RIP Jerry Grandenetti.

Word has reached the Internet, and by extension me, that Jerry Grandenetti passed away back in February. You may recall, if you've been reading my blog for any period of time, that I have written several posts praising his work in the 60's and early 70's, especially in the black and white Warren Magazines line, via titles like Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. Although I was infatuated with the work of many of the artists represented in those pages, such as Alex Toth, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, and many others, none of them grabbed my attention or captured my fancy like Grandenetti's surreal, expressionistic, almost hallucenogenic renditions of (mostly) Archie Goodwin's stories. Here are links to two previous posts, one an entire story, a personal favorite called "Rub the Lamp", and a single page from a later story called "Type Cast". As the years went by, I would read a bit about him here and there; I soon became acquainted with his work for DC, especially his run on the 60's Spectre, succeeding Neal Adams, inked by Murphy Anderson. The difference in styles was too jarring for many, and eventually the book was cancelled. Like Frank Robbins when he took over from Mike Kaluta on The Shadow several years later, fans didn't take it well...but I really liked his stint, although it wasn't until the mid-70's that I read them. Eventually, I found out about his beginnings working for Will Eisner, and his stint on DC's war comics. After a while, he moved into the greener pastures of advertising, but kept his hand in by illustrating a hodgepodge of things for DC in the 70's, mostly Joe Simon projects like Prez and in the pages of First Issue Special, The Green Team and The Outsiders. Sadly, his work was unappreciated by many at the time, who only seemed to appreciate the flashier, more modern-style artists of the next few decades. Regardless, I never forgot the charge I got from that 60's stuff, and he became one of the artists I was always evangelizing about to whoever would listen. When I started blogging, I was excited to discover his website, through which he solicited commissions, and I always thought it would be so great to get him to do something for me, but alas I never could afford it. The website is no longer online.

Anyway, short story long, of all the great artists I've admired, appreciated and loved over the years, few have given me as much pleasure as Grandenetti did in the 60's, my formative years. His was such a challenging style, it definitely could be an acquired taste, so I can see why it didn't receive the accolades I thought it deserved. In way of tribute, I want to post a series of pages and covers from different points in his career; I hope it will provide some insight into his talent and yes, genius, and perhaps enlighten you about why I revered it so. It's a very incomplete sample set, but I hope it will be satisfactory.

Two Eisnerish Dr. Drew pages, via Four-Color Shadows.

War comics covers for DC, many done with wash tones.

The uncut funk here, Warren pages from Creepy and Eerie. Grandenetti also did several stories as a ghost for Joe Orlando. Now, some DC pages from roughly the same period; the Spectre pages are inked by Murphy Anderson:

And from the 1970's, Prez and the Green Team:

Always wanted to see a Batman-Green Team teamup. You'd think the cartoon guys would be up for that. Anyway, finally, the one page bio that appeared in Creepy #42:

And that's all. Rest in peace, Mr. Grandenetti, and thanks for everything.

RIP Al Williamson

Illustrator AL WILLIAMSON died this past Saturday at the age of 79. Now, I heard the news that day, but I wasn't really thinking I'd eulogize him. Don't get me wrong- I knew full well who he was- one of the greats, with a graceful style in the great newspaper strip tradition. A consummate craftsman, certainly in the discussion when it comes to the all-time greats. But at the time, I had no real emotional connection because I couldn't think of anything he'd done that particularly moved me one way or the other since I'd been reading comics. I remembered him being one of the Warren stable in their glory years under Archie Goodwin. I also recalled his work on features like Flash Gordon and even recalled reading Secret Agent X-9 in the Louisville Courier-Journal (or was it the Louisville Times? I forget), and I also remembered a ton of ink jobs on comics I didn't buy very much, if at all, like Marvel's Star Wars adaptations and other comics. His byline was always appreciated, but I never sought it out.

Ah, but I was wrong!

