Charlton Horror

[ctc]

So....

Couldn’t sleep today, so I was rereading some old comics and stumbled on my Charlton box. I gotta give props to their old horror books; they’ve got the right touch of spooky and silly, and I thought it was kinda cool how they made the hosts actual characters in the books. I’m surprised more of them haven’t been brought back. (The only one I know of was a brief return for Doctor Graves in the 90's.)

I’ve read the origin stories for Professor Coffin and Arachne, and Baroness Von Bludd; but did they do origins for the rest of the cast?

By the by; “Midnight Tales” is STILL one of my all time favourite books.

Don C.

[saildog]

Thanks for the heads up to something different than what I have traditionally read. I think I will go looking for some of this stuff.

Traditionally, I have been a Superheroes reader and a Marvel and DC reader, to boot. Recently, I have discovered that I like genres beyond the Superhero stuff and I am gradually gaining an appreciation for companies beyond the Big Two. I honestly had no idea how much I have missed out on, so I appreciate a recommendation like this.

[ctc]

>I honestly had no idea how much I have missed out on

Do yourself a favour: run.... RIGHT NOW!.... and get a copy of the Grimjack Omnibus.

Don C.

[B-Lister]

I've got a big old box of it somewhere, that I'm looking to move. Some GREAT covers on some of those.

I'll keep you posted if I find the stuff. I dig Silver Age Horror, but I keep mostly to DC titles.

[johnnystorm]

Charlton is an acquired taste, there's a lot of nice stuff buried in the dregs. It's amazing to me that Charlton held he licenses to so many '60s & '70s iconic characters, from all the Hanna-Barbera stuff, to Emergency, Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, Six Mill & Bionic Woman, Space:1999, Popeye, the Phantom, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Bullwinkle & Rocky, even Ronald McDonald and Hee-Haw! Imagine if Dell or Gold Key had done a few of those (I know they did the cartoon stuff earlier)- a Six Million Dollar Man series with photo covers- those would price high I'll bet. Ditto a David Cassidy series from Gold Key?

And yet, Charlton pumped out that weird and mostly unfunny cartoon stuff with bad art that sometimes didn't even resemble the actual characters- I'm thinking here of the Flintstones. but then you had something like John Byrne's Space:1999 or Neal Adams on Six Million - weird stuff, huh? My understanding is that the owners at Charlton didn't even care about the comic line, it was just cheaper to print them and distribute in order to keep the presses running continuously. the main interest at charlton was word find books & Song Hits!

I think the writing on the Charlton horror books was hit & miss, the rough part is getting past that abominable typewriter lettering they insisted on using. Still anything Tom Sutton did was top notch, Jim Aparo is there, Giordano, Garcia-Lopez, Williamson, Wood. Great art, it would be great if somebody reprinted an Archives type book, a "Best of..." series with better printing and new less murky coloring. I think a Phantom book by Aparo & newton would sell or a Bionic collected Archives- Neal Adams art in there, especially from the b/w magazine size books.

Can't recall reading enough of the books to know if Dr. Graves or the others had origins. I remember Countess Von Bludd though, she had Lady Death beat by a couple decades. Maybe Dynamite should revive her by Alex Ross? I'd buy it...

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

I was always amazed that the tie-in stuff was almost univerally horrible; whereas a lot of their original stuff was pretty good. Yet the originals got buried in the hype.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

Was it these horror titles that the Filipino artists of the seventies got their american foothold?

[Earth 2 Chris]

Was it these horror titles that the Filipino artists of the seventies got their american foothold?

I think that was mostly on DC's line of horror titles.

I just read an article on Charlton Horror in a older Back Issue magazine. Sounds like some good stuff there. Some of the earliest works of Don Newton, Mike Zeck and Joe Staton, among others.

Chris

[johnnystorm]

Hmmmm....

I was always amazed that the tie-in stuff was almost univerally horrible; whereas a lot of their original stuff was pretty good. Yet the originals got buried in the hype.

Don C.

I think that's somewhat universal to licensed product...some of Marvel's stuff like Star Wars & Indiana Jones wasn't that great either- even big names on it like Infantino & Ditko look totally rushed and well, just off.


...and there's some really bad Dell & Gold Key stuff out there (anything Jack Sparling did I find exceptionally poor).I guess the attitude is that the character will sell the book regardless of quality? A really good current example is the horrendous stuff from Bluewater comics- names like Ray Harryhausen, Vincent Price, and the bio comics, nice cover art but open it up to see b- grade high school art class work.

[cjefferys]

Charlton put out some good pre-code horror, like "The Thing!", which is a classic title.

[TrueDave]

I loved th reprints as a teen in the 80s.

I was nuts about Horror and WW 2 back then.

Still remember my favorite two Charton Horrors. This is 20 years before I saw a EC reprint.

[ctc]

>I guess the attitude is that the character will sell the book regardless of quality?

That; or maybe the folks attached to it see it as just a job and have no real attachment to the book?

Don C.