Gone but not forgotten - Portman Magazines - a horrific story of a Marvel broken licensing deal

Back in the late 1970’s it wasn’t just Marvel UK that were producing reprints of US Marvel material, there was one other company doing this, for a short time at least Portman Distribution. Portman was originally part of the Top Sellers company but was later sold to Gold Star a publishing company based in Croydon and run by Ralph and David Gold. In 1978, they hired Alan McKenzie (who had previously worked at Top Sellers and would later work for Marvel UK) to create a line of horror comic magazines using American Marvel reprints which were very popular at this time. After securing a contract with Marvel US to reprint under licence, material from Marvels American black & white horror magazines, including Tales of the Zombie, Haunt of Horror, Vampire Tales etc. Portman Distribution produced 4 titles which featured characters like Blade, Morbius, Satana ,Simon Garth - Zombie, Gideon the Demon Hunter , Blade, and Brother Voodoo. These magazines, “Tales of Terror” “Castle of Horror”, “Demon!” and “Journey into Nightmare” were nicely produced advert free magazines that I mistook for actual Marvel US black and white titles at the time. Below are some of the Portman magazines that I picked up in 1978/79 to accompany the first issue of "Tales of Terror" (above):

"Tales of Terror" - issue 2 by Earl Norem - originally the cover to "Tales of the Zombie Annual" # 1 - "Tales of Terror" issue 1 (above) was origianlly the cover to "Tales of the Zombie" # 9.

"Tales of Terror" - issue 3 by Boris Vallejo - originally the cover to "Tales of the Zombie" # 1.

"Tales of Terror "- issues 4 by Earl Norem - originally the cover to "Tales of the Zombie" # 10.

"Tales of Terror" - issues 5 by Earl Norem - originally the cover to "Tales of the Zombie" # 7.

"Castle of Horror" issue 1 by Jose Antonio Domingo - originally the cover to "Haunt of Horror" # 3.

"Castle of Horror" issue 3 by Louis Domingues - originally the cover to "Vampire Tales" # 3.

"Castle of Horror" issue 4 by Boris Vallejo - originally the cover to "Monsters Unleashed" # 6 and "Demon!" issue 1 (below) cover by Earl Norem - originally the cover to "Haunt of Horror" # 2.

Marvel UK noticed these titles and understandably felt that they should have exclusive rights to reprint Marvel material in the UK and made an official complaint to the Marvel US licensing department, who had not informed Marvel UK of this deal. This resulted in the deal with Portman being terminated and the cancelation of all their titles: Tales of Terror and Castle of Horror after five issues and Journey into Nightmare and Demon! after three issues. Below is the cover to "Journey into Nightmare" issue 1 by Gray Morrow - originally the cover to "Monsters Unleashed" # 1

Once Portman lost their licensing deal with Marvel they produced a series of magazines reprinting 1950’s horror tales from Stanley (Morse) Publications in titles like Ghoul Tales, Chilling Tales of Terror and Stark Terror. These were truly awful looking magazines with poorly drawn covers and content. Not surprisingly these failed, and by late 1979 Portman ceased publication.

Above cover to "Ghoul Tales" issue 5 from 1979 - Cover taken from internet.