After reading Steve Bissette's remembrance today, it hit me- he drew one of my absolute favorite Warren stories, the wickedly funny "The Success Story", page below:

Click to read it inflated-ego size. If nothing else, when I first read it at the tender young age of six or so, it introduced me to the concept of "ruling panel borders", and that stuck with me for years. To this day I have a reluctance to rule panel borders. Go here to read it in its entirety.

And then, and then it REALLY hit me. Bissette's mention of Williamson's interaction and mentoring of the likes of Tom Yeates and Rick Veitch jogged my memory- Williamson drew a story in the multi-artist fourth issue of Timespirits, from a Steve Perry script! Below are two of his pages, click to read them dino-size.

So there you go. You never know sometimes, what kind of connection you could have with a man's work. There have many great tributes already- I linked to Bissette's above, and here's Tom Spurgeon's, as well as a roundup of most of the others.

As I so often seem to say when someone of this magnitude passes on, and it's happening more and more these days- we're running out of great ones and we won't see their like again.

Pic of Al above found here.

(click to supersize each page)

For your reading pleasure, one of my absolute favorite Jerry Grandenetti Warren stories, from Eerie #9: "Rub the Lamp"- in which an antiques dealer finds a magic lamp, and gets more than he bargained for. This is the story which got me to notice Grandenetti's hallucinogenic 60's style when I was a kid, even though I'd seen it in other stories in previous issues. Everything in this story, with its distorted figures, brittle, jagged panel borders and vertiginous perspectives literally radiates dismay, greed, and fear; I don't know if the term "expressionistic" applies exactly, but I think it's awfully close. His was never an attractive in a conventional sense sort of style, especially when compared to the Adamses, Woods, Crandalls, Kirbys and Morrows that were his contemporaries, but when it came to helping the reader get a feel for the vibe that this sort of horror tale was trying to get across, as far as I'm concerned it really did the job in excellent fashion. Joe Orlando's work at this time looked a lot like this- in fact, there were a couple of Warren stories that I had associated with Grandenetti for decades that I came to find out were actually Orlando's. But Grandenetti, I think, did it with a bit more gusto. I'm not familiar with the writer of this tale, one Allan Jadro; I wonder if it wasn't a pseudonym. Archie Goodwin wrote most of the stories in those days for this magazine, but it stands to reason that he couldn't write everything...someday I'll have to dig out my Warren Companion and see if it can shed some light on Mr. Jadro's identity.

These days, when comics readers think of JG at all, it's mostly in terms of the mostly lackluster work he did later in his career with Joe Simon on stuff like The Green Team and Prez, or perhaps even the Eisnerish work he did pre-DC War comics...but for me, this is genius stuff, and I wanted to share.

FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!




Tonight's Friday night fist fight is from CREEPY #7, from a story titled "Hot Spell"- a little "fiery tale of a warlock's curse" as presented by the late greats Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall. In the prologue, a group of villagers burns a warlock at the stake, he of course curses the village. Flash forward to modern times, and the village still worries...and a couple of deaths by fire leads them to conclude that a new resident, an artist, is responsible for reviving the spell. So when he unwittingly comes to town to buy groceries, he gets less than a warm, no pun intended, reception. But fortunately the artist is as good at punching as he is at painting, and the scene above ensues. As always, click to see biggerer.

Oh, and don't worry...as was so often the case with Goodwin's Warren stories from this period, justice of a kind is enacted by story's end.

BAHLACTUS SAID KNOCK YOU OUT.

Mr. Door Tree over at the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog has been doing us all here in the Blogosphere a great service, posting covers and pages from a wide and varied assortment of Golden and Silver age comics and pulps. It's a must-stop site. Lately, he's been holding a Poe tribute of sorts, and today posted the entirety of a Poe comics adaptation of "The Cask of Amontillado" that appeared in Creepy #6 (1966), scripted by Archie Goodwin and impeccably illustrated by Reed Crandall. It's a typically outstanding work by two comics legends. But.

