precode horror comics Archives

April 9, 2024

Pre-Code SCI-FI HORROR Comics by SPIDER-MAN Artist JOHN Romita

Pre-Code HORROR and SCI-FI Comics by Popular Marvel SPIDER-MAN Artist JOHN Romita

Pre-code horror comics by John Romita. Romita was a very popular Spider-Man artist for Marvel Comics. John Romita Senior, born January 1930, passed away at the age of 93 in June 2023, after many decades of acclaimed work in the comics industry.
Watch the original video here.

Romita is well known for his work for Marvel Comics in the 1960’s and 1970’s doing art for notable titles like The Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers, and Daredevil.
As an Atlas artist doing a lot of pre-code horror comics for Stan Lee, Romita ended up drawing about 200 stories for Atlas between 1951 and 1957 in all genres including horror, sci-fi, crime, jungle comics, westerns, war, and romance.
Marvel’s Masterworks volumes featuring pre-code horror comics by John Romita on sale now.

John Romita Beginnings In the Comics Industry

A graduate of the Caniff School of Art, Romita began his career at Atlas Comics ghosting stories for artists Les Zakarin in 1951. Working for Marvel in the early 1960s he started drawing Daredevil. He then followed Steve ditko on The Amazing Spider-Man his most acclaimed comic book series.

Fortunately, Marvel has reprinted many of the Atlas Comics Series in multiple volumes. These books feature pre-code art by John Romita, Sid Shores, Joe Sinnott, Russ Heath and many more. See the link on this page. Years before the Marvel superhero boom, Romita lent his young talent to Atlas pre-code horror comics. These titles include Menace, Marvel Tales, Astonishing, suspense, and Journey into Mystery.

Romita’s Atlas Pre-code Horror Comic Art

Today we’re looking at some of the Atlas horror comics titles that John Romita Drew starting in 1951 with Strange Tales number three, published October of 1951. Romita did pencils for the story The Man Who Never Was. Astonishing number seven, December of 1951, Romita did pencils and inks for “Out of my Mind.” Astonishing number 24, April of 1953, the story “Poor Wilbur,” doing both pencils and inks. In Marvel Tales number 108, August of 1952, a story called “The Guillotine.” Marvel Tales number 127, October of 1954, Romita drew a story titled “A thing of Evil.”

Menace, Mystic, and More

“Flying Saucer” was a story he rendered in Menace number six, 1953. Menace number eight October of 1953 called “The werewolf was Afraid.” In Menace number 11, 1954, he did the pencils and inks for a story called “The Robot.” Mystic number 25, December of 1953, a story titled “Vampire” with Romita supplying the pencils and inks. “Speed Carter, Spaceman” issue number one, September of 1953. He drew the story called “Venus Earth’s twin sister,” supplying the pencils and inks. In Spellbound number 13, March of 1953, Romita drew “The Dead Men.” Strange Tales number three, October of 1951 “The Man Who Never Was” pencils. Strange Tales number four December of 1951″IT,” supplying the pencils and inks.
Watch the original video.
I hope you enjoyed this look into John Romita’s pre-code horror comics period of the 1950s please like And subscribe and thanks for watching.
Romita’s pre-code horror and sci-fi comics are available through Marvel’s Masterworks volumes on sale here

January 15, 2024January 15, 2024

HAUNTED HORROR Pre-Code Comic Book Reprints From YOE Books

YOE Books Pre-code HORROR Comic Book Reprints – Part One
Yoe book’s Haunted Horror pre-code horror comic book reprint series began circa 2012 with editor Steve Banes, Clizia Gussoni and Craig Yoe.
Watch the original video here.

Haunted Horror Creators

Contributing editors included Tillman Courth, Mike Howlett, Toxic Tommy O’brien, and Jim Vadeboncoeur. The full color reprints are really quite good.
For instance, the story called “City of Fearful Night” drawn by none other than the great Bernard Baily, from Worlds of Fear number two, January 1952. For this series, they put together a variety of different stories from various publishers so you didn’t have one issue which was “Worlds of Fear” featuring stories from that title. You had a variety of issues which would have a story from Chamber of Chills, The Unseen, Beware! Terror Tales, etc. The reproduction as far as i’m concerned is really quite good so I don’t have any complaints with the way that they randomly put stories together in these horror comic books.

Artists and Stories in Haunted Horror

Haunted Horror number 15 featured an awesome bernard bailey cover from Weird Mysteries number four.
Another issue has “Nightmare come true” from Journey into Fear number nine, september, 1952. Art by Iger shop with a majority of the work done by Robert Webb. Webb loved to do these these like circular panels like this and his faces and and bodies had a certain look.
Mark of the Brute from Weird Terror number 11 with art by Don Heck who would go on to do a lot of stuff for Marvel superheroes and so forth. Here he is in the early 1950’s doing pre-code horror comics.
Haunted Horror number 16 features that fabulous George Roussos cover from Out of the Shadows from Standard Comics.

