Number 470


Who's afraid of the big bad werewolves


Karswell started this, posting horror stories from the '70s DC's, so I'm just following along behind him. It was his idea, really. I'm using him for inspiration.

Here are two werewolf stories, picked out because (1) they both have great Bernie Wrightson werewolf covers; (2) I like werewolves, and (3) because I own a page of the original artwork from "Way Of the Werewolf" from House of Mystery #231. It's by Gerry Talaoc, and demonstrates how the muddy coloring and printing of the 1970s obscured some really fine artwork. I've shown this page before, but it's worth looking at again.


"Deadly Stalkers Of the North" is drawn by Ricardo Villamonte and gives Wrightson an opportunity to draw three wolves on the cover. Weird Mystery Tales #21 has a cover date of August 1975, while House of Mystery #231 is dated May 1975. So 1975 was a good year for werewolves.

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Number 324


Rat Man!


Today Karswell of The Horrors Of It All and I are running two versions of the same story: He has the printed version of Bob Powell's "The Rat Man" from Harvey Comics' Tomb Of Terror #5, and I am showing the original art. Wish I owned this art, but I stole…errrrrrrrr…I mean borrowed it from the Internet.

This is a good example of how Powell used blue watercolor to indicate to the color artist where he wanted color emphasis. You can compare these pages to the printed pages and see if he got through to that colorist.

*******

...and while we're showing original art, here are three pages I bought over 20 years ago at the San Diego Comics Convention, all hand-picked for their horror qualities, drawn by a couple of superfine Filipino artists.



"Beware the Snare of the Tarantula," from Witching Hour #54, is drawn by Jess Jodloman, written by EC Comics vet Carl Wessler. Love that Modred figure in the splash panel. Love the whole splash panel!*

Fellow EC vet Jack Oleck wrote "Way of the Werewolf," and here's a great page by Gerry Talaoc. A really nice werewolf tale, and this issue, House Of Mystery #231, has an incredible cover by Bernie Wrightson.

My thanks to best friend Dave Miller for doing the work of stitching the pages together via Photoshop.

*After posting this Karswell sent me this poster for The Fly, which obviously influenced the splash. Thanks, Karswell!

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