewis revealed. “We thought the show could be more satirical. They’re also overwriting Fred. He’s being forced to make too many funny faces that could kill the show. Fans begin to get tired, and so long.”
DeCarlo complained of plot repetition. “I think we’re going to run out of sports stories for my husband. He’s played golf, baseball, basketball, tried scuba diving, fished. I don’t know what’s left.”
DeCarlo was also concerned that Herman has been stomping the floor and breaking things too much when angry.
“The kids laughed the first year,” she wondered, “but will they the second?”
For season two, The Munsters cast wanted to go in a different direction.
“I’d like to see us go back in time to the 16th century,” Lewis stated. “There’s a castle on the back lot used for the movie War Lord that would be just right for us, and no one could complain about added costs.”
DeCarlo agreed that the cast should return to their Transylvanian roots to avoid falling into a creative rut.
“We could sleep in the castle,” she said, “and be on display, snoring happily away for the group tours.”
A new Munster was introduced: Lester, the Wolf Man, played by Irwin Charone—but he only appeared twice. Giving Eddie a pet gorilla named Kogar was tested in personal appearances, but he never made it into the series.
In 1966 the Munsters embarked for England to star in a full-color feature-length presentation of their whacky humor.
Such was their popularity, The Addams Family made it to the cover of TV Guide just in time for Halloween, in late October 1965.
For its second season, The Addams Family chose to stay the course, but added new cast members, chief of which was hairy Cousin Itt, who had guest-starred in season one. He became a regular.
Also added was Morticia’s older sister, Ophelia Frump. Carolyn Jones doubled as Ophelia, explaining, “After 43 shows as just Morticia, I was afraid I might go stale.“
“Ophelia is seeking a man,” explained David Levy, “but she will find it difficult because her man is a gigantic hero type, a combination of D’Artagnan and Galahad. When excited, Ophelia may talk backwards, at which point Gomez stands on his head to understand her.”
Another new character was Granny Hester Frump, Ophelia’s doting mother. Margaret Hamilton of Wizard of Oz fame was cast.
Yet another announced new cast member was an invisible clairvoyant boy companion for Wednesday, named Woodrow.
“While he gets in everyone’s hair by spoiling card games and such,” Levy explained, “he may be the only one in the household who could beat Thing at chess. We are now searching for an invisible boy to play the part.”
Evidently, they failed to find him. Woodrow never appeared. Neither did a number of other promised Addams cousins.
The Wild Card
While Addams Family ratings slipped during season two, The Munsters held its audience. The cast confidently looked toward to a third season.
Fred Gwynne thought The Munsters would go on “forever,” while Al Lewis predicted, “I give the show two more years.” Then a wild card changed everything.
In January 1965, ABC released Batman opposite The Munsters. Ratings imploded. The Munsters was axed. Butch Patrick said, “I think Batman was to blame. Batman just came along and took our ratings away.”
John Astin was shocked when The Addams Family was canceled. He, too, blamed Batman, although the color hit Hogan’s Heroes won the time slot.
“It was a big accident,” Addams recalled. “Batman came on with a big rush. It was a storm, and tough to go up against. There was some thinking that The Addams Family would go away. A lot of the programming people thought about Addams and Munsters as the same kind of show.”
Both shows were gearing up to shoot in color for the following season. Networks were converting to all color. Between declining ratings and the expense of switching to color, black-and-white shows became a casualty.
But what really killed The Addams Family?
“I think Tom Moore, ABC head, canceled the show because he looked upon us as monsters,” Astin asserted. “That we are not, though we may be ‘different.’”
Carolyn Jones declared, “Perhaps the only answer is: that’s television!”
Determined to salvage the property, Munsters producers reunited the cast for a Technicolor film, Munsters Go Home in 1966.
“Now that the TV series is canceled,” said Fred Gwynne philosophically, “and the movie has been released, we consider ourselves mentally retired.”
But that wasn’t the end of either spook show. Thanks to syndication, they became cult classics. The inevitable revivals followed.
A 90-minute TV special, Halloween with the New Addams Family, aired in 1977. The Munster’s Revenge followed in 1981. And although other reimaginings followed, those marked the end of the original cast versions of both shows.
So who ultimately won the ratings race of supernatural shows? Neither—the real victor was ABC’s Bewitched, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, which also debuted that same week in September 1964! It ran until 1972. ■
WILL MURRAY is the writer of the Wild Adventures (www.adventuresinbronze.com) series of novels, which stars Doc Savage, The Shadow, King Kong, The Spider, and Tarzan of the Apes. He also created the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with legendary artist Steve Ditko.
the ADDAMS FAMILY vs . the MUNSTERS
Ted Cassidy, Carolyn Jones and John Astin returned in 1977, with most of the original cast for Halloween with the New Addams Family.
From the pioneering series, only Fred Gwynne, Yvonne DeCarlo and Al Lewis revived their roles for 1981’s The Munsters Revenge.
MONSTE R FAMILY MERCH
TV’ s ADDAMSES and MUNSTERS INSPIRED CREEPY, KOOKY SWAG
by Mark Voger
The first time I laid eyes on the Addams Family cartoons drawn by Charles Addams, I was 6. I grew up in an Irish-Catholic household in 1960s South Jersey, where The New Yorker might as well have been The Martian Times. But a kid in the neighborhood had an Addams compilation reissue in paperback—probably Monster Rally or Drawn and Quartered. I fell immediately in love.
But one thing confused me: Why weren’t they all Addams Family cartoons? Some featured the characters, but just as many showed non-Addams characters, albeit in scenarios that evoked the Addamses’ peculiar penchant for revelling in the macabre. Yes, there was Morticia saying to Lurch, “Oh, it’s you! For a moment you gave me quite a start.” But there was also a skier whose tracks in the snow went around both sides of a single tree.
My Addams education had just begun.
TV SHOWS PREMIERE
The culturally significant year 1964 gave us the Beatles (at least in America), Pop-Tarts, and two black-and-white “monster family” sitcoms that premiered within days of each other.
The Addams Family debuted on Friday, Sept. 18, at 8:30 p.m. on ABC. The Munsters debuted the following Thursday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. on CBS. Despite their shared creepy-kooky factor, the shows were markedly different in tone. But the fact remained: Two comedies about not-altogether-human families were now in prime time—the clearest sign yet that the so-called “Monster Craze” begun in the late Fifties had permeated, well, everything.
And TV shows meant that cool collectibles—toys, games, model kits, puppets, you name it—would not be far behind.
The Addams Family was based on Addams’ darkly humorous cartoons published in The New Yorker magazine. Addams had been featuring the characters since, roughly speaking, 1938—little by little, they coalesced into a family—but he never formally named them.
The Thing had his own battery-operated bank, produced by Poynter Products in 1964.
As writer-producer David Levy developed the show for TV, he prevailed upon Addams to finally christen the characters. Likewise, certain aspects of Addams’ characters were tweaked, tightened or fleshed out.
In the cartoons, Addams placed his oddball brood in a dim, cobwebby, dilapidated house; on TV, the Addams homestead seemed more Victorian, more eclectic, more tinged with old money.
John Astin played patriarch Gomez Addams with a lusty zeal, rolling his eyes, brandishing his cigars and slobbering all over his wife if she uttered but one syllable of French. Carolyn Jones played Morticia, a dark temptress with saucer eyes in a tight black dress with intriguing floor tentacles that gave her, to quote the Big Bopper, a wiggle in her walk.
Jackie Coogan—the title urchin in Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 tear-jerker The Kid and a former Mr. Betty Grable—played Uncle Fester, who had the pallor and raccoon eyes of a shut-in. Add to that Blossom Rock as withered hag Grandmama, Ted Cassidy as Karloffian butler Lurch, and Ken Weatherwax and Lisa Loring as the Addams’ deadpan kidlings Pugsley and Wednesday. The catchy theme song by Vic Mizzy—complete
MONSTER FAMILY MERCHANDISE
Jim Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman seized the opportunity to line The Addams Family up for the cover to #9 of Monster World, dated July 1966, with The Munsters already having appeared in #2, cover-dated January 1965.
MONSTER FAMILY MERCHANDISE
with the cast’s finger-snapping in the opening credits— was the cherry on top.
The Addamses weren’t monsters per se; they were more like wealthy eccentrics who rarely saw the light of day (and had a few monstrous relations). The Munsters were a different story.
Created by the writer-producer team of Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher—the guys who brought you Leave It to Beaver The Munsters was less cerebral, more monsterific, than The Addams Family. And since this was a Universal show, The Munsters had the license to borrow liberally from the Universal pantheon of monsters.
Fred Gwynne—last seen as Officer Muldoon on Car 54, Where Are You?—played simple-minded undertaker Herman Munster, a comical Frankenstein with the flattop and neck-bolts to prove it. Yvonne De Carlo, who played exotic femme fatales in a string of Fifties movies, played Herman’s wife Lily, the daughter of Dracula. Al Lewis—last seen as Officer Schnauzer on Car 54—played Grandpa Munster, a.k.a. Count Dracula, swapping Bela Lugosi’s Hungarian ghoul-ash for Noo Yawk Yiddish.
Add to that Beverly Owen (half of Season 1) and Pat Priest (the remainder of the series) as the Munsters’ “human-looking” blonde niece Marilyn; and pint-sized Butch Patrick as their pointy-eared son Eddie.
Universal’s two-time 1940s Dracula, John Carradine, appeared in a pair of episodes as Herman’s boss. Surf- and garage-rock guitarists have taken Jack Marshall’s instrumental theme to heart. As if to complete some cosmic circle begun when these two monster family sitcoms premiered, coincidentally and virtually simultaneously, to provide chortles with a side of chills, both TV series were cancelled in 1966 after two seasons.
MUCHO MEMORABILIA
The TV shows yielded an avalanche of merchandise that was eagerly gobbled up by the so-called “monster kids” of the 1960s generation. Department stores, pharmacies and toy shops were stocked with Addams- and Munster-
It may have been just an ordinary light bulb, but the kids loved this toy made by Poynter Products in 1967, one that continues to rouse interest every time it comes up for sale.
The Addams Family Cartoon Kit would have provided hours of fun on a rainswept afternoon. Then there was the chance to put together Aurora’s Addams Family Haunted House Kit, which came with the family ghosts.
themed trading cards, dolls, puppets, model kits, books, puzzles and games. (Unless otherwise noted, what follows was released during the 1964-66 period.)
On the Addams side, there was Poynter Products’ toy bank based on the Thing, the Addamses’ resident hand-in-the-box. Poynter also gave us Uncle Fester’s Mystery Light Bulb with a prominent image of Jackie Coogan (who, as a child star, had been depicted in paper dolls in the 1920s). See also Colorforms’ Addams Family Cartoon Kit
Bradley’s Mystery Jigsaw and card game (which offered a rare opportunity to see the cast in color), and Saalfield’s coloring books with passable cast likenesses.
Capitol Records, no less, spun out The Lurch, a 45-RPM single “sung” by Ted Cassidy, which he performed on ABC’s Shindig! (In an instance sinister synchronicity, Boris Karloff hosted the pop music program that evening.)
Lurch was composed by Gary Paxton, who co-wrote Bobby (Boris) Pickett’s #1 hit Monster
Mash, not that this helped Cassidy’s chances on the charts.
Pyramid Books reissued paperback compilations of Addams’ New Yorker cartoons (such as Drawn and Quartered and Addams and Evil) plus two Addams Family paperback novels, while Simon & Schuster reissued Addams’ hardback compilation The Groaning Board.
On the Munsters side, there was a neat-o lunch box from King Seeley Thermos and a large-sized talking Herman puppet from Mattel. Pull the string, and you heard what sounded like Fred Gwynn’s voice say things like “Let’s go on a picnic— in the graveyard!” (That’s from memory, so I may be a syllable off.) Gold
Key published 16 issues of a Munsters comic book between 1965 and ’68.