One *little* problem. This particular adaptation has always bugged me, ever since I read the original Poe short story a few years later- and it can be found in the last page, posted above. Poe ended his story as it appears in the first page scan at left, with Montresor bricking Fortunado up in the wall, and the chilling, deadpan "In pace requiescat" as his final word. But, for some reason, Goodwin added an extra page to the story, in which the chamber floods and Montresor is prevented by escaping by the skeleton of Fortunado- an EC-style ending which would suggest that no evil deed should go unpunished. Click on the images, of course, to see them larger.

This still blows my mind, four decades later. Believe me, I have nothing but reverence for the writing of Goodwin; I consider him one of the best scripters in the history of the field. But why he did this, I have no idea. Perhaps he felt like an extra page was needed, to make eight. Perhaps he was under the impression that the Comics Code would object, hardly likely since Warren magazines weren't subject to the code. Maybe, just maybe, he felt like the original ending wasn't satisfying enough or not EC-ish enough, which I find hard to believe. Either way, I think it was a hell of a poor choice by a normally brilliant author.

Anyway, if you want to see all the scans, and don't mind that I spoiled the story, go here and here.

Mr. Tree also makes me a happy boy by posting a killer Jerry Grandenetti Poe adaptation as well, which can be found here.

Here's that Steve Ditko story I mentioned in my post from earlier today. In addition to the accomplished inkwash technique Ditko uses (although not as much here as in other Warren efforts), the amount of detail and rendering he employs is staggering, especially considering that the work many regard as his best- his Spider-Man and Doctor Strange stories for Marvel- rarely had this level of delineation. I was amazed as I read this tale, and as far as I'm concerned it's one of the best art jobs I've seen from him.

I recently came into possession of a handful of scans of old Warren magazines such as Creepy and Eerie, which as you know featured horror stories by some of the giants of the field such as Reed Crandall, Alex Toth, Gray Morrow, Wally Wood, Neal Adams, Johnny Craig, Gene Colan, Joe Orlando, Jerry Grandenetti...the list goes on and on, all in service of outstanding scripts by Archie Goodwin and others. Also appearing in several issues was the great Steve Ditko, working in ink wash like many of the other artists in these books. Now, early-mid 60's Ditko art is golden...but his wash work is extraordinary. Above is just one sample of it- click to see it all bigger- Dr. Strange fans will immediately recognize the imaginatively weird images Ditko brings to bear in the story. there's another story in an issue that I have at home that is just insane in its detail and may be the best Ditko art job I've ever seen.

Skimming through many of these scans, besides the obvious nostalgia rush I got, I reacquainted myself with many other fine artists who also had work in these Warren mags that I had forgotten about- the likes of Tom Sutton (who went on to do a lot of Warrens after the "classic" period had passed), Rocco Mastroserio, Mark Ricton, and especially Angelo Torres, best known via Mad, who contributes some absolutely amazing realistic fantasy and horror art to several issues.

Tempering my enjoyment is that I couldn't find any from Eerie #'s 7 & 8, two fondly remembered issues from my childhood, which had some incredible Ditko, Toth, Adams, and Grandenetti work. Oh well- I intend to post some more pages here eventually, unless anybody objects, including that amazing Ditko job I mentioned earlier.

Thank you, Manny.

First up today, kiddies, some show & tell.

A while back, you may recall me writing about horror comics and in one particular case the Warren Magazines work of Jerry Grandenetti. But even though he has a website (link in the blogroll section) it features mostly newer stuff and doesn't have many examples of the stuff from the mid to late 60s that blew my preteen socks off.

