Cryptology #7 Preview

FROM THE DEPTHS OF RETRO CREEP CULTURE COMES…

CRYPTOLOGY

No. 7

Dracula TM & © Universal Pictures • The Lost Boys TM & © Warner Bros. • Vampirella TM & © Warren Publishing Tomb of Dracula TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

FEBU-SCARY 2026 $ 10.95

VAMPIRE ISSUE!

VAMPIRE FILMS OF THE 1980s!

Bela Lugosi

the Final curtain KATE BECKINSALE! “HORROR COMICS EXCESS!” “KILLER Bs!”

MARV WOLFMAN INTERVIEW! TOYS FROM THE CRYPT!

Volume 1, Number 7 Febu-scary 2026 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Peter Normanton PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION Pete von Sholly COVER ARTIST Werner Bayer (1975) SPECIAL THANKS Roberto Barreiro • Kate Beckinsale Michael Bonesteel • Daniel Dickholtz Barry Forshaw • Heritage Auctions Steve Kronenberg • Tim Leese David McDonnell • Will Murray Lynn Parks • Ian Spelling • Jack Ulrich Jim Van Hise • Ryan Vandergriff Mark Voger • Neil Vokes Tom Weaver • Marv Wolfman Copyrights: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula (1979) Dracula’s Daughter, Van Helsing TM & © Universal Pictures • House of Wax, Salem’s Lot, The Lost Boys TM & © Warner Bros. • Texaco Star Theater, The Red Skelton Show TM & © NBC Television • Suspense TM & © CBS Television Network • Mother Riley Meets the Vampire TM & © Reknown Pictures • Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla TM & © Realart Pictures • Glen or Glenda TM © Screen Classics • Bride of the Monster TM & © Rolling M. Productions • Miami News TM & © Cox Media Group • The Black Sleep TM & © United Artists • Ed Wood TM & © Touchstone Pictures • Castle Films’ Dracula (1960s) TM & © Castle Films • Creepy, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Vampirella TM & © Warren Publishing • Dracula Mask TM & © Don Post Studios • Dracula (1958), Dracula, Prince of Darkness, The Brides of Dracula TM & © Hammer Film Productions • Underworld, Underworld Evolution TM & © Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lakeshore Entertainment • People’s Edition of Lord Byron’s The Vampyre (1884) TM & © John Dicks • Strange Tales of Mystery & Terror TM & © Clayton Pubs • Challenge of the Unknown, The Beyond, Web of Mystery TM & © Ace Magazines • Eerie, Eerie Comics TM & © Avon • Dracula (1962) TM & © Dell • House of Mystery, House of Secrets, More Fun Comics, Night Force, Unexpected TM & © DC Comics • Amazing Spider-Man, Dracula Lives, Giant-Size Chillers, Marvel Preview, Suspense, Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night TM & © Marvel Comics • Mad, Tales from the Crypt TM & © EC Comics • Adventures into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, Out of the Night TM & © American Comics Group • The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor TM & © Western • Camilla, Dark Blue TM & © British & Colonial Publishing • Journey into Fear TM & © Superior • You’ll Die Laughing TM & © Topps • The Return of Dracula, The Vampire TM & © Gramercy Pictures • Grave of the Vampire TM & © Millenium Productions • Fright Night (Comic) TM & © Now Comics • Lifeforce TM & © Tri-Star Pictures, Easdram, London-Cannon Films • Fright Night (Film) TM & © Columbia Pictures • Near Dark TM & © F/M Near Dark Joint Venture • Nosferatu in Venice. TM & © Scena Film, Reteital • Leaf Spook Cards TM & © Leaf Brands Inc • Dracula (1962), Frankenstein (1962), Wolfman (1962), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1963), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1963), The Phantom of the Opera (1963), The Mummy (1963) Godzilla (1964), King Kong (1964), Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Mare (1966), Monster Scenes, Vampirella (1971) Models TM & © Aurora • Doc Savage Brand of the Werewolf TM & © Bantam Books