AMT, who specialized in car models, released faithful Munster Koach and Drag-u-la kits. Hasbro put out at least three Munsters board games: The Munsters Drag Race Game, The Munsters Masquerade Party
MONSTER FAMILY MERCHANDISE
A selection of Addams Family paperbacks, beginning with 1964’s Drawn and Quartered, which collected many of the original cartoons. Then came Jack Sharkey’s The Addams Family and W.F. Miksch’s The Addams Family Strikes Back from 1965.
Now a rarity, Ted Cassidy’s The Lurch was little more than a novelty.
Mattel’s Herman Munster hand puppet came with a built-in voice box.
Above: The Munsters Drag Race and The Munsters Masquerade Party Game, both board games made by Hasbro, adding to this “monster craze.”
MONSTER FAMILY MERCHANDISE
Game and The Munsters Picnic Game. Ideal released The Munsters Target Game, while Milton Bradley was behind a card game.
Certain manufacturers did double-duty with both Addams and Munster offerings. Remco released dolls of Morticia, Fester, Lurch, Herman, Lily, and Grandpa. Kudos to at least one of the sculptors; the likeness of Al Lewis was crazy funny. (I’ll bet it’s the same person who sculpted Remco’s dolls of John Lennon, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater that same year, 1964.) Ideal put out silly (in a good way) puppets of nearly the same line-up, except with Gomez instead of Lurch.
The Aurora Plastics Corp. put out the Addams Family Haunted House model kit, which was more reminiscent
of the dilapidated mansion drawn by Charles Addams than the one on the TV show. Aurora also marketed a kit depicting Herman, Lily, Grandpa, and Eddie in a scene of domestic bliss, Munster style.
Good old Ben Cooper—purveyors of sweat-trapping masks and crinkly apron-like “costumes” worn every Halloween—covered both monster families with depictions of Morticia, Lurch, Fester, Herman, Lily and Grandpa. If the likenesses weren’t exactly spot-on, the wording on the costume fronts made clear Ben Cooper’s intentions.
Warren Publishing’s flagship monster mag Famous Monsters of Filmland didn’t see fit to put the Addamses or the Munsters on its cover, but FM’s “sister” publication Monster World did. The Munsters graced the MW #2 cover in gorgeous painted art by magazine maestro Vic Prezio, while the Addamses graced the MW #9 cover in a color photograph.
CAST LIKENESSES
Were Addams and Munsters cast members taken aback to see their likenesses on all of this merchandise? Over the years, I broached this vital topic to several of the TV players.
“It was shocking, really,” said John Astin with a laugh when we spoke in 1993. “Because I’d never contemplated anything like that. Of course, I’m used to it by now. But back then when it happened, it stunned me. I can’t describe my feeling. There was a bit of delight, but also shock that I should be there.”
Had Astin ever picked up any of the items?
School lunch times would never be the same again when your sandwiches were packed away in your own Munsters lunch box.
AMT’s model roadster Drag-u-La was all the rage back in 1965, as was Aurora’s bizarre Munsters Living Room Model Kit.
Once home from school, what could be better than a few hours with a Milton Bradley Addams Family jigsaw puzzle?
“You know, it’s strange. I picked up just a few,” the actor said. “There are a lot that I missed. And through the years, I have occasionally been blessed with a gift from a fan here and there, so that I have more than I started with. Sometimes, a fan would send a pack of the bubble-gum cards. He’d send two packs and say, ‘If you sign these, you can keep the other pack.’ So I signed ’em and kept the other pack.”
Al Lewis wasn’t the least bit interested in the topic of Munster memorabilia when we spoke in 1989.
“I never really look. I don’t pay any attention to that kind of stuff,” said Lewis (who, it must be said, looked and sounded like Grandpa Munster at all times). “I have no memorabilia. Never looked at the series, comic books, dolls, nothing!”
Friday at the end of the day, there was a big garbage can right outside the stage door. We’d just drop our scripts in.”
‘THESE DOLLS WERE COMING OUT’
I am not alone among vintage toy enthusiasts who believe that the 6-inch plastic dolls released by Remco—with their squishy heads, hard bodies and coarse “hair”—are the Holy Grail of Addams & Munster collectibles. The market seems to support this position, as the asking price for these charming figures generally hover between $300 and $1800, depending on their condition and whether they include the original packaging.
Charles Addams’ widow, Tee Addams, once referred to the Remco dolls, however obliquely, when I spoke with her in 1991. She was not enamored.
Lisa Loring and Butch Patrick were similarly disengaged. “I really wasn’t that aware of it when I was on the show,” Loring said in 2001. “I never really gave it much thought,” Patrick said in 2003.
happened to
Pat Priest had some regrets. As she told me in 1998: “What amazes me is the prices they’re getting for these things. I can’t afford to buy my own memorabilia! None of us saved anything. When we’d walk off the set on a
The New Yorker is laid back and stuffy, if you will, but not really,” she said. “It had a bit of a higher tone, a little more class than all this commercial television stuff. These dolls were coming out. That Addams television thing was not Charles Addams. I look at those old television things ... they were for children.”
No argument there.
But what Tee Addams didn’t consider was that in many cases, “these dolls” helped introduce many children to the delightfully morbid cartoons of Charles Addams, which we investigated during, and especially after, the TV show’s heyday.
I never owned Remco’s Addams dolls—too late now, given these prices—but on Christmas Day 1964, “Santa” brought me all three Munster dolls. I hadn’t even known they existed, and there they were! I remember grabbing a handful of chocolate “coins” (the kind wrapped in gold foil) and repairing to my bedroom, where I consumed the chocolate like medication and just stared at Herman, Lily and Grandpa for an hour straight.
In the days before home video and the internet, you had to wait a whole week to see the next episode of The Addams Family or The Munsters. But thanks to the Remco dolls and other tie-in merchandise, the Addamses and Munsters could be right there on your dresser. You could see them whenever you wanted. ■
MARK VOGER is the author and designer of seven books for TwoMorrows Publishing, including Monster Mash (a Rondo Award winner). Mark’s latest is Zowie! The TV Superhero Craze in ’60s Pop Culture. Sadly, his mom threw away his Remco Munster dolls. Mourn with him at MarkVoger.com.
MONSTER FAMILY MERCHANDISE
Halloween would have been made all the more exciting with one of Ben Cooper’s costumes, so take your pick—it’s either Uncle Fester or Herman Munster.
Before we check out, anyone fancy a game of cards? Milton Bradley game cards from 1965.
What
Morticia’s hair when Ideal created their hand puppet?
AND
by Peter Normanton
When those lovable oddities The Addams Family and The Munsters debuted on television screens across the United States in September 1964, the impression they made went way beyond the expectations of everyone involved. It wasn’t just the kids; whole families would be glued to their television sets to share in their kooky antics. The Addams Family and The Munsters became an overnight sensation, a cultural phenomenon in the making. Never one to miss an opportunity, Gold Key, an imprint of Western Comics, saw an opening. They swiftly started work on a comic book inspired by the CBS series The Munsters. Fans of The Addams Family would have to wait a good few years
before this spooky household opened their doors to the pages of a regular comic book. Come on, they were hardly likely to give up their tenure in The New Yorker; their 26year sojourn in the pages of that journal had made them the envy of each and every one of their peers.
On October 8, 1964, Gold Key struck while the iron was still hot, premiering their comic book version of The Munsters, cover-dated January 1965, just two weeks after the television show had gone on air. In keeping with Gold Key’s design to make comic books for a younger readership, the show’s lighthearted buffoonery was just the ticket. Each issue would carry an amusing photo cover, insisting the would-be reader join in the wacky fun and games waiting within. While vampires were still very much verboten in the eyes of the Comics Code, Gold Key were exempt from these obligations, owing to their declining membership in the Comics Magazine Association of America. Thus Lily and Grandpa were at liberty to revel in their moribund cajolery.
Initially, Harold “Fred” Fredericks was handed the job of creating the artwork for The Munsters. Fred had quite a pedigree, having been taught by Burne Hogarth and Jerry Robinson while studying at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School after serving in the armed forces. Prior to taking on this role with Western, he had also gained experience freelancing as a cartoonist. This made him the ideal choice to bring the hair-raising hilarity of the television show to the pages of this new Gold Key title. His fondness for lampoonery (seen at bottom left and next page) would prove the perfect accompaniment to the amusement rippling through that tumbledown manse on Mockingbird Lane.
Unfortunately, his time amidst the cobwebs in this residence wasn’t to last. Soon after taking on The Munsters, Fred was offered the chance to take on the syndicated Mandrake the Magician strip in March 1965. As history has shown, his choice was wise, seeing him embark on an amazing run spanning 48 years. The cartoon-like pages he had lovingly produced for The Munsters were now set aside, replaced by the serious drama of what had become a well established spy series. Fred may have moved on, but the Gold Key editions of The Munsters were to attract a memorable bunch of illustrators. Among them was the celebrated science fiction and comic book artist Dan Adkins, who guested for the chicanery of “Strictly for the Birds” in issue #8, cover-dated August 1966. Pre-Code horror comics maestro Mike Sekowsky also penciled a handful of stories in this series, inked by Frank Springer, who had previously come to prominence on numerous newspaper strips during the 1950s. After making a prolific contribution to the terrors of the pre-Code years, Mike segued into the comedic capers of The Munsters with surprising ease. Despite The Munsters television show being canceled in May of 1966, the comic remained as popular as ever. It was during this post television phase Hy Eisman was welcomed into the fold. At the tender age of five he was introduced to one of the Fleischer Studio’s animators, who was lodging with his aunt. As he sat at his side, watching him work, Hy knew he wanted to go down the same path. After working his way through art college with funding from the G.I. Bill, he gained employment as a commercial artist, prior to switching to comic books. His first assignments came from the American Comics Group, followed by work on a number of newspaper strips, most notably Kerry Drake. In time, he joined Western, paving the way for him to enter into the field which had piqued his interest all those years ago. He began with a single-page feature in The Munsters
the ADDAMS FAMILY and the MUNSTERS the
the ADDAMS FAMILY and the MUNSTERS the gold key years
#10, dated December 1966, before handing in several strips for issues #11 and #13. In terms of cartoon art, these pages were as polished as you were ever going to see, giving the young readers the zany comedy they so relished.
Alas, by the end of 1967
The Munsters’ time in comics was coming to an end, but not before Alessandro Chiarolla had joined the party. This aspiring fellow had entered the world of comics as an 18-year-old, working for the highly successful Italian weekly Il Vittorioso He would later move on to acquire commissions through a variety of art agencies, gifting readers in the UK with a plentiful supply of his beautiful line work in Fleetway’s weekly comics. His spell with The Munsters was all too brief, assigned to just three stories, each allotted to appear in issue #16, dated February 1968. It would be The Munsters last hurrah. As with those who
had come before him, Alessandro captured the feel this young readership cherished, but sadly for all his efforts, it wouldn’t be enough to save that amiable family at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
A plethora of artists had worked hard to make these 16 issues so very special; a worthy addition to the onscreen merriment. While their technique may have varied, these changes in style were almost seamless, at least to the eyes of their youthful readers. It was the levity in this artistry which allowed the comic book to continue unabated in the months after the show had been taken off the air, if only for a short while.
