October 2017 Horror/Monster/Halloween/Spooky Covers

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Looks like Spook Comic which later added Suspense & Mystery becoming Spook, Suspense & Mystery 1st came out in 1946 & was publ. by Baily. I couldn't find how many issues it ran nor who else ended up publishing it, but the covers sure are neat.







*another cover of beauty -

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Let's slide on into Bronze with DC's The Witching Hour. Published from 1969-78 for 85 issues. At issue 14 they changed the title blurb from "It's 12 O'clock The Witching Hour" to "It's Midnight The Witching Hour." It was covers like this that jump-started my comic collecting passion.

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Hiccupping for a sec & bouncing back to the Silver Age. I'm always talking about what was going on at DC & Marvel during the Silver & Bronze age, yet spend very little time showing what was going on in other places. Gold Key was publishing their fair share of Horror titles & did 3 major tv tie-ins, Boris Karloff Presents, Dark Shadows & The Twilight Zone. As I recall from buying them as a kid; the covers were always better than the interiors. Oh well. This is a cover thread -

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I will say though that one Bronze book that Gold Key Published in the horror theme, was very, very good & had some great covers. Doctor Spektor ran from 1973-77 & was an Occultist Mystery Solver who along with his hottie, American Indian Assistant, Lakota Rainflower, battled a huge stable of spooks & monsters. I've picked up the Darkhorse hdbk. collections & they're all quite good. His recent update by Dynamite was just horrible, imo.









A dream Team-Up would be Dr. Spektor & Dr. Strange.

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Back to DC for a bit -

DC's The Unexpected was a continuation of their Tales of the Unexpected (that was more fantasy based). It ran from 1968-82. Once again, strong DC covers. Seems skeletons were a big theme w/ this book.

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A short run from 1972-75, Weird Mystery Tales originally started as a collection of older DC horror stories but did quickly branch off into its own stories. Pretty much a straight-up monster book. DC ended up really liking the "Weird" moniker & ended up tying in Weird War (which we'll see soon) & Weird Western (featuring Jonah Hex which tied him into his supernatural slant *see Tim Truman).




early Wrightson

* Ummmm? Not quite sure what the demon's doing here.

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Originally running from 1971 - 1983, DC's Weird War Tales comic was probably my favorite. There were many great cover artists on this one but, 'c'mon, the Kubert' ones sold the book to me.







ok, I had to throw in this Darwyn Cooke cover of the book's more modern 1-shot. I'm such a huge Cooke fan & he really did something here -

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Finishing up with DC, 70's Horror comics with two more of their big guns. Ghosts, running 112 issues from 1971-82 was, imo, their most hard-core horror book. Straight up supernatural. Arguably DC's most beloved horror comic had to be House of Mystery, which I always found to be hit-or-miss, but when it hit it was super spooky. House of Mystery ran a whopping 321 issues & has been revamped several times since it's glory days. It's sister publication, House of Secrets was also a huge success for DC.

When it came to Horror & the 60's & 70's, DC really knew what they were doing. They took the then-banned EC model, toned it down enough to get through the comics code, & saturated the market w/ killer covers, artists & writers.

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