The Editors as Horror Hosts

One of the great things about Haunted Horror is that they had the three editors, Banes, Gussoni, and Yoe all had their own horror host characters who introduced the stories. For example, this is Craig Yoe As Forelock the Warlock drawn by Angelo Torres.

Giant Ants and Mummies

In one of the classic pre-code horror stories, “the Black Death,” giant army ants attack and devour humans. The story was originally from Fantastic Fears number four with art by Iger Shop and redrawn in a 1960s issue Weird magazine for Eerie Publications.
The Mummy was a horror host used in many of the Beware! Terror Tales issues published by Fawcett in the early 1950’s. This particular story called “Search into the Unknown” was drawn by Maurice Gutworth, a very popular pre-code horror comics artist who did a lot of work for Fawcett.

L.B. Cole and Mr. Karswell

For Haunted Horror number seventeen we have an excellent reproduction of a great L.B. Cole cover. Every one of his covers are fantastic but this one from Spook number twenty-five, July, 1953 is gorgeous.
Mr. Karswell aka Steve Banes is another Haunted Horror host with a rather Creepy magazine style look done by Art Fuentes. The first story “To Death” is from Dark Mysteries number fourteen, 1953, art by John D’Agostino.

Mister Mystery number one september of 1951, a story called “Revolt of the Fingers.”
This is from Beware! Terror Tales once again. Here is the Mummy introducing the story for the november 1954 issue of Beware! Art by Bob McCarty, a really great artist.
The colors are quite cool and I love his style. IDW-Yoe Books’ reproductions are sharp, I have no complaints whatsoever with these.

We will continue with part two on Yoe books next week.
Haunted Horror Books on SALE.

January 8, 2024January 8, 2024

ECLIPSE Pre-Code HORROR Comic Book Series SEDUCTION Of The INNOCENT

SEDUCTION Of The INNOCENT Pre-Code HORROR Comic Book Series from Eclipse Comics 1985.
Watch the original companion video here.

In the mid-1980’s, Eclipse Comics began publishing a series of pre-code horror comic book reprints called Seduction of the Innocent. The title was taken from the infamous book by Dr. Frederick Wertham, a sad old man who led the charge against comic books in the 1950s. The stories in the Eclipse series were taken from standard comics pre-code titles that included Adventures into Darkness, Out of the Shadows, The Unseen, and Fantastic Worlds.
I don’t believe that any of these Standard comics titles were used in the congressional hearings that helped usher in the dreaded 1955 Comics Code Authority but it is an absolute fact that Standard had some top-notch artists of the day.
Six issues of seduction of the innocent are gorgeous full-color reproductions of great stories from the classic pre-code comic books. Two issues are 3-D reproductions wherein original non-3d stories were given the 3d treatment with mixed results.

Jim Vadeboncouer Introductions

In each issue there is a segment called The Horror, the History by Jim Vadeboncouer, a well-known authority in the realm of pre-code comics who sadly left this mortal coil in 2023. His book on the life of Everett Raymond Kinsler who drew comics for avon in the pre-code era is highly recommended.
Seduction of the Innocent Comic Book Covers
The covers of the non-3d issues is a mixed bag. Issue number one with cover art by Reed Crandall taken from the interior story is great. Issue number two with the cover taken from fantastic worlds number five art by Murphy Anderson is very tame for a Seduction of the Innocent cover. Issue number three has a cool panel from the story Werewolf by Mort Meskin and George Roussos from Out of the Shadows number 14. Issue number four has an interesting Alex Toth cover and issue number five cover by Alex Toth is a fine classic crime cover. Issue number six rounds out the whole affair with you guessed it, another Alex Toth cover, perhaps my favorite of the bunch called “Look into the Eyes of Death.”

3-D Comic Book Covers

The 3D issues are kind of a toss-up. Eclipse had the excellent idea of getting two stellar artists to do the covers. The spicy Dave “Rocketeer” Stevens cover for number one is fantastic and I wish that was in 3d! Issue two features a great Bernie “Swamp Thing” Wrightson cover. I highly recommend these issues for the covers alone because in reality the covers are better than the 3-D attempts inside. The problem is they took ordinary pre-code horror stories and processed them for 3D using modern 3-d processing techniques. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t.