Prior to The Addams Family and The Munsters beguiling television audiences across America, another set of curiosities had been introduced to the Gold Key roster, the little known Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist. “Who?” I hear you ask. Well, before Gold Key cast them into
the limelight, their only claim to fame had been a supporting role in three of Hanna-Barbera’s cartoons created in 1961. Although theirs was merely a walk-on role, the more perceptive at that time discerned a strange Addams Family air to their demeanor, most notably in Mrs. J. Evil Scientist, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Morticia Addams. Initially, they were showcased in the pages of Hanna-Barbera Bandwagon #2 and 3 in 1963. To the surprise of many, this led to their receiving their own title. This event was hardly earth-shattering, which explains why so many of you have never heard of them, marking just four issues published sporadically between November 1963 and September 1966. During this period they also guest-starred in the pages of Top Cat and The Flintstones, with text stories appearing in The Jetsons
The art chores on Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist were shared between John Carey and Pete Alvarado, both of whom had worked in animation. John Carey had worked for Warner Brothers during the 1930s on characters such as Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, and Bugs Bunny. As was the case with so many of these creators, much of his work was never credited. The 1950s would see John move into comic books, where he found an abundance of work with Western Publishing rendering the same characters he had worked on at Warner Brothers. By the 1960s he was embellishing their HannaBarbera line, which included the madcap shenanigans of Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist. His fellow artist on this series, Pete Alvarado, had also served his time in animation. His stint in the business had taken him to Disney, although he did work for Funnies Inc. during the earliest days of comic books. After his spell with Disney, Pete went to work for Warner Brothers, where he was entrusted with the same characters as his affiliate John Carey.
It had taken nine years, but at long last The Addams Family were given life beyond The New Yorker in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, aired between September and December 1973. This followed an appearance in the third episode of the New Scooby-Doo Movies, 12 months before. On this occasion Gold Key weren’t so quick off the mark, only getting around to the release of their HannaBarbera inspired series a year after the cartoon had made its television debut. For this incarnation of The Addams Family, it was too late in the day—by then the kids’ interest had fizzled away. Only three issues of this title made it into the stores between October 1974 and April 1975, each containing a single 25-page story, rendered by newspaper strip artist Bill Ziegler. It was a far cry from Charles Addams’ eccentric vision, failing to rouse any degree of excitement amongst the youngsters, who not so long ago were enjoying the cartoon series.
Before we bid a fond farewell to these Gold Key characters, there was another, often overlooked appearance from The Munsters in the UK. This came in a single-page ongoing weekly story tucked away in the Gerry Anderson inspired TV Century 21, commencing with issue #52 in January 1966, drawn by the renowned British artist Paul Trevillion. Later on, New Zealand-born artist Peter Ford would assume this role. In a wry twist, Peter also drew Bewitched for TV21, its television counterpart regarded by many as the successor to the much loved The Addams Family and The Munsters ■
It’s time to cast aside the snobbery of “mainstream” critics and appreciate the virtue and value of “B” horror films. Made on shoestring budgets with impossibly tight shooting schedules, these movies consistently fed horror fans a steady and entertaining diet of monsters and maniacs throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Consider this regular feature of Cryptology a tribute to what these films provided to even the most jaded horror aficionados.
Reviled by some critics and fans, the “Poverty Row” horrors of the 1940s remain embraced and beloved, largely because of their casts and the fact that they are, in every sense, true horror films. By the mid-1940s, Universal had trotted out their enduring but tired “monster rallies” like House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945). RKO provided sophisticated and moody product with its string of memorable but monster-less Val Lewton films. It seemed that only low-budget studios like Republic, Monogram, and Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) were willing to give horror fans a healthy dose of monsters, mayhem, and morbidity. More importantly, those studios employed genre icons like Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, and George Zucco, actors abandoned by major moviemakers, whose mere presence on screen portended dread and depravity.
PRC’s films, shot and paced with the speed of light, never failed to deliver significant horror content in mood and manner. And no PRC production better exemplifies this approach than 1942’s The Mad Monster. Though it rode the coattails of Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941), The Mad Monster possesses some unique and even groundbreaking touches that set it apart from its more expensive and lauded predecessor. George Zucco is the icy and soulless Dr. Lorenzo Cameron, mad as a hatter and obsessed with developing a serum extracted from wolf’s blood and designed to turn men into ravening werewolves. His guinea pig is his mentally handicapped handyman Petro (played by future Frankenstein Monster Glenn Strange). One injection from Cameron transforms the unfortunate dupe into a furry, fanged beast with a marked taste for human blood. Cameron wants to turn his formula over to the U.S. War Department as a
The slaughter continues, as the now transformed Petro (Glenn Strange) carries on in his frenzied killing spree.
weapon against “the savage hordes” of the Axis powers to guarantee victory during World War II (Cameron became cinema’s first mad doctor with a streak of patriotism). But before he lends his hand to the war effort, he’s determined to wreak revenge on his former university colleagues, who had him booted from academia for his loony and dangerous theories. In one especially surreal scene, Cameron begins an imaginary conversation with his former associates, who appear as transparent images scoffing at his wild conjectures. “Just picture, gentlemen,” he calmly declares, “an army of wolf men. Fearless! Raging! Every man a snarling animal!. . . Such an army will be invincible!” He proves his point by allowing the transformed Petro to run through the swamp-infested countryside, tearing out the throats of anyone unfortunate enough to encounter him.
The delightfully preposterous plot is ably abetted by Zucco’s poised performance as Poverty Row’s maddest doctor, transcending the film’s bargainbasement budget. Trained in the British theater, possessed of a beautiful speaking voice and a steely, sadistic stare, Zucco’s approach is consistently controlled and cultured, though tainted by an unmistakable cruel streak. Whenever Petro’s werewolf gets too raucous, the conscienceless Cameron treats him to a beating with a bullwhip. Yet Zucco never goes over the top, making his portrayal all the more deviant and debauched (working with Frankenstein alumni Colin Clive and director James Whale, Zucco delivered an acclaimed performance in the 1928–29 stage adaptation of the moving World War I drama Journey’s End, penned by future Invisible Man screenwriter R.C. Sherriff). Zucco’s death on May 27, 1960 spurred some controversy after Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon II published a vile rumor that the actor died raving in a mental institution. In his book Hollywood’s Maddest Doctors (Midnight Marquee Press: 1998), film historian Gregory William Mank interviewed Zucco’s widow Stella, who set the record straight by stating that her husband died quietly at home, the victim of a series of strokes.
The crucial counterpoint to Zucco’s cold-blooded approach in The Mad
Monster is Glenn Strange’s portrayal of the hapless Petro. Strange rarely lent such sympathy to his work in the horror genre, imbuing the simpleminded handyman with a kindness that sharply deviates from the savagery of his lycanthropic alter ego (Lon Chaney Jr. once chided Strange for expropriating Chaney’s portrayal of the slow-witted Lennie in 1939’s Of Mice and Men). At 6’5” and 220 lbs., Strange’s hulk and bulk create a formidably monstrous presence onscreen. Under the influence of Cameron’s concoction, he displays a unique and frightening ferocity as he bares his fangs and advances on each helpless victim—even while wearing a slouch hat and a pair of overalls (who ever dictated a dress code for werewolves?). In later interviews, Strange recalled Petro with fondness, respect, and a healthy sense of humor. Some fans once prodded him into doing a hilarious take on the character: “Hey, Dr. Cameron, are we going for a ride? Oh, goody, goody, goody!”
As Cameron’s daughter Lenora, horror veteran Anne Nagel lends solid if unspectacular support when
sharing scenes with both Zucco and Strange. Despite her father’s obvious derangement, Lenora remains loyal to him, though she yearns to leave the secluded, swampy mansion in which she’s ensconced. But top-billed Johnny Downs, playing Lenora’s love interest, is simply too boyish and beaming when juxtaposed with Zucco’s dignified demeanor and Strange’s bloodlust.
PRC workhorse Fred Myton crafted nearly all of the studio’s screenplays, and The Mad Monster is one of his best (Myton has been credited with a mind-boggling 168 scenarios). In addition to the imaginative, if loopy plot line, Myton’s script features the first werewolf created by science, not Central European myth, predating such films as The Werewolf (1956), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), and Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, one of the twisted “trailers” that accompanied the Quentin Tarantino/ Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse double feature (2007). It’s been speculated that PRC producer Sigmund Neufeld and his brother, director Sam Newfield, pitched the idea to Myton after hearing about
The inhuman Dr. Cameron (George Zucco), the real monster of these proceedings, attempts to maintain control of his snarling creation.
KILLER B’ s
the horrific experiments conducted by Nazi doctors on concentration camp prisoners. Myton’s script also includes a disturbing segment in which Strange’s werewolf climbs through a bedroom window and kills a little girl. The murder occurs offscreen, of course, but Myton subtly implies it when the rubber ball she’s playing with suddenly bounces to the floor and rolls across the room. It’s an unnerving scene, unmatched in any other 1940s horror film.
Credit PRC’s technical crew with the film’s surprisingly stylish execution. When Strange’s werewolf makes his nightly rounds, cinematographer Jack Greenhaigh and art director Fred Preble highlight the movie’s swampy, fog-choked exteriors, swathed in an impenetrable mist punctuated by gnarled trees, giving the film a relentlessly gloomy ambience. Both Greenhaigh and makeup artist Harry Ross create impressive lap dissolves that show Strange’s gradual transformation from man to monster. Transformative lap dissolves (where one shot fades out as the next shot fades in) had been used in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and Werewolf of London (1935), but The Mad Monster was the first 1940s werewolf film
to employ them (even The Wolf Man featured no man-to-wolf lap dissolves).
Upon its release, The Mad Monster received mixed reviews from critics.
The Hollywood Reporter praised Sam Newfield’s direction, the moody photography, the chilling set design, and
the confident performances of Zucco, Strange, and Anne Nagel. Variety gave a nod to Zucco and Strange, but otherwise panned the film for its “childish situations, inane dialog and generally misty camerawork.” In his book Poverty Row Horrors! (McFarland and Co.: 1993), horror historian Tom Weaver damned the picture with faint praise, calling it “...one of those uniquely bad films that is difficult to dislike.” The film was banned in the UK for being too shocking until 1952, when it was finally permitted to be released with a disclaimer informing viewers that “animal blood is never used in transfusions to treat disease.”
Fans of low-budget horror have ignored the critical slings and arrows, embracing The Mad Monster for its atmospheric style, memorable mad doctor, and unique approach to lycanthropy. Maybe it’s time to linger longer on Poverty Row. ■
STEVE KRONENBERG is a Managing Editor of Noir City Magazine and the co-author of The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy, Universal Terrors 1951–1955.
The mild-mannered Petro succumbs to the wolf-tainted serum, courtesy of Harry Ross’s makeup.
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COVER STORY MARVEL PRE-CODE REPRINTS from the 1970 s
by Peter Normanton
Do you ever groan when you hear Hollywood is looking to recreate yet another milestone of cinematic history? Other than lining a few bank accounts, rarely have any of these glossy re-vamps given us anything to shout about. A little over fifty years ago, following a relaxation in the Comics Code, horror comics were once again in vogue. Many of the new horror-
oriented titles Marvel Comics was putting out were sourced from reprints dating back from before the introduction of this Code. Unlike the re-makes on the big screen, there was very little effort made to update any of this recycled content. Given the wealth of material lying dormant in their inventory, it is hard to blame Marvel for returning to these stories, for back in the day they had been the envy of almost every one of their rivals.
For the most part, these reprints remained untouched—but not so the covers. The covers from the Atlas portfolio of terror had been some of the most shocking of the period, but in the intervening years the world had gone through a period of radical change. Indeed, the 1970s were a very different decade, one with styles and a teen culture very much at odds with the conservatism of the 1950s. The covers to Atlas’s pre-Code horror comics were hardly conservative, but the trends in fashion were no longer quite the same. With this in mind, Marvel set to creating a brand new series of covers to reflect the times, each embellished by some of their finest artists. Their design was to draw the modern day reader into these seemingly up-to-the-minute comics, some of which revisited the covers to those Atlas terrors of yesteryear.
When I was looking to put this piece together, my goal was to pair up at least a dozen or so covers from the 1950s with their 1970s counterparts. Boy, was I in for a surprise; it turned out there were at least 37 of these updated covers, many of which are on show here.