Yesterday I was over at my Mom's house. My mom recently had her hot water heater spring a leak on her, and as a result had to clean up a lot of water from her basement floor. She had to move a lot of the cardboard boxes (my Mom's a bigger pack rat than me, if that's possible), and she found one which contained a lot of old, musty, beat-up comics which I had left behind when I left home about a hundred years ago. I remembered them, because I had chosen not to put them in my original collection when I actually started "collecting" in my late teens, due to their extremely poor condition, and that box was where I had put them. Still, it was a lot of fun going through the box and seeing a lot of those old books. One of these books was a coverless and marked on (by 8-year-old me) copy of Eerie #8, which featured scripts by Archie Goodwin and a great inkwashed story by Gene Colan, the classic "Demon Sword" story by Steve Ditko (inkwashed beautifully as well), a mind-blowingly detailed post-apocalypse story drawn by the often overlooked Dan Adkins, a excellently drawn weird western by John Severin, and "Type Cast", the story from which the above page is taken, with a gloriously hallucenogenic, expressionistic art job by Grandenetti, just like I've been talking about. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to scan a page and put it out there for all to see.

It's a tale of an actor named Bryce who gets cast in, against his wishes, horror films back in the Thirties. He just can't get motivated, he complains to his manager, to play such ridiculous and sordid roles. When his manager suggests that he try to draw inspiration from immersing himself in the surroundings of the characters he's expected to play, then he reluctantly agrees and goes walking in a graveyard later that night. He really begins to enter into the midset of the hunchback character he's asked to play. When he's accosted by the caretaker, he panics and attacks the man, which gives him the necessary experience to play his part with the proper conviction. Now a success, his manager keeps getting him more horror roles, much to Bryce's chagrin, and the desperate actor keeps doing his increasingly violent research, until things come to a head when he strangles his manager, before filming a movie about an insane strangler. Quite insane by now, he is arrested and committed. The story opens with his release thirty years later, and ends with the discovery that the asylum staff released the wrong man- a patient named Brice, not Bryce, should have been released. When the director checks on him, and discovers that he has taken a role in a movie now filming...and when the director asks the name of the picture, both men in the office gaze at the newspaper on the table with the headline "Knife-wielding manic strikes again!" as the director intones "The Story of Jack the Ripper...!"

Ooh, hey kids- very scary, huh!

Anyway, it is a nice little story with a couple of clever EC-ish twists, which is what Goodwin and Warren were all about. But one of the things that makes this tale so effective is the chaotic rendering of Grandenetti, with its unconventional layouts, adventurous use of lettering, and effectively moody wash technique. I've always appreciated how, the farther the story goes along and the more deranged the protagonist becomes, Grandenetti's figure rendering becomes more jagged and harsh, and in moments of great stress he chooses to depict this by means of radiating lines eminating from Bryce's body.

A little blast from the past from a past master.

Good Evening. Permit me to introduce you to...

First, the usual disclaimers. This is a list of horror-and-supernatural themed comics that have made a big impression on me in my longer-than-I-like-to-think-about comics reading experience. I do not intend for this to be a "all-time best" list, nor do I even claim that these are shining examples of works of sequential fiction. Also, I'm sure much of what I'll be writing is already familiar territory for many, so apologies in advance if it gets tedious. I just want to share with the rest of the class some titles over the years that I've grooved on, man. So here goes nothing.

Of course, the first (and in most cases, the best) real horror comics of note, but not necessarily the first ones I was exposed to, were the EC titles such as Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and others, which saw print in the 50s. Before I was born, believe it or not. I didn't read any of these classic books until I was in my late teens/early 20s and had a friend who had a few of the reprint editions, and they were as good as I had been led to believe. I have never owned one, either in original or reprint format, so I don't really include them on my list, but they're damned good. I especially tended to like those illustrated by Ghastly Graham Ingels, Bernie Krigstein, and the SF stories that Wally Wood drew. That stout-hearted stalwart, the Pop Culture Gadabout, has saved me the trouble of writing more since he has recently posted a nice overview of the line with emphasis on a story illoed by another good one, Johnny Craig. Go here, read, then come back. I won't wait long for you.