Joe Kubert 3-D House of Terror

They may have drawn their inspiration from the fantastic 3d pre-code horror comic book titled “3D House of Terror” published by Saint John in 1953 featuring a surprisingly tame cover by Joe Kubert.
The 3d stories inside more than make up for the lack of cover “wow.” interior art by kubert and enrico bagnoli the first story drawn by Kubert called “Picture of Evil” has an intense splash page that is amazingly three-dimensional. According to comics.org this is the only story that was done for the issue or should i say not previously published elsewhere.

1950’s 3-D Comics Vs. Modern 3-D Comics

The other stories were originally published in Saint John’s Weird Horrors and Strange Terrors comic books, however, they are still better looking 3D than the Eclipse 3d series. It is possible that the kind of 3d printing technique used in the 1950s was superior after all 3d was very popular during that period in both comics and movies so it is likely that the folks doing it were on top of their game that being said i still recommend the 3d seduction of the innocent comics from Eclipse and I consider the one through six non-3d reprints essential for the pre-code horror fans. Trust me, you’ll be oggling that Dave Stevens cover for more than a few minutes.

This concludes part four of this series. Watch the original Eclipse Seduction of the Innocent video. Thanks for reading and watching!

January 2, 2024January 2, 2024

TALES Too TERRIBLE To TELL! Pre-code Horror Comic Book Stories and History from NEC

TALES Too TERRIBLE To TELL! Pre-code Horror Comic Book Reprints, stories and history from New England Comics.
You can watch the original Tales Too Terrible To Tell video here.

The 1980s and 90s saw a resurgence of pre-code horror comic book reprints from a variety of small publishers. Today we look at NEC: New England Comics and Tales too Terrible to Tell. These are some of my favorite reprints for a variety of reasons.

Pre-code Reprint Quality

Tales too terrible to tell published all interior reprints in black and white which can be a turn off for some pre-code comics fans, however, the reprints in the issues i have are clean and sharp making the reading very enjoyable. More importantly, the crew of tales too terrible to tell led by editor George Suarez, art director Bob Polio, assistant editor Larry Boyd and research assistant Billy Devine made this publication much more than just a collection of pre-code horror comic book stories reprinted and thrown into a magazine.

A History of Pre-code Horror Comics

Inside each issue is a wealth of information about the comics artists writers and publishers making Tales too terrible to tell a must have for any pre-code horror comics enthusiast. Beside the reprinted comic book stories each issue has a section called Terrorology that dives into the nuts and bolts of pre-code publishers titles and artists. Suarez also published a companion magazine called Terrorology specifically designed to be an informative guide to pre-code comics. You can get many of these on ebay.

Horror Comic Book Covers

Additionally. Tales to terrible to tell features a gallery of classic horror covers in each issue showing the cover and talking about the artist with cool details about the particular issue. There is also a letters to the tombs section in the back of each issue with correspondence from fans which can be very entertaining.

Pre-code Horror Meets SWAMP THING

I have issues one through eight and while most of the issues of Tales too terrible to tell have color reprints of great pre-code covers on their respective covers, issue number one and three have exclusive covers by the great Steve “swamp thing” Bissette. issue number one with the gloriously ghoulish zombie flesh rip-a-rama cover by Bissette was a specially numbered limited edition you can still get on ebay for around 20 bucks or so. Just make sure it’s the limited edition. A few years later they re-released issue number one without the Bissette cover and in its place the Jack Katz shrunken head cover originally published in issue number eight of Out of the Shadows in 1953.

Ben Edlund’s THE TICK

As a kind of strange extra, many of the issues feature early stories from ben edlund’s the Tick. NEC comics carried the Tick for a while so i imagine it was a kind of cross-promotional idea and apparently Mr. Edlund was a fan and supporter of the Tales too terrible to tell project. In summary if you are a true fan of pre-code horror comics you should get your claws on a set of tales too terrible to tell immediately. Highly recommended.
Watch this original video on the Horror Mike Channel.
This concludes part 3 of the series. As always, please like and subscribe. Thank you.

December 30, 2023January 1, 2024

Pre-code HORROR and SCI-FI Comic Book Reprints from Eerie Pubs and Stanley Morse

Most pre-code horror and sci-fi comic books are in the public domain so it is no surprise that there are many reprints starting with Eerie publications in the 1960’s and continuing on today with stellar publishers like Yoe Books and PS Artbooks. There are a few things that constitute a decent pre-code horror comics reprint depending on what you’re looking for.

This article is taken from the original Video on Pre-code HORROR and SCI-FI Comic Book Reprints.