Atlas Comics, and the Marvel Comics Group into which they evolved, had a remarkable knack for manipulating the fear in their covers, tempting generation after generation of readers flocking to buy their comics. Their earliest efforts in the shadows of the pre-Code era rate as some of the creepiest. Then, with the sanitizing scrutiny of the Code in place, they surreptitiously threatened something nasty rather than actually delivering it, before going on to leave their readers aghast with the monsters of the early Marvel years, prior to the darkness once again descending on this new breed of Bronze Age reprints.
The company’s ability to adjust to the demands of their readers becomes evident when Mystery Tales #15 (September 1953) and Tomb of Darkness #12 (January 1975) are placed side-by-side, these covers the prelude to a brutal confrontation with the Tony Dipreta rendered “The Vampire’s Coffin.” The twist at the last would have had the horror enthused readership from both eras slavering, as indeed would the covers. The violent fervor erupting from Russ Heath’s original rendition for Mystery
Tales #15 went straight for the jugular. With so many horror comics fighting for a place on the newsstand during the 1950s, Russ was ever but a nightmare away from creating another of these macabre phantasms. Over two decades later, Gil Kane’s collaboration with rising star Klaus Janson deigned to beckon the reader into Tomb of Darkness #12, their cover illustration and the title clearly playing on the success of Marvel’s groundbreaking terror Tomb of Dracula. This same story had only recently enjoyed a retelling in the fourth issue of Marvel’s black-and-white magazine Vampire Tales, on this occasion distinguished by a cover painted by Boris Vallejo, although this scene had nothing to do with “The Vampire’s Coffin.”
The amendments to the Code in February of 1971 would release the shackles imposed by the legislation from the latter months of 1954. This was the lead into a period when a wide variety of ideas were seen to flourish, although zombies were still a definite no-no. Writers and artists alike, were now free to intensify the severity in the dread seeping through these comics, just as their forebearers had so gleefully done during the early 1950s. Larry Lieber and Frank Giacoia’s terrifying interpretation of “The 13th Floor” for the cover of Dead of Night #7, dated December 1974, unsettled its readers in a way Harry Anderson’s whimsical rendering from Mystery Tales #21, dated September 1954, never could. Let’s set the record straight: Harry was an artist of considerable repute, whose work in the field of horror had gained him the respect of many of his peers. Unfortunately, this assignment came just when the hearings of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency were in full flow.
Fearing the worst, Atlas had latterly decided to tone down the excess on their covers, counting everything on appeasing those intent on bringing them to heel. As with their fellow publishers, they had too much to lose.
Curiously, soon after the Code had brought an end to the distaste in these comics, Atlas launched a series of rather sinister covers, ergo appealing to those surviving horror fiends still in need of that ghastly fix. In this watered down world, the stories within, while frequently thought provoking, were never quite the match for these covers. However, as foreboding as these images most certainly were, it was unthinkable for them to mirror the extremes relished by their forerunners.
When some of these more ominous covers were reimagined during the 1970s, the vexation pervading the originals was appreciably exacerbated. John Severin’s ghostly cover for Mystic
#56, from February 1957, revealed how an already unsettling cover could be plunged ever further into the abyss. The portent brooding from within John’s canvas was almost tangible, no doubt causing alarm amongst those charged with approving these pages. Then almost two decades later, it was escalated by his sister Marie, who replaced his spectral figures with an array of monsters for the appearance of Dead of Night #3, cover-dated April 1974. Marie’s interpretation was
indeed impressive, but it was inconceivable to think the palette used in John’s original could be bettered. Stan Goldberg was the man responsible for these colors; it was his craft that suffused the intensity in this unnerving display. For all of Stan’s ingenuity, you have to wonder if the atmosphere exuded in his tones would have been lost on the youngsters of the 1970s. In all but a short space of time, they had become more accustomed to the vibrant colour ablaze on the covers to the company’s ever popular superhero fare, leaving this new crop of horror titles with little choice but to follow suit.
Along with this contemporary approach to color, these covers also reflected the newfangled fashions of the age. The trim haircuts of the 1950s were poles apart from the free flowing locks of this new decade. Furthermore, the hats that had been commonplace for so many years, were now considered symptomatic of a bygone era. One might be tempted to say they had in turn become old hat!
Away from such witticisms, let’s look at the leading men of the pre-Code terrors and those in the years following the Code, for they were generally attired in rather well tailored suits. Not so in the Bronze Age of comics, where more casual apparel was now the order of the day. When the horror had raged in the comics of the 1950s, these well dressed fellows provided an assurance when confronted by the malfeasance lurking in these stories. They gave the impression they knew exactly what they were about, their impeccable dress sense making them immune to the terrors prowling in the night.
As the 1970s began to unfold, the conservatism of the past may have been on the wane, but note the omission of the cigarette falling from the dismayed man on the cover to Mystic #30 (May 1954). By the time it was redrawn by Mike Esposito as the prelude to Crypt of Shadows #9 (March 1974), attitudes towards smoking were at last starting to show healthy signs of change.
As we have seen, these eras were entirely different, but they could both stand together in boasting a bullpen of incredibly talented artists. Atlas were blessed with company stalwarts Sol Brodsky and Carl Burgos, a pairing who were regularly called upon for cover duties. Sol’s menacing cover for the third issue of Uncanny Tales (October 1952)
certainly encapsulated the dread permeating these years. However, when this idea was revisited on the cover to Uncanny Tales from the Grave #8 (February 1975), the team of Arvell Jones and Klaus Janson went that little bit further in letting the reader know just what to expect in the tale lying within. When Sol and Carl teamed up to embellish the cover to Mystery Tales #25 (January 1955), their ghoulish creativity had to be tempered so as to avoid aggravating the anti-comics crusade. Many years later, Ron Wilson and Mike Esposito were asked to return to this episode on the cover to Beware #6 (January 1974). Unlike many other revamped covers from this period, their delineation came pretty close to replicating the original. Still, as you would expect, the clothes worn by this terrified couple were pure ’70s chic.
In the early months of 1955, the Comics Code saw many artists lose their jobs. Thankfully, Carl Burgos was still in the thick of things, dutifully applying himself as one of Atlas’s leading cover artists. His cross-hatching for Mystic #41 (November 1955), worked to great effect to augment the threat imbued into this imposing labyrinthine scene.
In 1973, neophyte Ron Wilson was taken on by Marvel, to be assigned more covers than he could have ever dreamed. Within a few years, his style would come to epitomize this revitalized era of Marvel superheroes, but between 1973 and 1976 he was brought in to provide cover illustrations for many of these reprint titles. Working alongside time-served Marie Severin, he recreated Carl’s cross-hatched cover from Mystic #41as the lure into Chamber of Chills #9 (March 1974). Notice how in this unrestrained age, the gaze of the eyes on this cover is downright evil. This really was an image with the new breed of reader in mind—but then, Ron was a man of his time.
From joining the company at the end of the 1940s, Joe Maneely would rise to become one of the foremost artists in the Atlas bullpen. His illustration adorning the cover to Marvel Tales #129 (December 1954) may have been created when the Senate hearings were at an end, with judgment soon to come down on the entire industry, but it was still as morbid a spectacle as you were ever going to see. It was later redrafted by Marvel art director John Romita and Ernie Chan for Crypt of Shadows #10 (May 1974), losing none of the darkness of two decades past.
Both Bill Everett and Russ Heath were of a similar caliber to Joe Maneely when it came to producing scary covers. Bill had an unparalleled gift for the darkest of humor, as evidenced on his “Honeymooners” cover for Mystic #21 (July 1953). This turned to outright terror when Larry Lieber and Mike Esposito got their hands on it to announce the arrival of Vault of Evil #16 (Dec. 1974). As mentioned earlier, Russ was no stranger to the most spine tingling of terror. It wasn’t unusual for his covers produced during the pre-Code years to find
their way into this second wave of comic book terror, albeit with slight tweaks and unavoidable alterations to the color scheme. When his cover for Uncanny Tales #23 (Aug. 1954) was reclaimed for the eighth appearance of
Crypt of Shadows in January of 1974, there were modifications to the color tones, along with a series of minor adjustments to his original art. For all of this, there is no denying the apprehension in each, but the cover to Uncanny Tales #23 would have made anyone’s hair stand on end. Socially and politically, the 1950s and the 1970s were strikingly different decades, but in terms of comic book horror they are yet to be surpassed. Marvel’s decision to flood the market with their tales from the company’s past would peeve their rivals, yet in so doing, they brought these abandoned classics to a new generation of horror hungry comic book enthusiasts, who I can safely say remain grateful to this very day. These cover recreations were to have an immediate appeal for this youthful throng, just as their grisly predecessors had 20 years before. ■
Orphaned, a failed soldier, a bankrupt gambler and an alcoholic incapable of holding down a job, forced to live with his child wife’s mother, and eventually dead in a gutter aged 40... how could Edgar Allan Poe have become an outstanding poet, essayist and progenitor of at least four literary genres: the short story (or tale) of crime and detection, horror, psychological fiction, and even science fiction? Probably his unhappy background predisposed him to introspection, gloom and despond, but the elegance of his style and intricate intellectual curiosity give even his darkest works in the horror genre a burnished gleam. The obsessive protagonists of many of his tales prefigure both the criminals and sleuths of later writers: “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) deals explicitly with a murderer’s guilt, as does “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846). But it is the three tales featuring the detective C. Auguste Dupin (massively influential on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes), who uses observation, logic and lateral thinking to solve crimes, that claim primacy for crime enthusiasts: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter” (1845).
Horror, however, remains the principal field with which Poe is associated, despite his importance in the crime genre. He was American, but schooled for a period in England—in London’s Stoke Newington, in fact—and his macabre work remained an occasional preoccupation of British filmmakers during the decades of the 1930s and 1940s, his name (even in this period) virtually a synonym for Gothic horror; an adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher was directed by Ivan Barnett in 1949. Compared to such deceptively sumptuous versions as Roger Corman’s later color remake for AIP, this was a threadbare affair, poorly acted, with all of Poe’s melancholy poetry and febrile ambiance leached from the film. What’s more, the embroidery on the writer’s brief original was far less creative and in sympathy with the material than that practiced by Richard Matheson for the later Corman film. Nevertheless, despite its paucity of effects, Barnett’s version achieved the distinction of being the second British film (after The Dark Eyes of London) to be granted the ‘H’ (for horror) certificate. Later, the wily Hammer film studios would parley an ‘X’ certificate into considerable commercial advantage, suggesting to sensation-hungry audiences that the restrictive category meant that they would be party to some kind of forbidden fruit, but this lackluster ‘H’ version apparently did very little business. Corman, however, enjoyed massive success with his series of Poe adaptations for American International in the 1960s.
ENTER MIKE FLANAGAN
Poe admirers were intrigued to hear that there was to be a television series called The Fall of the House of Usher in 2023; the selling point for many was the fact that the show would be produced by Mike Flanagan,
FALL of the HOUSE of USHER
Reynold Brown’s macabre poster would have attracted the onlooker for Roger Corman’s film, as would the later Netflix retro-styled design.
FALL of the HOUSE of USHER
a talented filmmaker whose name became a byword for sophisticated horror shows on television, including The Midnight Club and The Haunting of Hill House. The latter had taken elements and characters from Shirley Jackson’s iconic supernatural novel (previously filmed by Robert Wise) and adapted them to fit a multi-part series, maintaining the ethos and dark sensibility of the original while expanding both the well-rounded characters and the flesh-creeping incidents to suit an extended drama. The new series, viewers were told, would replicate this approach with the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
The new Usher, as quickly became apparent, depended as much on some spot-on casting as on Flanagan’s reinvention and extension of Poe’s originals. The new concept, many noted, had echoes of the phenomenally successful drama series Succession, with lethal infighting between the members of a poisonous clan over the legacy of the patriarch. Roderick Usher is no longer the delicate, neurasthenic aesthete of Poe’s original story—a man who cannot bear anything other than the softest silk against his skin, and for whom all but the quietest music is a torment. As played by the excellent Bruce Greenwood, Usher has become the CEO of a sinister pharmaceutical company that has been plagued by a series of scandals. His wealth has sprung from an opioid crisis, but his life has been plunged into darkness by the death of all six of his children, in quick succession and all in notably horrific
The bloodied figure of Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey) was considered forbidden fruit by the UK censors, as was the rest of Corman’s classic.
fashion. He summons an old associate, C. Auguste Dupin (played by Carl Lumbly), but the character is no longer the prototype of Sherlock Holmes that he was in Poe’s original stories, but an investigator who has been endeavoring to nail Usher for the corporate crimes of his company. Through a series of conversations in a crumbling old dark house, Dupin is to learn the gruesome facts behind the House of Usher—and as Usher himself relates the horrors that have befallen his family, he is visited by a series of gruesome apparitions: the specters of his children who have died in deeply unpleasant (and bizarre) fashions.