SPILLING MY GUTS: Editorial by The Cryptologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS!: Letters to The Cryptologist. . . . . . . . . . . . 3 LUGOSI’S FINAL CURTAIN: How The Dracula Star Wore His Cape Until The Very End. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bela Lugosi may have been getting older, but in his later years he produced a stream of spine-tingling features DRACULA’S DAUGHTER: So Beautiful in Death. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Lambert Hillyer’s film may well have been forgotten but for one strangely provocative moment DEFINITIVE DRACULA: The Hammer Take . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 In 1958, Hammer released their Gothic terror which was to shape the guise of the contemptible Count for more than a decade A CHAT WITH UNDERWORLD’S KATE BECKINSALE: The Death Dealer in conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 After shooting the fourth film in the Underworld franchise Kate took time out to converse with Cryptology VAMPIRE VISAGES: The Undead in Vintage Comics and Pulps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 From Lord Byron to Vampirella and Tomb of Dracula, the bloodcurdling history of the pulp and comic book vampire KILLER B’s: The Vampire, The Return of Dracula and Grave of the Vampire. . . . . . . 40 Regular Cryptology department featuring selected horror and sci-fi B-movies THE DEAD REMEMBER: A Look Back at Now Comics’ Fright Night . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Tom Holland’s homage to the vampire films of years past comes to a new audience courtesy of small publisher Now Comics THE VAMPIRE: Still Undead in the ‘80s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 In 1979 the vampire appeared set to continue its reign of terror, but fell from grace, only to be revived in 1985 MONSTERS I HAVE KNOWN AND PAINTED: The Aurora Monster Kits of the 1960s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 A trip down a darkened memory lane to revisit Aurora’s treasured Universal Monster Kits OPENING THE TOMB: Marv Wolfman ventures once more into the Tomb of Dracula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 The origins and story behind Marvel’s eminent horror monthly from the 1970s HAMMER TIME: Dracula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Regular Cryptology department featuring selected Hammer Studios films HORROR COMICS EXCESS: Caught in the Web of the Vampire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 A catalog of atrocities from the crime and horror comics of the 1950s.

CRYPTOLOGY™ issue 7, February 2026 (ISSN 2997-416X) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals Postage Paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Cryptology, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.

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LUGOSI’S FINAL

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CURTAIN

Dracula star wore his cape until the end

by Mark Voger

“P

oor Bela” was a phrase you would hear or read in regard to Bela Lugosi.

His on-screen rival Boris Karloff once used it. It referred to the declining fortunes of the great star of Dracula (1931), whose film career sank to the depths of Monogram, PRC and Ed Wood, and who voluntarily checked himself into a hospital for treatment of drug addiction. This was considered shocking and humiliating in 1955. Today, it would be called heroic. In seeking help—negative publicity be damned—Lugosi was ahead of his time.

The actor’s filmography in his final decade has also proven to be a magnet for judgment. It has been called sparse and spotty. But this, too, is up for debate. Lugosi’s return to the role of Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) was nothing less than a triumph. His work in two oddball comedies that playfully exploited his legacy—Mother Riley Meets the Vampire and Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (both 1952)—put the actor’s immaculate comic timing on display. His TV work evinced a pro who was in there pitching, trying to keep up with the times even as his looks and health were fading.

As for Lugosi’s “serious” horror movies of the period, there were but two. He was a glorified extra in his final film, the all-star (albeit, old-hat) horror flick The Black Sleep (1956). But in Wood’s Bride of the Monster (1955), as inept and laughable as the film is at times, Lugosi is positively galvanized.

He’s past his prime, certainly, but giving everything he has left.

FAR FROM HOME

Lugosi (1882–1956) was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in the city of Lugos in Hungary (now part of Romania). He left home at 12 and worked mines and railroads while pursuing his dream to become an actor. At age 20, Lugosi made his stage debut in Budapest, before going on to play roles as varied as Romeo and Jesus. During World War I, he joined

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Yet when Universal Pictures acquired the property, the studio made overtures to Veidt, Lon Chaney Sr. and several other actors, but not Lugosi. Following Chaney’s death from throat cancer in 1930, Lugosi campaigned for the role and prevailed. The unknown (in America, at least) actor starred in Tod Browning’s film, Universal’s highest grosser that year.

“I am Dracula,” was his first line in the film. The actor couldn’t have known how prophetic those three little words were. For the rest of his film career, Lugosi regularly played “the bogeyman”—fiends, mad scientists or vampires, often in his Dracula drag: Slicked-back hair, long black cape, red lips. Among Lugosi’s best remembered horror roles are Dr. Mirakle in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Murder Legendre in White Zombie (1932), Vitus Werdegast in The Black Cat (1934), Count Mora in Mark of the Vampire (1935), and Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939). Lugosi was also, it cannot be denied, in a lot of dreck. He made nine movies for low-rent Monogram Pictures, which Lugosi-philes affectionately call “the Monogram Nine.” Some shoddy films from this period: The Devil Bat (1940), Bowery at Midnight (1942), The Corpse Vanishes (1942), The Ape Man (1943), Voodoo Man (1944)... I could go on.

Lugosi took the role of the Frankenstein monster, neck bolts and all, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). It has often been called another milestone in his downward slide, since he famously turned down the role back in 1931 owing to the heavy makeup and dearth of dialogue.

UNIVERSAL COMEBACK

Bela Lugosi in his career-defining role in Dracula (1931). © Universal Pictures

the Austro-Hungarian Army, but was wounded on at least two occasions, resulting in his discharge. Lugosi starred in his first movie, Leoni Leo (1917), but his days in his home country were numbered. Following the war, Lugosi joined a revolutionary movement which was thwarted, necessitating his flight from Hungary. (“I found myself on the wrong side,” he told an interviewer in 1931.)

