Gone but not forgotten: House of Hammer / House of Horror

As part of the countdown to Halloween I thought I would take this opportunity to revisit some of my favourite horror and mystery comics from years gone by. The House of Hammer (HoH) was a British horror magazine that featured articles on Hammer films and reviews on then new horror genre releases. However, of more interest to myself were the comic strip adaptions of Hammer's back catalogue that featured in each issue including "The Curse of the Werewolf" from HoH issue 10 (cover above by Brain Lewis)

House of Hammer was initially published between 1976 and 1978 and was the brainchild of Dez Skinn (later of Marvel UK fame), who initially conceived the idea of publishing a horror film magazine titled “Chiller” but on walking past the Hammer offices he realised that a tie-in with the famous horror film production house could be beneficial. A meeting with Hammer was arranged and a deal was quickly made and a new magazine was born. House of Hammer issue 1 above - image from the Grand Comics Database.

Artists working for HoH included Paul Neary, David Lloyd and Brian Bolland who would all soon become superstar names in British and American comics. However, it was the work of John Bolton that really stood out in HoH where he created some incredible work on features like "Dracula Prince of Darkness" (issue 6), "One Million Years BC" (issue 14) and my favourite "The Curse of the Werewolf" (2 page of his stunning art is shown above).

Although I had seen the first few issue of HoH on sale it was of little interest to me as I wasn’t a big fan of horror movies. But it was on seeing issue 5 featuring an amazing space /SF cover by the talented Brian Lewis (above) that I decided to take the plunge and splurge 35p (the equivalent of about 4 US comics at the time) and bought the magazine. It was 35p well spent. Below are some of my favourite covers from my HoH collection:

Cover to issue 6 and a page of John Boltons amazing art to the adaption of "Dracula Prince of Darkness" (written by Donne Avenell)

Cover to issue 7 by Brian Lewis featuring the Hammer film "Twins of Evil"

Cover to issue 13 featuring "The Plague of Zombies" - the comic strip adaption featured pencil art by Trevor Goring and Brian Bolland inks.

Cover to issue 14 featuring "One Million Years B.C." and a page of John Boltons wonderful art to the adaption of the film (written by Steve Moore)

Cover to issue 18. This was a departure from previous issues as it featured a non film comic strip "The story of Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein" by comic book greats Neal Adams and Dick Giordano from 1975. The comic strip was created as part of a series of Horror LPs and accompanying comics by Power Records. The strip was republished in colour in the Neal Adams collection "Monsters" in 2003.

The magazine also ran various back-up strips most under the title “Van Helsing’s Terror Tales” which were short ‘twist-in-the-tale’ type stories. Others stories featured Captain Kronos (from the Hammer film “Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter”) and my favourite the ongoing adventures of Father Shandor (page above by John Bolton) from the Hammer movie "Dracula Prince of Darkness" .

With issue 19, the magazine changed its title to “Hammer’s House of Horror” in order to take advantage of a US distribution deal. The title was allegedly changed as the US distributor thought that “House of Hammer” sounded like a DIY magazine. However, Jim Warren the publisher of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” heard about this and published a limited edition magazine called "House of Horror" to copyright the name which forced HoH into another title change to “Hammers Halls of Horror “ with issue 21. The magazine lasted until issue 23 (July 1978) when Warner Communications (the US publisher) sold its publishing division. The title returned again in 1982 published by Des Skinn Quality Communications with issue 24 and eventually ceased publication with issue 30 in 1984. A dead but not forgotten magazine.