EERIE EASTER EGGS
Part of the pleasure for the Poe enthusiast in this re-jigged Usher are the Easter eggs, essentially a series of references to other classic stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The title of the first episode, “A Midnight Dreary”, is taken from the first line of Poe’s muchloved poem “The Raven”, while the last episode utilises the poem’s actual title. The title of the other episodes are drawn from the writer’s short stories: “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (transformed into a single murder in Flanagan’s adaptation), “The Black Cat”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Gold Bug” (here conflated as “Goldbug”) and “The
Pit and the Pendulum”. But the elements taken from Poe are also present here at a granular level, and the show is something of a test of the viewer’s knowledge of the writer’s work. The corrupt pharmaceutical company is called “Fortunato”, and the names Annabel Lee and Lenore (both familiar from Poe) make appearances. Flanagan, however, rarely inserts these references in any parodic fashion—they are there for those who know their Edgar Allan Poe, but also function as simple story elements for viewers unfamiliar with his writing.
When Dupin asks the distracted Usher how he knows the details of the bloody deaths of his children, he replies: “I know because they told me.” The true horror—which we see as the series unfolds—is that the ruined, gore-encrusted bodies of the offspring are telling their stories after death.
All the episodes sport plenty of jump scares as one or other of the twisted bodies of Usher’s children makes a sudden jolting appearance. And along with these malignant ghosts popping up, Roderick Usher is at the mercy of the mysterious and seductive Verna (played by Carla Gugino), who acts as a smiling but lethal conduit between the various stories, and who appears to be always on hand when poetic justice is required for Usher or one of his children. Gugino was not new to Flanagan’s grim universe; she made a memorable appearance in his earlier The Haunting of Hill House
DISPARATE DEMISES
Before watching the program—if you’re new to it—it’s probably a good idea to familiarize yourself anew with the Poe stories, as part of the pleasure is seeing just how Mike Flanagan weaves the originals into his more extensive versions. In this regard, he is not unlike the filmmaker Roger Corman, whose principal screenwriter, Richard Matheson,
In a quiet moment, Vincent Price poses in the guise of Roderick Usher, perusing a collection of poems and tales scribed by Edgar Allan Poe.
Lady Madeline Usher (Gwen Watford) contemplates her nightcap in Ivan Barnett’s low budget British adaptation. As with the audience, she was never entirely sure if it had been poisoned.
was obliged to flesh out the often minimalist stories before Poe provided the climax of the plot. (And if anyone has a reluctance to tackle Poe’s vintage prose, it should be pointed out that these are masterpieces of concision as much as they are masterpieces of horror—taking only four of five pages each.)
Flanagan imagines one of Usher’s children, the unsympathetic Prospero, “Perry”, as a drug-taking hipster type. When Perry opts to host a hedonistic nightclub party with copious sex and drugs laid on in one of his father’s defunct factories, those familiar with “The Masque of the Red Death” will be well aware that the finale will be a truly grotesque series of deaths—and the flesh-melting
horrors laid on here are considerably more grisly than those that Roger Corman conjured in his impressive film of the story.
A particular plus of the series is the appearance of the always reliable actress Mary McDonnell, who plays Usher’s deeply unpleasant and murderous sister Madeline Usher, secondary head honcho of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, and much concerned with technological developments. She is, of course, based on Usher’s ill-fated narcoleptic sister from the short story, and McDonnell’s reptilian playing here as a mature woman is matched in intensity by the remarkable Willa Fitzgerald playing her younger self.
While the series is required viewing for any admirers of Edgar Allan Poe, it should be pointed out that, as in the earlier The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan is not able to avoid the occasional longueur—the series might have profitably been reduced by one or two episodes. There is also a certain amount of repetition—notably, too many sequences of Roderick Usher relating the stories of his children’s deaths to the reluctant Dupin, with the constant attempts to wheedle the truth out of Usher proving tedious. That said, the series is blessed with some consummate acting, particularly from the various unpleasant Usher offspring. And when it comes to the moments of gruesome horror, Flanagan lets us have it with both barrels, a noticeably disturbing example being the hideous acid rain that strips the flesh from a throng of party-goers and leaves them in a molten mass, writhing on the floor—an unsparing channeling of the macabre that we have come to expect from Flanagan. Caveats aside, The Fall of the House of Usher is a welcome addition to televisual horror. ■
BARRY FORSHAW is the author of Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide and American Noir (available from Amazon. com) and the editor of Crime Time (www. crimetime.co.uk); he lives in London.
What is it about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” penned in 1839, that continues to draw comic book creators to its timeworn doors? It is a tale devoid of the intricacies of elaborate plot, so often enjoyed by the minds behind these comic books, relying solely on the atmosphere Poe induced in his melancholic narrative all those years ago. In what was merely a short story, he opened with a lone narrator treading a path on horseback leading into a province seemingly forsaken, abandoned to wither and wane, plagued by horrors of the most degenerate kind. As his tale unfolded, it became obvious the subject matter was not entirely in keeping with that associated with a comic book. Its intimation of incest and the abstract of a hopelessly diseased mind were hardly suitable fare for young children. Yet to the credit of those who have sought to relate this tale to a modern audience, they have remained faithful to Poe’s words, bringing the despair in this desolate landscape to sequent generations of eager comic book readers wanting a little more from their regular dose of horror.
There have been numerous graphic interpretations of this morbidity, each
preferring to eschew the surreal imagery observed in Jean Epstein’s silent masterpiece of 1928, the sombre muse pervading Ivan Barnett’s departure of 1950, and so much of Roger Corman’s entertaining cinematic release from 1960. While they have followed their own course, these stories have never escaped the attention of those who continue to venerate Poe’s canon of work, countless of whom have nothing but praise for these pictorial narrations.
The first comic book adaptation of “Usher” came in the Charlton anthology title Yellowjacket Comics #4, coverdated December 1944. Given these were early days for the comic book industry, Austrian born Gus Schrotter turned in a highly competent set of pages. This talent would eventually open the doors to a successful career illustrating children’s books. From the outset this tale unsettled, as a deathly specter was observed beckoning the reader into the gloom of The House of Usher. In this, the third of this series taken from Poe’s forbidding legacy entitled “Famous Tales of Terror,” he was chosen as narrator. It wouldn’t be the last time Poe would assume this role, although his recountal in these pages was probably the most removed
“The Fall of the House of Usher” made its first comic book appearance in Charlton’s Yellowjacket Comics #1, dated December 1944, followed by a return in Classics Illustrated #40, “Mysteries by Edgar Allen Poe” in August of 1947.
Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine from September 1839.
from his words of a century past.
The reader could be forgiven for thinking Gus was not entirely familiar with Poe’s story, for the house was unusually modest for a family of this stature, in stark contrast to the daunting mansion first portrayed in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in September of 1939. As this episode raced to its climax, Madeline appeared in the guise of an archetypal ghost, a shrouded figure with no evidence of the cataleptic malady that was her bane. Minutes later, the house was struck by a devastating meteor rendering it into flame. Those behind this story were plainly intent on chilling the spines of their young readers, no doubt banking on their being oblivious of the original. Still, it was a charming piece, going on sale at a time when horror would have been considered a venture a little too far into the unknown.
It was never the design of their fellow publisher, Gilberton, to embark on such a venture—rather, their aspirations lay with comic book interpretations of the classics of literature in what became a groundbreaking series. In 1947, three of Poe’s stories were selected for Classics Illustrated #40: “Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe”; this initial print dated August 1947. Behind Henry Kiefer’s cover, came Classics Illustrated regular Harley M. Griffiths’ rendition of this funereal malaise. The Gilberton team adhered a little closer to Poe’s work, but chose to avoid so much of his dialogue. Instead it went for an element of drama favored by these youthful readers, a bold entry from a time when horror was yet to make its presence felt on the newsstand. In keeping with so many of these Gilberton classics, this issue was reprinted two years later. Half a century on, Valiant collected this entire issue along with Classics Illustrated #21: “3 Famous Mysteries” and First’s Classics Illustrated #1: “The Raven
and other Poems” published in 1990 in the 29th issue of their revived Classics Illustrated in 1997.
Reprints have become the norm for anything bearing the name Will Eisner. His version of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” first seen in The Spirit’s weekly strip from August 22, 1948 was no exception. Amid the shadows of the opening page, penciled by Will, the masked crime fighter was depicted reading this story to young Ebony, who was already adrift in the mists of this brooding outpost. It was left to Jerry Grandenetti, who just a few years prior had been sweeping the floor of Will’s studio, to lay out the next six pages, then apply his luscious brushstrokes from beginning to end of this story. As with so much of their work, it was a sight to behold, destined to become the benchmark for those who followed, for this account went that one step further in making able use of the writer’s original words. Moreover, Will invited a fellow, not unlike
Edgar Allan Poe, to chronicle his version of this tale. As we have seen elsewhere, Jerry too chose to downsize the scale of the Usher family home. However, he captured the ailing figure of Roderick Usher like no artist before. The reader was left in no doubt, that underlying Roderick’s hypochondria was a man not long for this world. Between them, Will and Jerry then set to invoking the terror swept in with the howling wind to extraordinary effect as an antecedent to the appearance of the striking manifestation of Madeline Usher. In all but seven pages, each of them bound for the funny pages, this pairing succeeded in elevating this story to a new level.
Although comic book horror boomed between 1949 and 1954, there was only one tenuous play upon Poe’s short story during this period. It came early on, in EC’s “The Curse of Harkley Heath” from the pages of Vault of Horror #13, cover-dated June July 1950. Looming in Johnny Craig’s cover for this issue was the semblance of Madeline Usher, once again risen from her ill-
timed internment, the prelude to an atmospheric offering coming courtesy of script writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Harrison. In essence this was a tale synonymous with EC’s penchant for terror, their relish for revenge from the grave already endorsed as a means to satisfy their newfound readership. Only when the closing page was turned did the connection with Poe’s account become clear. In a sequence of panels, surely inspired by Jerry Grandenetti’s rendition of Madeline Usher, she was again seen advancing from a doorway prior to collapsing on and killing her persecutor. In this instance, the maligned heroine had taken on a similar pose as she claimed the life of one of those who had conspired to kill her. As with its aging counterpart, Harkley Heath then burned to the ground.
The ravages inflicted by the Comics Code would put an end to this reign of terror, calling time on these adaptations of Poe’s works. It would be another ten years before Jim Warren found a way to bypass these regulations, bringing his terrors together in a line of black-and-white magazines. The first of his horror comic styled magazines commenced life in 1964, but it wasn’t until March 1969 that “The Fall of the House of Usher” once again cast its shadow, this time in the pages of Eerie #20. Contained within was Tom Sutton’s stunning visualization of Poe’s original, beguiling the reader from the opening doublepage spread, leading him up to this dismal dwelling.