In Berlin, Lugosi was cast in a precursor to his career in horror: Der Januskopf (1920), a Jekyll and Hyde adaptation starring Conrad Veidt and directed by FW Murnau. (This was two years before Murnau made the Dracula harbinger Nosferatu.)

Landing in New York in 1921, Lugosi won political asylum and forged a stage career, learning his earliest English-language roles phonetically. (He became a naturalized US citizen in 1931.)

In 1927, Lugosi landed the part that would define his career: the title bloodsucker in the Broadway debut of Dracula. (A stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel previously played in England.) Lugosi got raves for his unique portrayal, which was the first to imbue Dracula with sexual magnetism.

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Lugosi was hungry for work at the time UniversalInternational was casting Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. But pride in his legacy as Dracula was a stronger factor behind his campaign to reprise the Count in the horror comedy. History repeated itself: Universal didn’t want him at first, but Lugosi won, and nailed, his signature role in the film directed by Charles Barton.

Though the makeup team led by Bud Westmore laid it on thick—pure white face powder, darkened lips, jetblack hair—Lugosi looked magnificent as Dracula. Plus, he was in good company alongside Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man and Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein monster (called “Franky” by Lou Costello). The script wisely played the monsters straight, leaving the comedy to Bud Abbott and Costello.

Lugosi’s son, Bela Lugosi Jr. (born 1938), visited the A&CMF set wearing his military school uniform.

“The principal actors treated me very nicely,” he told me in 1993. “I had my picture taken with all of them. On the set, I was surprised to see that they had actually hired comedians to walk around and crack jokes and cut up. Because the set was so dark and somber, they had to keep everyone’s spirits up. So they would joke around.” Added Bela Jr. with a laugh: “They even tried to joke around with my dad.”

Did he laugh because his father was such a serious person?

“No, he had a good sense of humor,” Bela Jr. came back. “But he had a lot of respect on the set, too. So it was sort of like teasing the king, you know? But he was a good sport about things.

by Roberto Barreiro

B

y the mid-1930s it could be said Universal Pictures was on the verge of very serious trouble, with the studio facing worrying financial difficulties. Around the mid-1920s they had enjoyed a couple of notable hits, but as the end of the decade beckoned, the bank balance was beginning to run low.

Then in 1931, when it appeared they were teetering on the edge, the company released a film adaptation of the most famous horror novel of the day, Dracula. Directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi, this feature would become a landmark in cinematic history. It wasn’t long before Universal followed with Frankenstein, which also proved to be an incredible success.

Now with a winning formula on their hands, they released a succession of reasonably successful horror movies through 1935. It was then Universal learned to their cost, the goose that had only recently laid the golden egg was starting to run dry.

One of its big movies for that year, The Raven, directed by Lew

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Landers, was censored by the British government, which had banned the screening of any kind of horror movie for a two-year period. With a market as large as Britain closed to its monster movies, the studio had to put its vampire brethren on hold; if only for a short while. Burdened by ever-mounting debts, Universal returned to the idea of producing a sequel to the film that just a few years before had been their savior, Dracula.

The idea for this follow-up had been in development since 1932. To get the wheels in motion, the studio had called upon John Balderston, Dracula’s screenwriter, with a view to him creating a sequel based on Dracula’s Guest, a Bram Stoker story published a couple of years after his death. Some consider this short story to have been a draft for a chapter from the novel Dracula, one Stoker later withdrew, while others are equally forthright in their view it was always intended as a narration in its own right.

Unfortunately, Balderston’s script failed to convince the executives. They didn’t like it for two reasons. First, it contained

Defnitive Dracula THE

TAKE

by Barry Forshaw

W

hich actor—and which studio— produced the most memorable filmic take on Bram Stoker’s immortal (in every sense) Dracula? The 1931 Hollywood film version of Dracula (directed by Todd Browning and starring, of course, the largerthan-life Bela Lugosi), has a residue of what is left of the original novel, and the Hungarian on the vampire count is certainly distinctive, although highly theatrical line readings do not wear well in the 21stcentury. It is the superior UK-made version made several decades later (with Christopher Lee as a notably more sophisticated—and sexually attractive—Dracula) which now demands attention—along with several (although not all) of its successors from the same company. As an aside, it should be noted that a few bars of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake under the title (as inappropriately

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utilized by Universal in its inaugural version) now seem a curious choice, compared to the grinding dissonances of James Bernard’s brass-based score for Hammer that heralded the appearance of Lee’s vampire count.