The first horror comics I remember being exposed to were the line of B&W magazines published by Warren- Creepy, Eerie, and later the original incarnation of Vampirella, which kinda came late to the party. After all the dust settled from the Wertham trials, and after EC had folded all its horror titles with the advent of the Comics Code, the only place these sort of stories could appear were in the pages of magazines like these, which weren't displayed in the same locale as comic books, nor were they aimed at the same audiences. Actually, the first horror comics I remember reading were probably the seven-or-eight page illustrated adaptations of movies like The Mummy's Hand that appeared in Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World, and although I didn't know it then those were Warren's way of testing the waters for a whole magazine of nothing but illustrated horror stories. And oh, boy- what talent they assembled between their covers, especially in the first year of both titles: Archie Goodwin was the editor (and main scriptwriter) in the early days, Frank Frazetta did most of the covers, and the likes of Reed Crandall, EC's Wally Wood, Joe Orlando and Jack Davis, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Tom Sutton, Dan Adkins, Gene Colan, Gray Morrow, and my personal favorite Jerry Grandenetti, whose hallucinogenic, expressionistic style just blew me away. Much later the likes of Berni Wrightson and Richard Corben, then all those Filipinos, came along and revitalized the line. The Warren titles were, to me, artist showcases first and foremost- the scripts were all tight and well written, but most were riffs on the EC template. Either way, those Warren magazines really got their hooks in me early on and I spent many an allowance coin on them whenever they came out on the magazine rack at the Houchens Market.

Also coming out at about the same time were the supernatural titles of Gold Key, formerly Dell. Dell had changed over to the Gold Key imprint at roughly about the same time I was aware that there were even such things as comic books, so I don't really remember Dell all that much, but I remember the GK imprint very well. Gold Key comics were also unusual (on Planet Dave) in that they weren't sold on the same racks as DCs or Marvels or even Harveys, but were always found at the local Ben Franklin five and dime store, and nowhere else. Well, OK, also at the Stevenson's five and dime down the street, but they weren't there long. I think Ben Franklin sold Gold Keys exclusively until the early 70s, when they shared spinner rack space with DCs. But I digress. Gold Key didn't have the superstar artist firepower that Warren did, but they had some solid illustrators like Russ Manning, Jack Sparling and Doug Wildey and Gold Key books were often pretty darned entertaining. They published several horror-themed titles, all with lush painted covers and featuring code-approved but no less remarkable tales of terror aimed at kids and teenagers. One story I remember in particular illustrated the legend of Spring-heel Jack, in Ripley's Believe it or Not, I think...really creeped me out, as I recall. I always had at least one GK horror title like Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery or The Twilight Zone around when I was in grade school. If I had the patience and the money I'd track some of these down but have little of either, so I'll just have to get by with my memories.



To be honest, I'm not sure which of the Big Two (who both published horror comics pre-Code, but pretty much ceased after it was introduced) actually got around to doing supernatural comics in the 70s, when the Code relaxed its anti-vampire, zombies, and werewolves restrictions a bit, but I seem to recall Marvel testing the waters with its Morbius, The Living Vampire character in an issue of Spider-Man before DC revamped its House of Mystery/Secrets titles, so I'll go with the House of Ideas first. When the Morbius story went over well, Marvel rush-released its own takes on a Werewolf (By Night, actually not bad when Mike Ploog drew it), Frankenstein's monster (ditto), and the big kahuna of sanguinary doings himself, Dracula. After a shaky beginning, the Tomb of Dracula, as it came to be called, got in a real groove, with writer Marv Wolfman (not the first scripter, but he came aboard very early on) creating and developing a solid supporting cast to interact with Drac, as well as giving the lead a well-developed, if belligerent personality, and stalwart Gene Colan did some of the best work of his career, illustrating (I believe) all 70 issues, plus a story or two in other books at the time. Colan has always drawn his figures and backgrounds as if they were on the verge of dissipating into mist, something which came in very handy when he was given a character that could actually do this. ToD, despite its subject matter, was still a Marvel comic and sometimes listed into melodramatics and compromise (one specific instance, I recall, had Drac encountering an angel, late in the series' run- an angel dressed in a spandex costume, of course), but it was still one of the best things Marvel did in the 70s and is well worth one's time if one cares to invest it. They've finally released that long-awaited Essential edition of the first 25 issues, plus three other Drac appearances, and it's well worth the 15 bucks. Not long after the Morbius issue of Spider-Man, we got two horror anthologies, Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness. Don't remember much, if anything, about CoD, but I'll always remember the lead story in Tower by Jim Steranko which is one of the best pieces of sequential storytelling I've ever seen. Above is the more sedate-by-comparison cover that appeared on the newsstands, then the rejected design (complete with groovy logo) by Steranko colored for the Steranko-Graphic Prince of Darkness one shot which came out a few years ago, then an interior page example. The original title for the tale of greedy heirs and a weird old house was: "Let Them Eat Cake", which was so cool that it came as no surprise to read that Stan didn't like it and somewhere down the line it got re-titled "At the Stroke of Midnight". Zzzz. But the story itself- whoa mama. Steranko was at his graphic storytelling peak then, and this tale was a tour-de-force. You can see a B&W example of one of the pages above.



