The weird world of Aurora model kits ......and comics - Neal Adams art

Aurora models were probably best known for their popular series of monster model kits featuring the Universal movie monsters Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy, and the Frankenstein Monster. In 1971 Aurora launched their controversial new horror collection, the “Monster Scenes” which was designed as a collection, with torture dungeon accessories so that you could create your own horror scenarios. Of more interest to myself was the fact the kit came with a specially created comic book (cover by Neal Adams above). In addition to the comic book these kits were heavily advertised in the comics and included the comic book style advert below, although I have no idea why Vampirella was included in a Universal movie model kit.

As the years passed I had forgotten all about the Aurora “Monster scenes” kit until a few weeks ago when I was on a holiday visit to Brighton and came across the “The Victim“ model kit and the associated comic book in one of the many antique stores that pepper the city's "Lanes". Sadly I was unable to buy the comic on its own as it came with the “Victim” model kit and was priced (and sold) at an eye watering (to me at least) price of £150. However, the owner very kindly gave me a link to his eBay page where he was selling his kit and had the comic book pages displayed. Disappointingly the comic itself was only 4 pages long (including cover) but these are shown below as they contain the art of the late and legendary Neal Adams:

One of the reasons that these kits can command such a high price is that almost as soon as they went on sale the protests started with the models being accused of corrupting children. The most prominent opposition to these kits came from the National Organisation for Women which lead to the eventual recall of the kits for toy stores throughout North America.

Model kit photo/image taken from the Internet (this wasn't the sellers picture as by the time I got home he had sold his version and taken down the advert)

Favourite Comics: Chamber of Darkness issue 1 - John Buscema & Stan Lee - It's only Magic!

I have to make an admission here, I never owned a copy of “Chamber of Darkness” issue 1 when I was a kid. However, when I came across a copy of this issue last week (on a holiday to Brighton) my memory was immediately sent hurtling back to 1970 when my pal (Alan) loaned me his copy to read. Although the cover (by John Buscema and John Verpoorten) certainly started to trigger my memory of this comic it wasn’t until I flipped through the pages and came across the 4 panels below that I fully recalled that day and the first time I had seen John Buscema’s amazing drawings of the Djinn and my many, many failed attempts to copy them.

Chamber of Darkness was Marvels attempt to compete with DC’s successful mystery line of comics including House of Mystery and House of Secrets. The comic featured the work of some of Marvels top talents including writers Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, and Roy Thomas, and artists John & Sal Buscema, Jack Kirby, Tom Sutton, Don Heck, Barry (Windsor) Smith and Bernie Wrightson. Despite this “Chamber of Darkness” (and it companion title “Tower of Shadow ) had poor sales and soon moved from publishing all new material to featuring mostly reprints from the Atlas back catalogue from the 1950’s and 1960’s. This issue featured work by Kirby,Tom Sutton, Don Heck, Gary Friedrich and Denny O’Neil, but the strip below by Stan Lee and John Buscema was the stand out for me, so much so that it had stayed "hidden" in my memory banks for over 50 years – Enjoy.

Chamber of Darkness ran for 8 Issues from October 1969 to December 1970 (and one all reprint special in 1972).From issue issue 9 the title changed to “Monsters on the Prowl” which finally ended with issue 30 in 1974. A real shame as the new marterial that appeared in "Chamber of Darkness" issue 1-7 were more than a match for DCs mystery titles.

Page Turners: The early monstrous art of Steve Ditko

Before Steve Ditko co-created Spider-Man, Dr Strange etc he worked primarily as a horror, fantasy and monster artist for numerous comic book publishers. But it was his work for Marvel (or Atlas as they were then known) in the 1950's where he really came to the attention of fans and publsihers as a major talent. At Atlas/Marvel he created (mostly with Stan Lee) 100's of fun short "twist in the tail" type stories about Martians,robots, time travellers, monsters and ghosts. By 1959/60 Marvel were producing lots of great monster comics which followed a standard format of a lead tale by Jack Kirby, and couple of tales by artists like Don Heck or Jack Abel and finishing with a Ditko story. It wouldn't be until around 1969 -1971 before I would read these tales via UK reprints (Alan Class comics etc) or in Marvel's US reprint titles("Where Monsters Dwell", "Where Creatures Roam" and many others) and it was always the stories illustrated by Steve Ditko (most written by Stan Lee) that always fascinated me the most. Some of my very favourite Steve Ditko "monster" splash pages are noted below (and above from "Where Creatures Roam" issue 1) - Don't these pages just make you want to read the story?

