Saturday, August 27, 2011

Charlton's Ghostly Tales



I've always wanted to complete my collection of Charlton horror comics. Unfortunately they're kind of hard to come by at the local conventions I go to. I did pick this particular ish from September, 1969 not too long ago. Ghostly Tales From The Haunted House lasted for 115 issues from 1966-1984. The few issues I have are actually not bad, much better than I expected. Issue #75 featured a great Jim Aparo cover but unfortunately Jim didn't do any of the interior art. This ish featured art by Charles Nicholas, Sanho Kim, Pat Boyette, and some guy named Ditko. Needless to say, the Ditko story stood out. He had a great sense of the macabre. Charlton sometimes gets a bad rap for churning out subpar stuff but a lot of the books are fun reads, especially in the late 60's, when guys like Ditko and Aparo worked for them. They're worth checking out.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

The "New" 1970's Showcase

One of my favorite short lived series when I was growing up was the 11 issue run of DC's revamped Showcase title. It featured three different three issue story arcs featuring The Doom Patrol, Power Girl, and Hawkman. There were also two stand alone issues, the 100th anniversary issue, featuring pretty much every hero that appeared in the mag through the years, and the last issue featuring stories of the WWII era OSS. Joe Staton drew the interiors of issues #'s 94-96, featuring The Doom Patrol but the always great Jim Aparo covers were what drew my seven year old self to these books.







The next three issue arc featured the Earth 2 Supergirl, Power Girl, who was a fairly new character at the time. Staton provided the cover and interior art for these issues.







I was really excited when issue #100 came out. There were a ton of ads for it in every DC book and it was cool seeing all these heroes together in one book. Once again, late 70's DC workhorse Joe Staton did the cover and interiors.



The next three issue arc was my favorite of the short lived series. Al Milgrom and Murphy Anderson provided the art for a great three part story featuring Hawkman and Adam Strange behind great covers by the one and only Joe Kubert. I've always loved Kubert's Hawkman and these covers didn't disappoint at all.







The last issue of the series featured three stories of the OSS, the famous World War II spy agency, with art by Ric Estrada and Bill Draut. Once again Kubert provides the cover.



If you're into late 70's DC like I am, these are pretty good reads and are pretty cheap if you can find them at conventions. I definitely recommend picking them up.

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