It was soon obvious Tom was well versed in this tale, for as with Will Eisner’s telling, he too returned to the words scribed by Poe to bring the dread in this decaying domain to a new gathering of readers. In a brief moment of amuse-
ment, the valet appeared as a Lurch-inspired character, his demeanor so very suited to this dark abode. This diversion was quickly forgotten, for as with Jerry Grandenetti’s incarnation, the effects of Roderick Usher’s hypochondria was plain to see, his appearance every bit as atrophied as the blight defiling these woebegone environs. Then came Tom’s exposition of the resurrected Madeline encircled in the frame of the door, the augur to the final fall of The House of Usher. Many followers of the Warren line consider this period to be a lull in the company’s fortunes, but how could this be when the likes of Tom Sutton could craft a tale of such outlandish magnitude, conveying the strangeness of this doomed family in their uninviting home in such an imaginative way? Only at the last, in the moments when the house was torn asunder, did Tom reveal Poe as his narrator.
For the next four years a deathly silence fell over The House of Usher. Then Scream #3, cover-dated December 1973, returned to this crumbling edifice in a 12-page adaptation created by Skywald supremo Alan Hewetson and the almost forgotten Maro Nava. Maro excelled in these pages, according the facade of this house, set against the decay of the trees, an abnormally claustrophobic feel, mirroring the oppression in this moribund terrain. In this account, it was Roderick Usher’s doctor who disclosed his manic depression. From the first, it was obvious Roderick was in many, many ways so different to other men, as was his “tenderly loved” sister. Maro’s portrayal of Madeline was much more severe than that of any of his fellow artists, her catalepsy and emaciated visage coalescing to make her appear zombie-like, newly risen from the grave.
A little over 12 months on, another of Jim Warren’s magazines again dared traverse the threshold into these mournful corridors. Rich Margopoulos and Martin Salvador combined their talents to bestow their take on this tale to the readers of Creepy #69, dated February 1975. The House of Usher showcased in these pages wasn’t the Gothic residence alluded to in Poe’s account; rather, it resembled a well apportioned country house from the late Victorian or Edwardian era. Similarly, the opening scene was more autumnal, shunning the melancholy observed in Harley M. Griffith’s depiction from Classics Illustrated Yet despite these minor inconsistencies, Martin’s artwork was sumptuous; indeed, an illustrator’s dream. His artistry for this tale
harkened to those shadow laden melodramas from the golden age of cinema, with hints of the classic Hammer years of horror thrown in for good measure. While he may not have captured the canker tainting the interpretations adopted by his predecessors, he certainly gave these readers a veritable feast.
The House of Usher then went to sleep, only to awaken from its slumber in the fateful year of 1984. In May of that year, Pacific Comics announced the first issue of a new and very exciting title, A Corben Special, subtitled The Fall of the House of Usher Those hoping for more would
have been sorely disappointed, for this was a one-off, but what a one-off it proved to be!
Together with Corben’s breathtaking genius, came parts of Poe’s original narration, blended together to make for a truly memorable spectacle. Unsurprisingly, his lone traveler again resembled the originator of this short story, but this House of Usher was like nothing on Earth. Looming through the mist, it appeared as an inhospitable Gothic monstrosity, the stuff of darkest nightmare, cautioning anyone who had strayed onto this path to stay well clear. The foolish who failed to heed this warning would soon find themselves assailed by the malignancy slowly corroding that which lay within.
More than any of his predecessors, Richard took liberties in his treatment of this tale, principally in the shape of the wan figure of Madeline Usher, whose ghostly presence appeared very early on, before our narrator had set foot in this imposing citadel. While she may have struggled with her ailment, true to form Corben presented her as an impassioned creature, the victim of her scheming brother. It was easy to forgive the artist this indulgence, for this was a genuinely eerie telling, revealing the mausoleum that was The House of Usher to be the embodiment of abhorrence, a necropolis erected solely to harbor those who had already departed this mortal coil.
This century of Poe adaptations was rounded off by P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” with his layouts finished by Jay Geldhof, who also embellished the cover for First Publishing’s Classic Comics #14, dated September 1990. This account would run all
of 44 pages, adhering very closely throughout to the text published so long ago, a fitting way to say farewell to this damned abode.
However, before we do say our final good-bye to Poe’s accursed construct, let’s turn the clock back to an Usher tale many have overlooked from Charlton’s Haunted #31, Tom Sutton’s “Subway Stop,” released in January 1977. Charlton were known to give their creative staff a considerable amount of freedom; Tom frequently used this to incredible effect. On this occasion he drew upon Poe’s recondite library, supplemented by that of H. P. Lovecraft, to deliver a tale of utter madness. Here, our disillusioned protagonist was forced to make a subway stop like no other. When he awakened—and he would soon wish he never had—Edgar Allan Poe himself was obliged to inform him he was none other than Roderick Usher, doomed to live his life over and over.
The intricacies of plot may be absent from Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” but it is the atmosphere invoked in his words that has stirred writers and artists alike to return time and time again to its blighted premise. While the unhealthy bond Roderick seeks with his sister has been played down, his derangement was just perfect for these tales of terror. The works of Edgar Allan Poe certainly carry an esteem; but it goes beyond this, for he has an appeal, the enormity of which has drawn even those whose interest in horror is peripheral toward any publication bearing his name. This tale, however, stands apart, an entire family and their home forever doomed. ■
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The Devil Rides Out is a 1968 film produced by Anthony Nelson Keys for Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts Productions. This was the last production by Seven Arts before it became part of Warner Bros Inc. in 1969.
The film is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by British author Dennis Wheatley. The prolific author wrote over seventy books during his career, amassing sales of around fifty million copies. Wheatley was the selfproclaimed “Prince of Thriller Writers,” producing mainly historical fiction and adventure stories. He also wrote a number of black magic novels which became particularly popular in the 1960s and ’70s. The Devil Rides Out was the first book in the series.
The actor Christopher Lee was a fan of Wheatley, which led to the two of them meeting at Harrods in London in 1960, where Wheatley was promoting his book The Satanist. During the meeting, Wheatley gave Lee permission
to approach Hammer with a view to making a film of one of his books.
Hammer co-founder William Hinds read The Devil Rides Out and was suitably impressed. However, he was initially reluctant to take on the project. Owing to concerns regarding censorship, there was also the fear of causing offense to the Church. Nevertheless, by early 1967 Hammer approached American novelist and Twilight Zone screenwriter Richard Matheson to write the screenplay.
Matheson had become a very popular author, having written a number of wellknown novels including The Shrinking Man and Hell House. He also came up with the not-to-be-forgotten short story Duel, first published in Playboy in March 1971, which was adapted later that year for a Universal Television movie, starring Dennis Weaver. (While it was essentially made for television, it was also notable for the fact that it marked Steven Spielberg’s debut in the director’s chair.) Matheson had already worked
with Hammer on their 1965 film The Fanatic, known in the US as Die! Die! My Darling!, after having penned several screenplays for cult director Roger Corman’s celebrated adaptations of some of Edgar Allen Poe tales.
Casting for The Devil Rides Out began in early 1967, bringing together the main cast:
Christopher Lee – Duc De Richleau
Leon Greene – Rex Van Ryn
Patrick Mower – Simon Aron
Charles Gray – Mocata
Nike Arrighi – Tanith Carlisle
Sarah Lawson – Marie Eaton
Paul Eddington – Richard Eaton
Rosolyn Landor – Peggy Eaton
In a strange twist during postproduction, Leon Greene’s voice was overdubbed by that of fellow British actor Patrick Allen. No one involved in the making of the film can recall why this was done—even Sarah Lawson who was married to Allen at the time!
began in August 1967 with Hammer regular Terence Fisher appointed as director. An energetic filmmaker, Fisher directed 43 films during the 1950s and 1960s, working on many of Hammer’s most popular releases from the period, amongst them The Curse Of Frankenstein, Dracula, Hound Of The Baskervilles, and The Mummy. He has since stated in several interviews, as has Christopher Lee, that The Devil Rides Out stands as one of his favorite Hammer films. Fisher’s religious faith would ensure that its lasting message was “good always triumphs over evil.” Ironically, while crossing the road after attending the premier of The Devil Rides Out, Fisher was struck by a car, leaving him with injuries that affected his subsequent career.
The film is set in 1930s London and the South of England. The Duc Richleau and his friend Rex Van Ryn become embroiled in a battle to save their friend Simom Aron and his associate Tanith from a cult of devil worshipers led by the mysterious Mocata.
The story moves at a fast pace, enhanced by many memorable car chase scenes, a daring rescue from a witches’
sabbath, along with a series of black magic attacks by Mocata—amongst them, an encounter with the Angel of Death. There are some outstanding performances from the cast, with Christopher Lee in fine form as De Richleau. Lee was particularly enthusiastic to play the role of the hero, as he felt he was being typecast as a villain in most of his Hammer films; although the Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy films wouldn’t have been quite the same without his heinous portrayals. He was particularly pleased with The Devil Rides Out, and years later expressed a wish to remake the film with modern special effects. Lee’s death at the age of 93 in 2015, sadly meant this plan
would never come to fruition.
Another standout performance is Charles Gray’s sinister turn as the devilish Mocata. The part was originally intended for German actor Gert Frobe, but his success in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger inflated his fee way beyond Hammer’s budget. Coincidentally, Gray went on to appear as a Bond villain in the movie Diamonds Are Forever.
Gray was an inspired choice, playing the part with a condescending menace to give the character of Mocata a genuinely dangerous edge. Who can deny his chilling line to Marie Eaton: “I shall not be back … but something will” is pure terror.
Wheatley was duly impressed with the film, taking time to write to Matheson and Fisher congratulating them on their work. The same couldn’t be said of Hammer’s 1976 version of his novel To The Devil A Daughter. He disliked the modern interpretation as well as the changes to the storyline, so much that he denied Hammer the rights to any more of his books. To The Devil A Daughter turned out to be the last horror film from Hammer until its re-emergence in 2007. Wheatley died just a year after the release
of the lackluster To The Devil A Daughter in November 1977.
Visually, The Devil Rides Out looks fantastic, with exemplary use of Technicolor and cinematography by Arthur Grant, whose realistic style would make him Director of Photography for Hammer Film Productions.
Music for the film was scored by James Bernard, who had the distinction of attending the same school as Christopher Lee (Wellington College in Berkshire). Bernard worked on many Hammer films, but always stated the score for The Devil Rides Out was his favorite—so much so that he requested some of it should be played at his funeral.
Filming took place between August and September 1967 at Elstree Studios, Shenley Road, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England WD6 1JG, with certain scenes filmed at the following locations”
■ Black Park Country Park, Black Park Road, Wexham, Slough, Buckinghamshire, England SL3 6DS (the witches’ sabbath ceremony)
■ The Manor Elstree, Barnet Lane, Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England WD6 3RE (the exterior of Richard Eaton’s house, now a hotel)
■ High Canons, Buckettsland Lane, Well End, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England WD6 5PL (home of Mocata, now a private house)
■ Grim’s Dyke, Old Redding, Harrow Weald, London, England HA3 6SH (external shots, which is now a Best Western Hotel)
This latest presentation from Hammer was released in the UK on July 20, 1968. It premiered in the United States on December 18, 1968 under the title The Devil’s Bride, as the distributors were concerned that movie-goers may have thought the original UK title was a western.
The film received favorable reviews from critics at the time of release and it fared reasonably well at the box office in the UK, although not so well in the US. Consequently the overall box office returns were disappointing, resulting in Hammer declining to make any more films based on the Wheatley black magic
novels featuring the Duke De Richleau, these being A Strange Conflict written in 1941 and Gateway To Hell, published a couple of years after Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out. There have been numerous home entertainment releases of the film, with the latest blu-ray issues being probably the best regarded.