One other Marvel supernatural book of note was Man-Thing. Another swamp-dwelling creature who was semi-intelligent and whose touch burned those who feared him, as the copywriters kept telling us again and again. At first, he appeared as the all-new lead in a reprint title, Adventures Into Fear, most notable for the first appearance of Howard The Duck. Eventually, they put MT into his own title, and assigned the team of Steve Gerber and, after issue #5, Mike Ploog to do the script and art chores. Gerber's stories tended to be of the "Man-Thing and company encounter weird strangers and menaces in the swamp" variety, but written in his typically quirky style with human interest shadings and Ploog's quirky, Eisner-inspired art brought just the right tone to the proceedings. My favorite of these was the one depicted above, "Night of the Laughing Dead", (a two-parter in #'s 5 and 6) in which MT and his friends encountered a suicidal clown who had come out to the swamp to do the deed, and wind up fighting for his soul with demons from hell. Gerber crafted a touching script out of a very odd premise, and this was the most memorable of their run together, which lasted until issue 11, and included the infamous-for-its-title-and-the-legion-of bad-jokes-it's-inspired Giant-Size Man-Thing #1.

Moving on to DC now, it seems that about the same time Marvel stuck its toe into the horror comics pool, DC followed suit in the late 60s by revamping (no pun intended) its former flagship supernatural titles, House of Mystery and House of Secrets, which had been featuring superhero takes like Eclipso, Dial H for Hero, Prince Ra-Man, and others. Also at about this time they launched a title whose lead had actually been created in the 50s, and had a very short-lived book of his own then, the Phantom Stranger. Early issues consisted of the Stranger, that enigmatic character whose origins were clouded in mystery but could usually be counted on to show up, introduce the story, dispense warnings and advice and bicker with Doctor Terry Thirteen, a skeptical James Randi-type paranormal debunker/investigator who was determined to prove the Stranger was a charlatan. This went on for several issues, until a young writer named Len Wein showed up and, combined with artist Jim Aparo (who did the best art of his career, in my opinion, on this title), ushered in the most creatively fertile period that the character has ever known. Wein gave the Stranger a girlfriend of sorts, a blind psychic named Cassandra Craft, and set him to battle a murderous cult called the Dark Circle, led by a sexy high priestess named Tala with aid from a cynical, morally ambiguous magician named Tannarak, who had appeared several issues back in the run. This was truly PS's golden age, because after Wein and Aparo left, it was back to becoming a glorified horror host (the Rod Serling of comics, some called the character at the time) before the inevitable cancellation. That Wein/Aparo run, though, was some great stuff, and it was issues 14-26, in case you were wondering. Also appearing in the last few W/A books was an interesting back feature, The Spawn of Frankenstein, by Wein and Mike Kaluta, in which Dr. Thirteen gets mixed up with Frankenstein's monster. The episodes that Kaluta drew were really great, and issue #26 was a fun crossover between the Stranger and the SoF, with Aparo interiors and a Kaluta cover.

