As with most horror geeks raised in the 1960s, the incidents that truly shaped my youth were not civil rights, assassination, and war, but rather late night viewings of Creature From the Black Lagoon with my dad, TV Guide, and Forry Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. From five years on, I was hooked on everything horror. The four color variety arrived to me in 1969 in the form of Ripley's Believe It Or Not #14, published by Gold Key. Four decades plus later, the majority of the Ripley's stuff seems pretty tame, if not downright silly. The same can be said for its sister publications, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and The Twilight Zone.
Re-reading Ripley's #14 recently, though, the same kind of goosebumps ran down my spine as when I sat in the treehouse in my backyard with my stash of comics and Mountain bars. The leadoff story, “The Demon of Beachy-Head” tells the tale of evil Sir Robert of England, cursed by an old abbot to die and wander the cliffs of Beachy-Head in chains for all eternity. Sir Robert’s demonic identity, complete with horns and Spock ears, was enough to swear me off solo stints in the treehouse for quite a while. The two back-up features “The Foxes of Doom” and “The Monster of Croglin Grange” are also very effective shockers. 
Other early comics in that stack included Gold Key’s UFO Flying Saucers (a greatest hits of alleged Earth visitations by aliens friendly and not so friendly), and Dell’s Ghost Stories. The un-numbered first issue of Ghost Stories from September 1962 includes “The Monster of Dread End...”, a story about a giant hand that haunts the sewers and “The Werewolf Wasp,” starring Bobby, who finds out his Entomology professor is actually a giant spider who’s been cocooning and draining the kid’s classmates. The panel that features Bobby unraveling one of the mummified boys presages the gruesome antics of the Alien films. Luckily, Bobby has found a werewolf wasp and unleashes it on the attacking Professor, who quickly becomes dinner for the insect. The last panel shows Bobby chugging down a hill, gasping “Got to get help...those boys...may be all alive...”Never mind that it’s badly drawn and Professor Larvay (!) is not introduced until he unmasks... and the fini is anticlimactic and..., well, what the hell is a werewolf wasp and why does the professor fear it? It’s still very cool and a comic reader who respects this kind of stuff will still dig it big time on first read. “The Monster of Dread End” is cited by many as being one of the most frightening and influential comic stories ever written.
4 comments:
Aw! I was hoping for a more extensive review of GHOST STORIES, since it's one of the most vivid comic memories of my childhood. And like many others, I think THE MONSTER OF DREAD END is outstanding--a landmark horror comic, even. IMO, it's a visceral shocker unlike anything seen in a comic, before or since. The effect on me back then (I must've been about 7 or 8) was as close as I've ever come to being traumatized by a comic book. It wasn't just the premise, which was disturbing enough (as well as highly original)--it was that final panel showing the gruesome aftermath of the demise of the monster. I mean, holy cow! How did they get away with it? I can still recall the horrified shudder it gave delicate little me--brr! Anyway, I've learned since then that any memorable stories from GHOST STORIES were written by the legendary John Stanley. Apparently, he produced outstanding comics in whatever genre he attempted, from LITTLE LULU to TALES FROM THE TOMB.
Well, I didn't intend to post anything remotely critical, because I've been reading through the massive archives on this site, and it's been giving me a LOT of enjoyment. I really appreciate the high level of the writing here, too--I mean, this is quality entertainment, folks! And it's all free! I can only say with humble gratitude... THANKS, guys! --Mark
Hey Mark! Thanks for your kind words. It's comments like these that keep Jack and I going. Wow, this was a blast from the past, one of the first posts we popped up after our rebooting. Stephen King goes into the "big hand" story quite a bit in Danse Macabre (but you probably already know that). Perhaps, we need to take a look at some of the Dell comics after we're done dismantling Atlas.
Hi Peter! I read Danse Macabre quite some time ago, so I recall a more recent article better, by Stephen R. Bissette, in MONSTER!. It was so thorough it pretty much covered the entire publishing history of Dell, in particular focusing on its horror output, finally leading up to DREAD END's publication (and he REALLY liked it!). An impressive research job and an enjoyable read.
Wow, I hope you guys DO decide to cover some Dells! I'd love to see your take on the likes of TUROK, MAGNUS-ROBOT FIGHTER, SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON and many others--not to mention the Disneys (Beware! You could get lost in there!). But as far as psychotronic oddities, I'd especially like to see what you think of KONA, MONARCH OF MONSTER ISLE... one of the most inexplicable, most INSANE comic books I've ever encountered. No joke--totally bonkers!
--Mark
I'm with Mark! How about it, Peter? I've been looking for an excuse to dive into my collections of KONA and SAMSON! And I'd even love to revisit DOCTOR SPEKTOR again after all these years...
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