GHASTLY HORROR: Skywald, Warren & other B&W Horror Mags

[deejayway-migration]

Hi horror fans,

I'm new around here but I have been participating in other comics forums so I may be familar to someone out there.

I recently got turned onto Skywald horror-mood mags, which in turn re-ignited my interest in Warren magazines. This eventually brought me here.

By way of further introduction I want to post some stuff I logged elsewhere. Hopefully, someone can answer my questions. Please indulge me.

 

 

GHASTLY TERROR

A Public Service Message

 

I recently read Jon B. Cooke’s excellent Comic Book Artist #5 (vol. 2) with great interest. It presented two main features; a long interview with one of my all-time favourite artists, Howard Chaykin, and an exhaustive retrospective about Skywald’s ‘Horror-Mood’ magazines. I’d ordered the mag for Chaykin’s interview so I was pretty darn disappointed when it turned out the CBA #5 was dominated by Skywald, which I’d barely heard of. Well, wouldn’t you know it the Chaykin interview turned out to be a bit of a dud (nice portfolio section though) but I thoroughly enjoyed the section of Skywald.

 

Part of the Skywald section consisted of large excerpts from “Skywald: Horror-Mood” by former Skywald editor-in-chief, Alan Hewetson, available from a British publisher called Headpress.

Inspired by CBA I decided to order the book, as well as another one from the same publisher called Ghastly Horror, a retrospective of horror comics by British author Stephen Sennitt.

 

I just finished Ghastly Horror and I thought I’d warn all you horror fans out there; it’s putrid and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

The writer excuses himself exhaustively in both the introduction and the after word that the book isn’t intended as a serious study of the phenomenon but rather “an unbridled appreciation of the horror comics themselves; their gruesome stories, their lurid artwork and their striking covers!” Okay, fair enough. That’s a sentiment most horror enthusiasts can dig but what follows is basically 160 pages summarising largely unremarkable and generic horror stories. It could be cool if his enthusiasm was infectious like the aforementioned CBA but it just seems obsessive and reeks of anoraks.

Little attention is paid to the creators, except to mention their contributions. Interviews (from other publications!) are cited liberally but nowhere does the writer delve into what inspired these nightmare visions besides monetary gain. The book predictably focuses on EC and Warren and those chapters are enjoyable enough but offer little news or insight. The author lavishes attention on loads of Uninspiring sounding pre-code horror tales and yet almost completely ignores DC’s excellent horror titles from the 70s like House of Mystery and House of Secrets. However, Marvel’s monster comics and magazines from the same period get a whole chapter and are heaped with considerable praise.

The book is also marred by inaccuracies like stating that Gerry Conway authored the first six issues of Marvel’s Frankenstein, which were gorgeously illustrated by Mike Ploog. Every red-blooded fan knows the actual writer was “Groovy” Gary Friedrich. A small thing admittedly but if I know it and I‘m not even a big horror fan, surely the author of a “serious” book on the subject could get it right.

To add insult to injury after the DC slight, the writer completely ignores Vertigo, only referring to the imprint indirectly in one sentence. Otherwise, there is no mention of Hellblazer, Witchcraft, Sandman, Lucifer or other great Vertigo horror mags.

Surely a major omission in a work of this nature.

Most of the art reprinted in the book is too small to appreciate and the art isn’t printed “synchronous” with the text. It is either printed a few pages before or after the page on which it is mentioned so the reader is continually paging backwards or forwards.

 

All in all a very anaemic offering, no meat and very little blood. Save your shekels horror fiends.

 

Skywald Horror-Mood by Alan Hewetson himself is much more satisfying (sacrificial) offering. This little publishing house and its output of obscure b&w horror magazines in the early 70s has really caught my imagination. Hewetson, who I had never heard of, strikes me as a real comics original and the mags seem to have a weird, quirky, idiosyncratic appeal.

It’s hard to define because I haven’t been overly impressed by the stories reprinted in this retrospective and yet, and yet, I remain intrigued. They are strangely different, which I attribute to the whole “Horror-Mood” thing Hewetson had going.

BTW, for anyone interested in this book, the reproduction of the original stories looks strange. The paper has a greyish tint and the artwork seems slightly obscured, as if it has been scanned from the original magazines, which may well be the case.