One reason Wein left the Stranger was so he could focus on DC's latest horror star, the Swamp Thing, who had just earned his own brand new title in the late summer of 1972. This particular run tends to be overshadowed by Alan Moore's brilliant re-imagining of the character some 13 years later, but I've always had a soft spot for its original incarnation, which featured the best artwork of Berni Wrightson's career and some clever reworkings of classic horror-film icons; a Frankenstein monster, here called the Patchwork Man; a werewolf, witches, and so on. In #7 Swampy met Batman in Gotham City, which treated us to Wrightson's lithe version of the Dark Knight, complete with fifty-foot long cape, touched on Lovecraftian territory in #8 when he encountered M'Nagalah, a malignant "old god" in a mine shaft, and so on. After issue #10, Wrightson tired of incessant deadlines and left, along with Wein, who went over to Marvel and began his quick slide to obscurity, and new creators came aboard: David Michelinie (fresh off an underrated run on the Unknown Soldier comic) and Nestor Redondo, who was easily one of the best of the then-new Filipino artists that were prevalent in comics in the mid-70s. They had a tough act to follow, but they often excelled and Swamp Thing was consistently good for a long time, but eventually sales dwindled and the book got cancelled, and then a few years later Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben happened. But that's another story.

A sort of wild-card entry into DC's 70s horror stable was the Mike Fleisher/Jim Aparo take on the Golden Age character, The Spectre. After DC had revived the Discarnate Detective in the early 60s, first in one of those JLA/JSA team-ups of yore, then in his own short-lived series in which he was treated as sort of DC's answer to Dr. Strange, the decision was made to give the character a spotlight in one of DC's anthology-type books, Adventure Comics, which had been floundering in sales. Fleisher took the earliest appearances of the Spectre as his inspiration, specifically the instances where the Spectre would kill a man dead in his tracks by giving him a death stare, or pick up a car full of fleeing gangsters and fling it into space, watching it catch on fire as it left the atmosphere. This grim, avenging angel aspect of the character had been pretty much ignored previously, and Fleisher decided to take it and blow it up to imaginative, outlandish, Grand Guignol (or as much so as one could do in a Code-approved comic) levels. Killers disguised as hairdressers? Spec would gesture at a pair of scissors out of one of their pockets, enlarge it to giant size, and cut one of them in two! Trapped kidnapper in a sawmill? Transformed into wood and cut into sections! Fake swami, with crystal ball, ripping people off? Transformed into glass and shattered! This was a gruesome hoot for a while, and this relaunch of the Spectre was quite popular at first...but eventually it became formulaic and stale, and sales dwindled as well, and was eventually replaced in Adventure about a year after it had begun. But these issues were PG rated, gory good fun and Jim Aparo turned in some outstanding art on these as well. They're well worth checking out if you find them, and I'll always remember them fondly.



I think there was a pretty long dry spell for interesting horror-themed books in the late 70s and 80s; other than Moore's (and later, Rick Veitch's not-bad) Swamp Thing, and Gaiman's Sandman of course. Seems like all the independents like Eclipse and Pacific tried their hands at horror anthology books, and most were forgettable. But one character, created by Moore as sort of a gadfly during his Swamp Thing run, soon became a star and eventually got his own title in the late 80s, which helped launch the entire Vertigo line: John Constantine: Hellblazer, still going strong to this day. Ol' JC has had a number of different writers and artists in those one hundred eighty-plus issues, but has always remained a fascinating and charismatic character. Perhaps the best run of this title was Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's long run in the 90s which introduced a lot of great characters, developed the lead in new and interesting ways, and set the tone for their subsequent Preacher series. Another long run by Paul Jenkins and Sean Phillips was outstanding as well. Actually, JC:HB is as good right now as it's been in a long time, with Mike (Lucifer) Carey at the helm. Speaking of Sandman, I gotta mention Carey's excellent Lucifer ongoing series, which is as good as it gets in mainstream comics right now, in my own humble opinion.