The 2012 Studio Canal blu-ray features an “enhanced” version of the film, where some of the original special effects have been updated using modern CGI technology. The disc also includes full commentary from Christopher Lee, Sarah Lawson and Hammer historian Marcus Hearn. In addition there are four mini-documentaries:
■ “Black Magic: The Making Of The Devil Rides Out”
■ “The Power Of Light: Restoring The Devil Rides Out”
■ “Dennis Wheatley At Hammer”
■ “The World Of Hammer: Hammer” –narrated By Oliver Reed
The most recent release is the 2019 Scream Factory blu-ray featuring a highly rated new 2K scan of the US interpositive featuring the title The Devil’s Bride. This release also contains the 2012 UK Studio Canal version with the four mini documentaries and commentary from Lee, Lawson and Hearn. To
compliment these, there is commentary from Steve Haberman, Constantine Nasr and Richard Christian Matheson (the son of original screenwriter Richard Matheson) along with two additional mini-documentaries:
■ “Satanic Shocks : Kim Newman Recalls The Devil Rides Out”
■ “Folk Horror Goes Haywire: Jonathan Rigby On The Devil Rides Out”
The UK and US trailers and an image gallery are also included.
Given the Scream Factory release includes both the US and UK versions plus all of the documentaries, this is probably the definitive home entertainment version.
In conclusion, while not their biggest commercial success, The Devil Rides Out is regarded as one of Hammer’s finest films. Many are of the opinion that it was also Terence Fisher’s last great work for Hammer, although there is a very good argument to support the view the following year’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is equally good.
During the following decade, the subject of Satanism became more prevalent in films, with the likes of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen demonstrating a more terrifying interpretation of the subject, which led modern horror fans at the time to take the view that Hammer had become somewhat tame and outdated. Thankfully, time has been kind to the Hammer catalogue, and the films continue to retain their longterm audience, while at the same time attracting new fans. The combination of good actors, excellent production and directing skills, and importantly, the ability to tell a good story, has given these films an enduring quality, which we will delve further into in forthcoming issues of Cryptology. It goes without saying, The Devil Rides Out remains one of their best. ■
TIM LEASE is a Sherlock Holmes aficionado and long time horror movie fan. He only puts down his horror novels to share his fascination for this dark genre with Cryptology readers.
he ill wind that billowed across the comic book industry during the spring of 1954 was to turn into a storm of the worst kind before the summer had drawn to a close. In the eyes of certain influential figures, the publishers of these tawdry comic books had gone too far. It was now time for them to change their ways. The Comics Code would be the means by which this change was induced, the effect of which would bring a grinding halt to the heinous activities of these publishers and those in their gainful employ.
Although still in its infancy, these stipulations would force the industry to reappraise its approach. In time, the surviving comic book publishers would sally forth, their vigor renewed— the grisly excess proliferating their horror comics of the early 1950s, along with the brutality observed in the crime comics in the years immediately before, now well and truly extinguished. Many years later in 1971, the restrictions in the Code were finally relaxed, but the comic book publishers of the day, with the occasional exception, did all they could to avoid the extremes relished by their iniquitous predecessors, mindful of legislative reprisal.
Commie Infiltrators
The anti-comics crusade was to take much of the blame for their part leading to the Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, held over three days in April and June of 1954. Those at the center of this crusade firmly believed children exposed to such depravity would inevitably experience a life of criminal dereliction. This rallying call coincided with an even greater fear: the reds under the bed. To the zealots, this corrupt pairing seemed to fit hand-in-hand. We can only wonder whether these Commie infiltrators were sneaking a peak at junior’s stack of well thumbed
horror comics while they lay concealed beneath the aforesaid bed. We will never know for sure, but for many Americans there was an unbearable feeling of apprehension, a sense this newfound prosperity could be stolen away by an unscrupulous regime bent on undermining the values they held so dear.
To the outsider it was obvious the humble comic book was little more than a patsy. Rather than examine the issues arising within their own society, these righteous crusaders, ably abetted by the media’s capacity for manipulation, saw fit to anoint the comic book as the sacrificial lamb. Eminent psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham echoed these sentiments in a series of articles revealing the horrors sepulchred in these four-colored atrocities. His findings would appear in such venerable publications as Ladies Home Journal and Readers Digest, before being brought together in his inflammatory book Seduction of the Innocent Wertham’s censure has since been disputed, but is there ever really smoke without fire? Could the comic book publishers have actually inflicted calamity upon themselves? In the forthcoming issues of the Cryptologist’s new tome, we are going to take a look at the lengths the creators of these comics were prepared to go. While thousands of readers thrived on this vulgar show, it was difficult to deny the allure in the miscreancy permeating this garish content, all of which was sanctioned by this band of esteemed publishers. Of course, their first line
Dave Berg heightened the abhorrence in his cover to the fifth issue of Ace Magazine’s Four Favorites, dated May 1942.
of defense would have been to assert their aim was to appease a readership demanding ever more of this excess, thus ensuring they maintain their position on the newsstand. When all was said and done, comic books were a business, and a lucrative one at that.
Torturous Covers
Throughout the years of the Golden Age, the newsstand had been chockfull of the very latest comic book fare. With such an array of exciting titles, any comic looking to make its mark was going to need an extra bit of oomph on its cover. Deeds of heroism and costumed superheroes standing proud verily worked a treat. However, even at this early juncture, artists such as Alex Schomburg, Jack Kirby and Al Avison recognized a hero in peril—or better still, a hapless damsel in the clutches of a foul miscreant— would have the casual bystander willing to shell out to discover more. Of all the cover artists at this time, it was Alex Schomburg who demonstrated a genuinely insane propensity for the most bizarre apparatuses of torture. His covers would have the youngsters flocking in droves, gleefully parting with their pocket money to share in a piece of the action.
While Alex and his illustrious cohorts had seized so much of the attention, Charles Biro was tasked with creating the covers for Lev Gleason’s new crime comic, Crime Does Not Pay. Having spent time sizing up the opposition, he took these minacious portrayals even further. From the outset, Crime Does Not Pay ran with an excruciating cover,
detailing the agonizing close-up of a dagger being forced through a hand, in its premiere numbered #22 with a cover date of July 1942. The interior pages were every bit as bad, the most blatant being an appalling acid-to-the-face panel in the introductory potboiler, followed by story after story that thought nothing of meting out brutality on its female cast.
Acid Attack
Such acid assaults found their way into numerous crime and pre-Code horror comics over the forthcoming years. There was an intimation of an acid bath sputtering from the brushstrokes of Tony Dipreta in Astonishing #14’s “The Clean Up,” dated June 1952, although Tony wisely
refrained from depicting the aftermath. In the interests of good taste, its best to warn the squeamish among you of the searing acid-to-the-face scene in “Revenge so Evil” from the pages of Superior’s Journey into Fear #14, published in September 1953. This was a title of serious notoriety, yet curiously overlooked for so many years, owing to its poor print quality, or possibly its Canadian origin. That same month, Farrell’s Voodoo #11 traumatized with another graphic acid-to-the-face panel. A similar horror had previously been inflicted on the drawing board of Jack Davis in “Drawn and Quartered” for Tales from the Crypt #26, dated OctoberNovember 1951. To be fair to the creators of these tales, while they reveled in the viciousness of these attacks, they were upstanding in their representation of the perpetrators, revealing them as abhorrent hoodlums. The premiere of Crime Does Not Pay was in many ways the blue print for the atrocities that would prevail in the horror comics of the early 1950s. Charles Biro’s cover to issue #24 of this title, dated November 1942, continued in a similar vein, a woman’s head forced onto a burning oven ring by a ne’er do well seemingly encouraged by the title’s host, Mister Crime.
The atrocity on show in Charles Biro’s cover for Crime Does Not Pay #24 (November 1942) would have caused much alarm.
HORROR COMICS EXCESS
Just one issue later, in January 1943, Dick Briefer portrayed the hideous image of a psychotic individual setting his own mother alight, in the hope of covering up the fact he had already suffocated her. Again, violence towards women appeared commonplace in these crime comics and thereafter in the terrors published in the early 1950s. Alarmingly, as we shall see later on in these pages, this shocking behavior was not readily condemned by those seeking to curb the debauchery in these publications.
Bloodthirsty Intent
If the ferocity of the head burning scene on the cover to Crime Does Not Pay #24 wasn’t enough, then surely the bloodthirsty intent of the
mind of Charles Biro, would provide the inspiration for the next debased generation of comic book creators. The violence threatened in this cover was taken all the way in the shocking finale to Marvel Tales #114’s “Fifty-Fifty,” dated May 1953. It was probably in everyone’s interests the readers didn’t get to see the sanguinary payoff, for it was blatantly obvious things were going to get
The acid-to-the-face panels above, appeared in the aptly named “Revenge so Evil” from Superior’s Journey into Fear #15 and below it Voodoo #11’s “Horribly Beautiful,” both dated September 1953.
by George Roussos, which bowed out with a remarkably similar image to that seen just a month before in “Fifty-Fifty.” While the outcome wasn’t in question, the gruesome minutiae was again left to the reader’s fevered imagining—maybe not always the best of ideas.
In less than six months, Sol Brodsky and Carl Burgos had combined their talents to deliver another of these horrific episodes for the cover of Men’s Adventures #24, dated November 1953. On this particular outing, their artistry was undoubtedly raw, but it certainly made the point. Men’s Adventures’ tenure as an Atlas horror title was all too short-lived, but it was swiftly
recognized as one of the company’s most disreputable excursions into the genre. The accompanying story “The Torture Master” used a diary to tell the tale of the horrors of a Nazi death camp, rendered by one of the finest artists of the day, Russ Heath. The splash page to this tale, shown here, reveals the extent to which this series was prepared to go. Little wonder those with an ax to grind with the excess in these comics were so outraged.
Not a single punch was pulled in the explicit panels depicting the outcome of a series of axe murders in Mister Mystery #17’s “The Executioner,” published by Stanley P. Morse in June 1954. Stanley
had no reservations when it came to indulging the exploitation lying at the heart of this dark epoch in comic book publishing. However, for all of his desire to push the limits of acceptability, hence guaranteeing the sales of his comics, not even he could match the ax wielding mayhem of Story’s Mysterious Adventures #21’s “The Coward” drawn by Bill Savage. The splash page to this story set the scene, but what followed was infinitely worse. This issue was cover-dated for August of 1954, mere months before the axe finally fell down on the entire industry.
The malevolence to which we have just been privy was just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming issues, we will explore so much more of this diabolical period in comic book publishing. Many questions have been raised about these comics, one of the most compelling being whether they were really aimed at a younger audience—or were they created with a more adult readership in mind? Bundles of these comics had been shipped out to servicemen on active service overseas fighting the Axis powers in the Pacific and across Europe. This supply of comics books along with countless pulps would continue in the years after WWII, when many men had to continue their service in a world that remained divided. Some of those returning from the battlefield would find work in the comic book industry, bringing with them the trauma of the horrors to which they had borne witness. Certain stories do make you wonder if the suffering these men had endured in combat was now being exorcised in the work they produced for these so-called children’s comics.
The debate, I am sure, will continue for many a year to come, but when all was said and done the publishers were only too keen to please their baying readership. Alas, these bloodthirsty demands would eventually bring down a considerable part of the industry. ■
The butchery rendered by Eugene Hughes for Mister Mystery #17’s “The Executioner” (June 1954) was quite commonplace in Stanley P. Morse’s wanton line of comics.
THE TV SUPERHERO CRAZE IN ’60s POP CULTURE by MARK VOGER
HOLY PHENOMENON! In the way-out year of 1966, the action comedy “Batman” starring ADAM WEST premiered and triggered a tsunami of super swag, including toys, games, Halloween costumes, puppets, action figures, and lunch boxes. Meanwhile, still more costumed avengers sprang forth on TV (“The Green Hornet,” “Ultraman”), in MOVIES (“The Wild World of Batwoman,” “Rat Pfink and Boo Boo”), and in ANIMATION (“Space Ghost,” “The Marvel Super Heroes”). ZOWIE! traces the history of the superhero genre from early films, through the 1960s TV superhero craze, and its pop culture influence ever since. This 192-page hardcover, in pop art colors that conjure the period, spotlights the coolest collectibles and kookiest knockoffs every ’60s kid begged their parents for, and features interviews with the TV stars (WEST, BURT WARD, YVONNE CRAIG, FRANK GORSHIN, BURGESS MEREDITH, CESAR ROMERO, JULIE NEWMAR, VAN WILLIAMS), the artists behind the comics (JERRY ROBINSON, DICK SPRANG, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA), and others. Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, HOLLY JOLLY), ZOWIE! is one super read!
