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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Number 1488: Monsters of Karloff


Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery was a title of the 1970s from Gold Key/Whitman, which featured monster stories. What I remember about it from seeing it on the comic racks of its era was the art in each issue seemed uneven to me, a problem I found with most of the anthology comics of the time.

These two stories I found interesting and well drawn. “The Eternity Monster” is from issue #60 (1975), drawn by José Delbo; “The Axeman and the Taxman” is from #68 (1976) and identified (if you can call it that) as being by “West Coast artist?” by the Grand Comics Database.
















There are more Boris Karloff monsters at Karswell’s The Horrors Of It All.
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5 comments:

Brian Barnes said...

One of my favorite part of the Karloff hosted comic is how dapper he's always drawn, it's such a change from the moldering cloak and rag crypt denizens you usually see.

I think the art is always a bit off because it's usually drawn by people who are "slumming" in comics, i.e., not journeymen artists who know their way around page layout and camera positioning, etc. So things are usually a bit stiff.

We are probably getting guys/gals that are new (and cheap) or folks doing it for a side money. That's just a guess, though, I could be very wrong. A lot of these people end up being unknown.

Pappy said...

I might be mistaken, but did Gold Key use the services of artists in other countries? I know that the Alberto Gioliti studio did a lot of work from Rome in the sixties.

Even though I thought the art was uneven I didn’t think it was necessarily bad. I would be reading a story with artwork I really liked and then right after it presented with something I didn't like as much. The artist was professional, just not to my taste, and that's what I meant by uneven.

rnigma said...

If I recall, this began as a comic based on the Karloff-hosted TV series "Thriller," then changed its title after the show ended its run.

Keir said...

When one thinks of horrible, slime-infested marshland, Eton immediately comes to mind...
the executioner sounds more like he hails from Alabama.

Kirk said...

These are from the 1975 and '76? Karloff seems to have returned from the grave. I suppose if anyone could do it, it would be him.