Dark Horse Comics' major contribution to the horror comics genre is, of course, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, the always entertaining adventure/horror series featuring a seven-foot demon who gets called "The World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator" and has become, thanks to Mignola' innovative style, a stylistic benchmark for any sort of subsequent supernatural-themed illustrated endeavor. Big Sunny D recently posted a great commentary on this series, and I'll just point you here so you can read it. One of the best things about the Hellboy series, in my opinion, is the organization he works for, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, aka the BPRD, which is staffed with a fascinating cast of characters and provides a lot of depth for the entire series. I want a BPRD cap, damn it.

Another series I like a lot originally appeared as a backing feature in Hellboy before getting its own one shot a couple of years ago, The MonsterMen by Gary Gianni. Gianni's meticulously retro artwork recaptures the feel of old pulp magazine illustrators more convincingly than anyone since Mike Kaluta, and the concept (which still hasn't been fully explained yet, due to the sporadic nature of MonsterMen appearances), is just downright wiggy. Most of the tales so far revolve around one Saint George, a fellow who dresses in a smoking jacket and wears a medieval armored helmet to help people do battle with the malignant forces of evil. Lotsa fun, and well worth checking out when possible. This series has had a lotta names as well: it was originally called "Gary Gianni's MysteryMen", then was changed for obvious reasons to "Corpus Monstrum", and is now known as "Gary Gianni's MonsterMen". Whatever they call it, I like it.

X-Men saturated Marvel really didn't have much of note coming out in the 90s, unless you count its Ghost Rider book...they attempted several times, especially in the wake of the success of DC's Vertigo imprint, to revive their supernatural stable to no avail. However, in my opinion they did publish one standout title in that period: Warren Ellis and Leo Manco's Hellstorm series, which I included in my 12 comics series everyone should read list. Go here to read what I wrote then.

Finally, I want to mention a couple of Fantagraphics' forays into supernatural comics, especially my personal favorite: Richard Sala's Evil Eye. Sala's made a career out of writing and illustrating oddball murder mysteries and ghost stories, and I really like his quirky, Charles Addams-meets-Nancy Drew style. Eye is his ongoing series, which features a mystery serial Reflections in a Glass Scorpion and the stand-alone exploits of his somewhat enigmatic and waifish Peculia. This book, and all of Sala's work like this, is an acquired taste, I suppose, but I acquired it a long time ago so I'm in for the long haul. Besides, Sala draws, in my twisted opinion, some of the sexiest women I've ever seen. Also from Fantagraphics, and speaking of acquired tastes, is Meat Cake, by performance artist Dame Darcy. Darcy's primitive art style and whimsical, sometimes surreal, Neo-Victorian gothic stories don't appeal to everyone, for sure, but I find them charming. I also get a strong antebellum Southern-style ambiance from them as well. Darcy has been known to do the occasional ghost story as well, in her turn-of-the-previous-century style, and these are always excellent. Plus, if you send her 20 bucks and a copy of your palm, she'll tell your fortune! Where else are you gonna find that in a comic book? The Bros. Hernandez, in both incarnations of their Love and Rockets series, also sometimes dip into the supernatural well, most notably the Mexican legend of La Llorona. Fantagraphics also publishes Charles Burns' Black Hole, a title to which I was initially attracted, but I found it kinda dry and uninvolving after a couple of issues so I moved on. I really like Burns' style, though (especially on those great El Borbah stories), so I might try to buy a collection of this down the road sometime.

I know there are probably a lot of great books I've overlooked, or didn't mention because they just didn't fit somehow (like Dr. Strange, Neilalien) but these are ones that have left the strongest impression on me in the past, so there ya go. Sorry it's taken me so long to finish this; I've had all kinds of stuff going on non-stop around here and it's seriously cut into my time in front of the butterfly curtains...so...thanks for your patience and Happy Halloween!