 

 

WARREN & ME

 

I first encountered Warren magazines when I was about 11 or 12 and still living in Australia. I came across a copy of the Warren Spirit #3 in a local newsagents. It was weird and wonderful. The art was strange and caricaturist with dark shadows and weird angles. The stories featured a man in a business suit and a talking monkey. It was just all too surreal for my tastes. I was a Marvel madman and used to capes, bulging muscles, gritted teeth and universal threats. The back cover featured some really cool painted advertisements for magazines with ominous titles like “Creepy”, “Eerie” and - shock! horror! - “Famous Monsters of Movieland”. Heavy stuff but nowhere to be found in the Australian newsagents.

 

 

I eventually got over my reticence about the Spirit and found out the talking monkey was actually a young negro called Ebony. Very strange but I loved it nevertheless and the mag sparked a life long love affair with the masked crime fighter and his creator-supreme Will Eisner (but that’s a tale for another time).

 

Then I moved from Australia to the Netherlands in 1975. Immersed in an alien culture, where everything looks, sounds and even smells different, the first thing you do is look for something familiar and comforting. The first thing I did upon landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport was to go down an elevator and look around a gift shop. I quickly noticed Beatles cassettes and Dutch translations of Superman and Batman. Well that was a relief even if there weren’t any Marvels in evidence.

It turned out later that Dutch translations of American comics were abundant but I couldn’t read Dutch at the time and they just weren’t the genuine article anyway. They were even worse than that anathema for “serious” collectors like myself - gasp! - reprints. The Dutch translations were true horror comics. They were printed on better paper so the original colouring looked garish and ugly and they utilised machine, lower case lettering. No they just wouldn’t do, so seeking out the American originals became my very own quest for the Holy Grail. They could be found in Amsterdam with its crowds of foreign tourists but once we moved down south to the province of Limburg on the border with Belgium, American comics dropped off the radar completely and I was devastated. I haunted the newsstands with their piles of foreign magazines and to my utter delight one day I found a battered copy of Warren Spirit #9. I was in heaven for a brief moment until my father converted the price and it turned out to be three times as expensive as in Australia. After a few days of cajoling the old man finally caved in and gave me the dough. I read that mag to pieces and it tied me over until we went to England for a holiday. There I could indulge my comic collecting needs as most stuff was available on the stands, albeit with an ugly big pence price on the cover but beggars can’t be choosers. It was that fateful summer in old Blighty that I bought my very first Warren horror magazine and a beauty it was; Eerie #66, the all El Cid issue with a striking barbarian cover by Sanjulian. I was into Conan in a big way back then so I was attracted by the obvious sword & sorcery appeal. What awaited me inside, I found even more appealing. The art by Gonzalo Mayo was exotic, ornate and beautiful. It reeked of decay and eldritch sorcery and what’s more it portrayed - gulp! - real nekkid women. Well, it would be many years later before I realised that Mayo’s portrayal of nekkid women was as realistic as George Bush’s designs in Iraq but the portrayal sent my thirteen year old heart a throbbing in my throat. It wasn’t the only thing it sent throbbing but you get the picture. I was hooked. Even today I still think that issue of Eerie is an extraordinarily beautiful piece of comic art.

 

 

After our trip to England we returned to the Netherlands and my sacred quest for comics resumed with a vengeance. I devoured the Spirit but that was a bi-monthly, which was hardly enough to sate my unnatural desires and then one fateful day I saw a copy of Creepy #75 on the stands with a striking Ken Kelly cover. It portrayed a scaly reptilian creature clinging to a rope suspended from an air-balloon, the balloonist looking down anxiously at the nightmare below. It had to be mine and after paying the staggering amount of 5.45 Dutch florins it was. Wow, what a grey issue to start with. Unfortunately their were no nekkid women but it did feature a post-apocalyptic story about cannibals by Rich Buckler & Wally Wood, a great alien invasion tale by John Severin and the absolute icing on the cake was a realistic story about a mass-murderer called Thrill Kill, a real classic by Jim Stenstrum and none other than the maestro himself, Neal Adams. This was heady stuff for my young mind, a far cry from four-colour fisticuffs. There were also one or two stories by people with Spanish sounding names and awful “swiggly” art but I didn’t let that bother me. Buckler, Severin and Adams was enough for the nonce.