SOURCE MATERIAL

The better the original source material and care taken to reproduce the most accurate image possible. The higher quality reprint you will have. Color reprints are much trickier thus you have fewer publishing in full color with the majority being simple black and white reprints.
I first discovered reprints of pre-code comics when i was a kid and I happened to find some magazines from Eerie publications in a store one day. At the time I didn’t realize magazines like Weird, Horror tales (pictured), and Tales of Voodoo were simply reprints or redos of all of those pre-code comics from the 1950s.

PUBLISHER MYRON FASS

Myron Fass ran eerie publications and he himself drew comics and did covers for 1950s publishing houses like Toby contributing to titles such as Tales of horror and covers of issues like Beware (pictured) drawn by Fass depicting himself being attacked by monsters. So the fact that Myron Fass figured out a way to milk those pre-code tales for many more years is not surprising. It was many years later that i realized that what Eerie publications had done so I ended up collecting more to get those reprints.
The redrawn pre-code stories in Eerie publications were often quite good as foss employed many talented south american artists to churn out the pages. Overall, one might think of Eerie publications as a kind of click bait operation. The incredibly gory covers of vampires attacking a scantily clad woman while being skewed through the heart by a crazy looking werewolf never showed up as stories in the magazines themselves but if you want to up your gore game I highly recommend getting at least a few magazines from Eerie publications for the decent black and white reprints and the insanely over-the-top violent monster covers. Ebay and a few other sellers have them running anywhere from 10 bucks to perhaps a few hundred dollars for the rarest issues in great shape.

JAMES WARREN VS. MYRON FASS

And now a tasty little anecdote in 1965. Myron Fass (pictured) ended up calling his horror comics publishing company Eerie publications after James Warren publishing beat him to the name.
His original idea was to call his first magazine “Eerie” but Warren struck at the midnight hour and released an ash-can version of Eerie magazine beating Fass to the punch and securing the name Eerie for his own title. The ash can version of Eerie number one which is simply a black and white staple-bound quick print can be found on ebay or other collector’s sites and seem to range between 800 and 1500 dollars. This is why the first full-fledged issue of Eerie to hit the stands was issue number two. The good news is that you can get a photocopy of erie number one on Ebay for around 10 to 15 dollars.
It is interesting to note that around this time, early to late 1960’s, a UK publisher called Super Comics also published pre-code reprints in comic book form. For example, they published Eerie tales number 12 which was a reprint of Avon periodicals Erie number one from 1951.

Stanley Morse

One of the more famous or perhaps infamous pre-code players back in the day with titles like Mister Mystery and Weird Tales of the Future, was Stanley Morse.
Morse jumped into the pre-code reprint game in the late 60s with SHOCK and Chilling Tales of Horror magazine (pictured) in 1968. Stanley publications had other pre-code reprint titles like Ghoul Tales and Stark Terror. In the case of Stanley morris, he literally reprinted the original stories including some of the original covers.
For example, Shock number one has the cover of Weird Chills number one which was originally done by the great Bernard Bailey although many of their covers were done by modern artists. A lot of these are available online, particularly on ebay and are not very expensive, running between 10 to 50 dollars depending on condition.
In the next part of this series, we dive into latter day reprints from the 1990s and on.

Watch this Pre-code HORROR and SCI-FI Comic Book Reprints video on Horror Mike’s Channel.

December 19, 2023December 19, 2023

Mysteries Weird And Strange Six – March 1954 Superior Comics pre-code horror comics

precode horror comics mysteries weird and strange — horror comic books precode golden age

Mysteries Weird and Strange Number Six – March 1954 Superior Comics pre-code horror comics. Full video here.
We look at the classic precode horror comic book Mysteries weird and Strange number six published in September 1954 by the Canadian company Superior Publishers limited.
From 1947 to 1956, Superior publishing produced dozens of different comic book titles and a total of 443 issues during that 9-year period. Their pre-code horror titles included strange Mysteries, Mysteries weird and strange, and journey into fear. Most of the art in these titles were done by Jerry iger’s famous Iger shop which consisted of such artists as Jay disbrow, Matt Baker, Ken Batefield, Robert Webb, and writer editor Ruth Roach among others.
Iger shop worked as a factory producing perhaps a dozen comic books a month for various Publishers and other titles such as Haunted Thrills, Voodoo, Mysterious Adventures, Strange Fantasy, Fantastic Fears, and more. Typically, no specific artist is credited with a story because many artists worked on specific things related to a story in a factory like setting.
We begin with Mysteries Weird and Strange number six from March 1954. The copy I have is coverless but complete so we can take a good look at all the stories. All of these synopsis are taken from Comic Book Plus, a great website you need to check out for fantastic digital reproduction of these precode horror comics.
Howling Horror. Synopsis: on a trip to the mountains writer Adam hunt makes the acquaintance of lonely Vicky barow something is uncanny about her because she keeps dogs with men’s names.
Next up, Swamp Vengeance. Synopsis: trouble in the bayous! Jake karna kills a man for some precious animal pelts but is blackmailed by eyewitness Bell. Karna murders her too by throwing her to the alligators. Belle however returns as a vengeful ghost.
Then we have a text story called The Kill which is two pages long. Synopsis: a sentenced man sneaks back into the courthouse to stab the judge who punished him. The judge’s chair comes to life and crushes the evildoer.
The next tale is Evil Disguise. Synopsis: Sam wants to give his friend Tom a scare. He asks him to come to the cemetery where he’s ordered some actors to appear in costume. The men are confronted with real fiends from the grave!
Death Rehearsal. Synopsis: Peter Edison wants to commit the perfect crime with the help of his attorney Tom Ferris. He plans a murder scenario for his philandering wife but does he know that Ferris is the man that his wife is seeing?
And that wraps up Mysteries weird and strange number six. In part two we will look at strange Mysteries number Seven from September 1954. You can see the entire video here.