AN ISSUE-BY-ISSUE FIELD GUIDE TO A POP CULTURE PHENOMENON by PIERRE COMTOIS
This new volume in the ongoing “MARVEL COMICS IN THE...” series takes you all the way back to that company’s legendary beginnings, when gunfighters traveled the West and monsters roamed the Earth! The company’s output in other genres influenced the development of their super-hero characters from Thor to Spider-Man, and featured here are the best of those stories not covered previously, completing issue-by-issue reviews of EVERY MARVEL COMIC OF NOTE FROM 1961-1965! Presented are scores of handy, easy to reference entries on AMAZING FANTASY, TALES OF SUSPENSE (and ASTONISH), STRANGE TALES, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, RAWHIDE KID, plus issues of FANTASTIC FOUR, AVENGERS, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and others that weren’t in the previous 1960s edition. It’s author PIERRE COMTOIS’ last word on Marvel’s early years, when JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, and DON HECK, together with writer/editor STAN LEE (and brother LARRY LIEBER), built an unprecedented new universe of excitement!
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by KEITH DALLAS & JOHN WELLS
NOW IN FULL-COLOR WITH BONUS PAGES! In 1978, DC Comics launched a line-wide expansion known as “The DC Explosion,” but pulled the plug weeks later, cancelling titles and leaving dozens of completed comic book stories unpublished. Now, that notorious “DC Implosion” is examined with an exhaustive oral history from JENETTE KAHN, PAUL LEVITZ, LEN WEIN, MIKE GOLD, AL MILGROM, and other DC creators of the time, plus commentary by other top pros, examining how it changed the landscape of comics forever! This new EXPANDED EDITION of the Eisner Award-nominated book explodes in FULL-COLOR FOR THE FIRST TIME, with extra coverage of LOST 1970s DC PROJECTS like NINJA THE INVISIBLE and an adaptation of “THE WIZ,” JIM STARLIN’s unaltered cover art for BATMAN FAMILY #21, content meant for canceled Marvel titles such as GODZILLA and MS. MARVEL, and more! NOW SHIPPING!
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ALTER EGO #190
MITCH MAGLIO examines vintage jungle comics heroes (Kaänga, Ka-Zar, Sheena, Rulah, Jo-Jo/Congo King, Thun’da, Tarzan) with art by LOU FINE, WILL EISNER, FRANK FRAZETTA, MATT BAKER, BOB POWELL, ALEX SCHOMBURG, and others! Plus: the comicbook career of reallife jungle explorers MARTIN AND OSA JOHNSON, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!
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KIRBY COLLECTOR #91
30th Anniversary issue, with KIRBY’S GREATEST VICTORIES! Jack gets the girl
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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #36
TOM PALMER retrospective, career-spanning interview, and tributes compiled by GREG BIGA LEE MARRS chats about assisting on Little Orphan Annie, work for DC’s Plop! and underground Pudge, Girl Blimp! The start of a multi-part look at the life and career of DAN DIDIO, part two of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview, public service comics produced by students at the CENTER FOR CARTOON STUDIES, & more!
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ALTER EGO #191
#191 is an FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA) issue! Documenting the influence of MAC RABOY’s Captain Marvel Jr. on the life, career, and look of ELVIS PRESLEY during his stellar career, from the 1950s through the 1970s! Plus: Captain Marvel co-creator BILL PARKER’s complete testimony from the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and other surprises!
IN THE NEWS! Rare newspaper interviews with Jack, 1973 San Diego panel with Jack and NEAL ADAMS discussing DC’s coloring, strips Kirby ghosted for others, unused strip concepts, collages, a never-reprinted Headline Comics tale, Jimmy Olsen pencil art gallery, 2024 WonderCon Kirby panel (featuring DAVID SCHWARTZ, GLEN GOLD, and RAY WYMAN), and more!
Cover inked by DAVID REDDICK!
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BOOK CREATOR #37 STEVE ENGLEHART is spotlighted in a career-spanning interview, former DC Comics’ romance editor BARBARA FRIEDLANDER redeems the late DC editor JACK MILLER, DAN DIDIO discusses going from DC exec to co-publisher, we conclude our 100th birthday celebration for ARNOLD DRAKE, take a look at the 1970s underground comix oddity THE FUNNY PAGES, and more, including HEMBECK!
MARK CARLSON-GHOST documents the mid-1950s super-hero revival featuring The Human Torch, Captain America, SubMariner, Fighting American, The Avenger, Phantom Lady, The Flame, Captain Flash, and others—with art by JOHN ROMITA, JOHN BUSCEMA, BILL EVERETT, SIMON & KIRBY, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MORT MESKIN, BOB POWELL, and other greats! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!
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KIRBY COLLECTOR #93
SUPPORTING PLAYERS! Almost-major villains like Kanto the Assassin and Diablo, Rodney Rumpkin, Mr. Little, the Falcon, Randu Singh, and others take center stage! Plus: 1970 interview with Jack by SHEL DORF, MARK EVANIER’s 2024 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con, neverreprinted Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, and more! Unused Mister Miracle cover inked by MIKE ROYER!
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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #38
RICK VEITCH discusses his career from undergrounds and the Kubert School; the ’80s with 1941, Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal; to Swamp Thing, The One, Brat Pack, and Maximortal! Plus TOM VEITCH’s history of ’70s underground horror comix, part one of a look at cartoonist ERROL McCARTHY, the story behind Studio Zero— the ’70s collective of artists STARLIN, BRUNNER, WEISS, and others, and more!
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ALTER EGO #193
An abridgment of EDDY ZENO’s “Drawn to Greatness” book, showcasing Superman artists who followed JOE SHUSTER: WAYNE BORING, PAUL CASSIDY, FRED RAY, JACK BURNLEY, WIN MORTIMER, and others. With appreciations by ORDWAY, KUPPERBERG, ISABELLA, JURGENS, WAID, MACCHIO, NEARY, NOWLAN, EURY, THOMAS, and more! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2025
KIRBY COLLECTOR #94
SPACE RACES! Jack’s depictions of cosmic gods and life on other planets, including: how Ego, Tana Nile, and the Recorder took Thor to strange new worlds, OMAC’s space age future, time travelers in Kirby’s work, favorite Kirby sci-fi tropes in his stories, plus: a 1967 LEE/KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, never-reprinted Simon & Kirby story, robotic pencil art gallery, cover inked by TERRY AUSTIN!
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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #39
THOMAS YEATES career-spanning interview about the Kubert School, Swamp Thing, Eclipse Comics, and adventure strips Zorro, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant! GREG POTTER discusses his ’70s Warren horror comics and ’80s reboot of Wonder Woman with GEORGE PÉREZ, WARREN KREMER is celebrated by MARK ARNOLD, plus part one of a look at the work of STEVE WILLIS, part two of ERROL McCARTHY, and more!
ROY THOMAS celebrates 60 years in comics! Career-spanning interview by ALEX GRAND, e-mails to Roy from STAN LEE, the history of Wolverine’s creation, RT’s 1960s fan-letters to JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and his top dozen stories compiled by JOHN CIMINO! With art by BUSCEMA, KANE, ADAMS, WINDSOR-SMITH, COLAN, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and cover by TONY GRAY! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2025
BRICKJOURNAL #87
Take to the air with JESSE GROS and his wondrous airships! KEVIN COPA’s renditions of the ships from International Rescue, a.k.a. the Thunderbirds, are also featured, as well as JACK CARLESON and his airliners! Plus BRICKNERD, BANTHA BRICKS: Fans of LEGO Star Wars, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!
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Covers the aftermath of WWII, when comics shifted from super-heroes to crime, romance, and western comics, BILL GAINES plotted a new course for EC Comics, and SIEGEL & SHUSTER sued for rights to Superman! By RICHARD ARNDT, KURT MITCHELL, and KEITH DALLAS
BACK ISSUE #155
THIS ISSUE IS HAUNTED! House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unexpected, Marvel’s failed horror anthologies, Haunted Tank, Eerie Publications, House II adaptation, Elvira’s House of Mystery, and more wth NEAL ADAMS, MIKE W. BARR, DICK GIORDANO, SAM GLANZMAN, ROBERT KANIGHER, JOE ORLANDO, STERANKO, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and others. Unused cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ & WRIGHTSON
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RETROFAN #35
Saturday morning super-hero Space Ghost, plus The Beatles, The Jackson 5ive, and other real rockers in animation! Also: The Addams Family’s JOHN ASTIN, Mighty Isis co-stars JOANNA PANG and BRIAN CUTLER, TV’s The Name of the Game, on the set of Evil Dead II, classic coffee ads, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!
BACK ISSUE #156
BRONZE AGE GRAPHIC NOVELS! 1980s GNs from Marvel, DC, and First Comics, Conan GNs, and DC’s Sci-Fi GN series!
With BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, JACK KIRBY, DON MCGREGOR, BOB McLEOD, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. WRIGHTSON cover.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Nov. 2024
RETROFAN #36
Feel the G-Force of Eighties sci-fi toon BATTLE OF THE PLANETS! Plus: The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’s STEFANIE POWERS, CHUCK CONNORS, The Oddball World of SCTV, Rankin/Bass’ stop-motion Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, TV’s Greatest Catchphrases, one-season TV shows, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY
KEITH GIFFEN TRIBUTE ISSUE! Starstudded celebration of the prolific writer/ artist of Legion of Super-Heroes, Rocket Raccoon, Guardians of the Galaxy, Justice League, Lobo, Blue Beetle, and others!
With CARY BATES, TOM BIERBAUM, J.M. DeMATTEIS, DAN DIDIO, ROBERT LOREN FLEMING, CULLY HAMNER, SCOTT KOBLISH, PAUL LEVITZ, KEVIN MAGUIRE, BART SEARS, MARK WAID, and more!
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Jan. 2025
RETROFAN #37
The Jetsons, Freaky Frankensteins, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling’s HOLLYWOOD, the Archies and other Saturday morning rockers, Star Wars copycats, Build Your Own Adventure books, crazy kitchen gadgets, toymaker MARVIN GLASS, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY
Featuring BYRNE, CARDY, CONWAY, DeCARLO, DINI, ENGLEHART, the HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, MOTTER, and more! Cover by ED McGUINNESS (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships March 2025
RETROFAN #38
Tune in to Saturday morning super-heroes Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Mod Squad, Hanna-Barbera cartoonists, Jesus Christ Superstar, Mr. Potato Head, ‘Old Yeller” actress BEVERLY WASHBURN, Flying Nun collectibles, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS 40th ANNIVERSARY! Pre-Crisis tour of DC’s multiple Earths, analysis of Crisis and its crossovers, Crisis Death List, post-Crisis DC retro projects, guest editorial by MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Featuring BARR, ENGLEHART, GREENBERGER, LEVITZ, MAGGIN, MOENCH, ORDWAY, THOMAS, WAID, and more! With GEORGE PÉREZ’S Crisis on Infinite Earths Index #1 cover.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships May 2025
RETROFAN
#39
Can your mind stand the shocking truth of… ED WOOD CAST CONFESSIONS?
Plus: Ideal Toys’ Zeroids, television Tarzan RON ELY, Planters® Peanuts’ Mr. Peanut, CHARLES ADDAMS, TV’s The Fugitive, the forgotten 1981 Spider-Man cartoon, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, ED CATTO, and MARK VOGER