 

 

Creepy led me to Eerie (#70) and finally Vampire (#53). I bought all three titles for about a year and a half until I came to realise that painted covers and a succession of nekkid women don’t adult comics make. There were indeed some chilling covers, particularly by the aforementioned Ken Kelly and Sanjulian, and some pretty good stories as well but real quality was scarce on the ground. For every “Creeps” by the classic team of Archie Goodwin, John Severin & Wally Wood (Creepy #78) or “In Deep“ by Bruce Jones and Rich Corben (Creepy #83), there were five or six gore fests by embarrassed writers with obvious pseudonyms and hideous Spanish sounding artists. They were horror comics and meant to be ugly I guess but there’s ugly cool and just plain ugly and a lot of this was plain ugly. after I stopped drooling over Vampy and Pantha and read the stories I discovered there was a lot less meat there than in most Marvels, metaphorically speaking of course. Still, there were a few Spaniards who I really admired, like Mayo, Jose Gonzales, Ramon Torrents and particularly Esteban Maroto but they rarely seemed to have decent stories to illustrate.

Creepy was by far the best in terms of stories, followed by Eerie, which was hampered by some really weak continuing features and bringing up the rear was Vampirella, who had the nicest rear of them all but also the weakest stories.

The Spirit folded and Warren was plummeted into one of it cyclical declines, relying mainly on repeats and cheap foreign labour. Thus ended my brief love affair with Warren. I eventually found an outlet for Marvels in Germany and I had discovered other ways of seeing nekkid women so there wasn’t any real need to buy them anymore.

I did try 1984 briefly when it first came out but despite some very kinky and perverted sex, I just couldn’t be bothered to keep buying it.

The horror, the horror….

 

[deejayway-migration]

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, I couldn't stand the screaming silence or blaring white of this (no) reply space.

 

Sob - sob - Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -Sob - sob -

[Jayman]

Hey there! It has been a little slow around these parts lately but things will pick-up again and get back into the "Horror-Mood", I'm sure!

I hope you checked out the other threads that are already discussing some of these books.

 

I agree that the Skywald Horror-Mood book is a good read including lots of behind the scenes info and a surprise (for me) interview with Dr. Wertham!

 

BTW: Welcome to the Boards!

[precodekeith]

Sorry, I didn't want to reply to your post until I finished reading it. I've been working on it awhile now. It's like WAR & PEACE. I like to snuggle up in bed and try to finish it each night before I go to sleep!

 

Welcome to the Boards!

[deejayway-migration]

I got mail! I got mail! I exist!

 

It's like WAR & PEACE. I like to snuggle up in bed and try to finish it each night before I go to sleep

 

My writing has been known to cure even the most stubborn cases of insomnia.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[bounty_coder]

Sorry, I didn't want to reply to your post until I finished reading it. I've been working on it awhile now. It's like WAR & PEACE. I like to snuggle up in bed and try to finish it each night before I go to sleep!

 

Welcome to the Boards!

 

...

 

Hey deejayway, you definitly have quite the imaginitave bit of nostalgia. My past with magazines was much simpler. I would go to school, given a certain amount of Lunch money each day. I would only spent 1/4 of it (by being a clever negotiator), save all that amount for the week, and get what I could at my local comic shop after spending a little bit on bus fare.

 

Get my favorites, read through them with friends, during sleep overs, while hiding under forts we built, raining and thundering outside. Pretty goofy, but how fun and simple it was to be a kid!

 

Great to see more passionate, and with you I really mean passionate about Magazines! Great to have you here.

 

Have you been collecting as of recently? Or building your collection again?

 

-bounty

[deejayway-migration]

Sorry I didn't reply earlier Bounty but I've been away for a few days and thanks for the hearty welcome.

 

Have you been collecting as of recently? Or building your collection again?

 

I have collected comics constantly since about 1972, when I was 10 so that's more than 30 years. I'm 43 now.

 

However, I only collected Warrens for about a year or so back in 1975-76 when I moved from Australia to the Netherlands. They were a lifeline for me being the only American comics readily available in Holland at the time. I became pretty disenchanted with them after that and mainly stuff to mainstream comics afterwards.

About a year ago, after a particularly savage divorce (which perhaps explains the renewed interest in gore) I started picking up some of the Warrens I owned way back then.

My interest in Skywald is relatively new. I didn't know anything about them at all until I read Comic Book Artist Vol. 2 #5 about 4 months ago. The article devoted to Skywald intrigued me so much that I ordered Ghastly Terror and Skywald: Horror Mood. Since then I've actually bought my very first Skywald via e-bay.

 

Looking forward to hearing more from collectors-in-the-know like yourself. As soon as I get the time I intend to read the various long thread devoted to Skywald.

 

Cheers,

Deejay