Fantasy Masterpieces issue 9

Monsters on the Prowl issue 20 - One of my very favourite Ditko pages from this time.I remember being fascinated by the way Ditko drew the the water splashing off the robot.

Fantasy Masterpieces issue 7

Monsters on the Prowl issue 24

Weird Wonder Tales issue 5

Where Creatures Roam issue 3

Where Monsters Dwell issue 37

Weird Wonder Tales issue 5

A picture of the great man himself, perhaps from a time when he was drawing one of the above tales.

True story: The worlds most evil & depraved comic book and the Gorbals Vampire!

The Glasgow Southern Necropolis (picture below) holds a special place in the history of Glasgow, the gravestones are testament to the prolific number of rich merchants, traders , inventors , soldiers and military leaders that once strode the city. However, what may not be known to many is that in 1954 the Necropolis was the scene of a real life vampire hunt made up entirely of children. In late September 1954, talk had begun to permeate the playgrounds across the city that a seven-foot-tall bloodsucking monster with iron teeth was stalking the grounds of the Necropolis, a monster that would soon be written into Scottish history as the ‘Gorbals Vampire’ (The Gorbals being an area of Glasgow). Rumours had even spread that the vampire had brutally killed and eaten two young boys, so the children decided to take it upon themselves to put an end to the monsters reign of terror and on the evening of 23 September 1954 a group of children clutching wooden stakes, knifes and crosses headed for the Necropolis with a sense of vigilante justice that would put Batman to shame.

Of course there was no Vampire to slay and no childrens had been killed, but the story spread throughout the city and was picked up by the local press and was even covered in worldwide news. Worried parents, teachers and religious leaders desperately sought answers as to why their innocent children had come up with such a bizarre story and politicians quickly found an obvious culprit in those “evil and depraved” American horror comics, and specifically a story that appeared in “Dark Mysteries” issue 15 called “The Vampire with the Iron Teeth”. Appalled at the content of these comics it was easy to blame them for warping their children’s young minds and local politicians took their case to the UK Parliament which led in no small way to the 1955 Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act being passed which is still (technically) in force today.

Above the offending issue of "Dark Fantasy" issue 15 and below the lead story page from "The Vampire with the Iron Teeth" - Images taken from internet.

Although this looks a pretty cut and dried case of US horror comics warping Glasgow kids minds and justification for banning 1950’s US horror comics there were other factors involved that could have influenced the children. There was already a local Glasgow legend called ‘Jenny wi’ the Airn (Iron) Teeth’ who was alleged to haunt Glasgow Green in the 1800’s. The Necropolis was also a frequent playground for the local kids and the gothic nature and atmoshpere of the Necropolis could have affected their childhood imaginations, and there were of course social issues of poverty, stress and depravation in this area of Glasgow at this time. These issues would have been more worthy of being taken to Parliament than a complaint about American horror comics. But whatever the reason the story has been woven into the rich tapestry of the city and has spawned books, music, Radio programmes, art, and even a play (the header picture by Frank Quietly is the cover of programme for the play).

Front page of the "Evening New" one of 3 Glasgow evening papers that ran the story of the Gorbals Vampire.

Bring on the back ups - Vampire Tales issue 9 - Blood Lunge - by Russ Heath /Doug Moench

Continuing with the Halloween theme this time I focus on Marvel’s "Vampire Tales" magazine which ran for 11 issues and one annual, over the period 1973 to June 1975. The magazine featured various tales of horror based characters including Morbius, the Living Vampire, Blade the Vampire Slayer, Lilith, Dracula's daughter, and Satana, the Devil's Daughter (an amazing 4 page tale of Satana by Roy Thomas and John Romita Sr is shown here ). But it was a short vampire story by Dough Moench and Russ Heath from Vampire Tales issue 9 (December 1974) that has always stuck out in my memory. A nice tale taken to a different level by the genius of artist Russ Heath.

This story was originally printed in the wrong order in Vampire Tales issue 9 with the second page (above) being published as the fourth story Page. This was rectified when the story was reprinted in the first (and only) Vampire Tales annual in 1975.

Vampire Tales held a special place in my teenage nightmares as it featured a story that genuinely freaked me out. The tale “Where is Gallows Bend…?” written by Don McGregor and illustrated by Tom Sutton from issue 7 featured a few pages where a man is hung , the last page (below) of that story really shocked me when I saw it, but 14 years old me loved it !

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.