November 23, 2023

RARE Eerie Publications HORROR Cover Art Prints PLUS The Weird World of Eerie Pubs

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to get a hold of four prints that were taken off the original art used on Eerie Publications magazines including Tales of Voodoo, Terror Tales, Horror Tales and Weird. There could have been some more but I think those were the prime issues they were using.
Publisher Myron Fass took pre-code horror comic book stories from the 1950’s and either reprinted, re-drew, or added blood and gore to the original artwork to print in these magazines.
The guy that owns the original art did a spectacular job as you can see doing these prints. The reproductions are fantastic. I tried to bring it up so you could really get a good look at it but it does cut off the top but as you can see the top is simply you know was reserved for the title like Terror Tales is gonna go up there so that’s kind of what we’re missing which is not much. This is for Terror Tales April of 1973.
The artist Bill Alexander who would do the mother-lode of art for the these horror magazines from Erie Publications. In this scene a flying vampire woman that’s coming in menacing this poor half-naked girl in a cemetery and you’ve got this Green Ghoul down here pulling her into the ground while another vampire looks on. He’s like “yeah, I’m coming in for some of that action too.” Now I’m going to show you how it turned out with the cover for Terror Tales and you will see… Continue reading “RARE Eerie Publications HORROR Cover Art Prints PLUS The Weird World of Eerie Pubs”

June 26, 2022

The Mystery of Bad 3-D in Horror Comics Finally SOLVED!

I love a good pre-code horror comic book, and one of my favorites is the St. John Publishing’s 3-D HOUSE OF TERROR published circa 1953 featuring the fantastic art of Joe Kubert who did the first story called “Picture of Evil” with an amazing 3-D splash page that is one of the greatest examples of 3D I have ever seen. It pops right off the page!
I bought some Eclipse comics Seduction of the Innocent 3-D issues 1 and 2 a few years back which came with a pair of “3D glasses” and I was not impressed with the 3-D at all. After a short while it kind of gave me a headache and I couldn’t enjoy the stories as much as I wanted to.
Well, a few days ago I got the MR. MONSTER 3-D comic book from Eclipse and discovered something profound with 3-D that I never realized before!
So I made a video about it, would you like to see it? Well here it is!
On Youtube
On Bitchute

March 3, 2022

HAUNTED THRILLS Archive Video PART TWO: Unedited Interview with Everett Raymond Kinstler

HAUNTED THRILLS Archive Video Part Two: Pre-Code HORROR COMICS Master Everett Raymond Kinstler
Doing art for Avon, Ziff Davis, Western Printing in the 1950s.
Unedited archive video of my interview with pre-code horror comics master and illustrator Everett Raymond Kinstler.

bitchute https://www.bitchute.com/video/UDoBvpvoK…
youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjrCoOc…
rumble https://rumble.com/vwc7fh-haunted-…

HAUNTED THRILLS Archive Video PART TWO: Unedited Interview with Everett Raymond Kinstler

February 17, 2022

Pre-Code HORROR COMICS Movie on Sale NOW

Get the Witch Tales blu-ray featuring terrifying pre-code comic tales of horror along with a FREE COPY of Horror Anthology Movie vol. 1 DVD ON SALE NOW with FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING.
Witch Tales has stories adapted from Harvey’s Chamber of Chills, Ajax Farrell’s Haunted Thrills, and Story Comics Mysterious Adventures with a spine tingling wrap around featuring a seductive witch making her own special conjuration on Halloween eve!
Available now on Ebay and Etsy.