The Gothic elements of the opening scenes set in the Carpathian Mountains suggest that an element of justice might be done to Stoker’s original, not to mention the production design of Dracula’s splendidly dilapidated castle (with its wandering armadillos), but the more prosaic orientation of the London scenes are deadeningly redolent of the proscenium arch of the play from which the film is adapted. Ironically, the constraints of the Bray studio locales for the later Dracula are used far more creatively, even though budgetary restrictions meant that Lee’s Count never reaches London.

The key problem for modern audiences, inevitably, is

for the same—and a displacement, what’s more, which has a concomitant libidinous charge more insidious than any more conventional sexual presentation would be. Certainly, the actor who played the part claims to have been unaware in advance of the erotic effect his playing of the character would have, and has since insisted that he was greatly surprised at the matinee idol-type following his bloodsucking monster swiftly acquired.

Curiously, the censorship problems that plagued British horror films during their heyday (in the late 1950s and 1960s) were commonly directed at their more sanguinary aspects, although various censors were customarily disturbed by The introductory image of Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, suggests a man of culture; however, in the what they perceived as an alarming above shot, his inherent malevolence is plain to see. TM & © Hammer Film Productions association between sex and violence.

Bela Lugosi’s eye-rolling, outrageously camp Dracula. The actor, John Trevelyan of the British Board of Film Censors (with while undoubtedly charismatic, betrays his phonetic learning whom Hammer was to have many battles, both amicable and of the lines (the Hungarian Lugosi’s English was never secure, acrimonious) was worried by this particular conjunction, but even at the end of his career) by some truly bizarre emphases not as much as one of Trevelyan’s successors, James Ferman, and articulations which are more likely to prompt mirth today who decided that “blood on breasts” (needless to say, a standard than shudders of dread. What’s more, the latent eroticism of image in Hammer films) was a trigger for rapists, and Ferman the count’s nocturnal activities is left largely inert and may routinely attempted to excise such images. But the more deepreally only be read in the gaps in which the count is presented. seated eroticism of the earlier Hammer films (such as Dracula) This first film Dracula (leaving aside the unauthorized version appeared to go over the heads of—or at least be (tacitly?)

Nosferatu) is, these days, more of a fascinating curio than a ignored by—the censors. The erotic submission to the vampire fully realized piece of Gothic cinema—that phenomenon was to count by his female victims in their various states of undress arrive with a more distinguished film made in 1958. was self-evident, such as Melissa Stribling’s clearly sexual In many ways, Terence Fisher’s film of Dracula (from an surrender in Fisher’s film, an image foregrounded in the posters. economical screenplay by Jimmy Sangster) is not only one of Inevitably, of course, the clearly expressed sadomasochism the most perfectly constructed films made by the studio, it is and dominance/submission of the relationships between also an encapsulation of just how these filmmakers conflated the various elements to make their cinematic invention function so well. The way in which the frustration of these budgetary constraints occasioned a level of inspiration in Fisher and his colleagues, not only concealed the paucity of their resources, but also made a positive virtue of such penny-pinching.

Blood and sex

But just how well did the filmmakers understand the real implications of the Hammer version of Dracula, in which the vampiric count is no longer presented as the distinctly monstrous creature of the Browning Bela Lugosi version, but (in Christopher Lee’s mesmeric interpretation) as an elegant, dangerously attractive and cultivated figure with immense erotic appeal? However little his character is inclined to (or, for that matter, able to— who knows?) indulge in familiar sexual activity, it’s rather a displaced metaphor

The British Quad for Dracula, a.k.a. Horror of Dracula (1958), wasn’t entirely subtle in its allusion to the film’s underlying eroticism. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

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A BRIEF CHAT with

UNDERWORLD’s KATE BECKINSALE

by Lynn Parks

T

he daughter of eminent British television stars Richard Beckinsale and Judy Loe, Kate Beckinsale is one of the most beautiful action heroines on the horror scene. She starred in such genre movies as Haunted (based on the James Herbert novel), Van Helsing, Whiteout, Total Recall (2012), and Click. But she’s best known for dressing up in a black leather catsuit in the role of Selene, the Death Dealer in the cult Underworld film saga (Underworld, Underworld: Evolution, Underworld: Awakening, and 2016’s Underworld: Blood Wars). Shortly after making Blood Wars, she chatted about her recent combat experience.

Lynn: What is it about your journey in this film that really jumped out at you and said that this Underworld was worth bringing to theaters?

Kate: I love the stuff that goes on. There’s a lot for the character in this movie. She has stuff happen to her that hasn’t happened before and, you know, we have a lot of new cast. It feels like a

very different universe and world this time.

This is the fourth film where you’re playing Selene. How do you envision Selene’s story eventually ending?

I don’t know! I envisioned it coming to an end after the first one.

I never really planned on doing four movies playing the same character. And it’s an amazing privilege because there aren’t that many girls that get the opportunity to be in a long-running franchise, especially an original story. I’m very happy about that but it’s not something that was always out of my comfort zone.

Do you think this is the last Underworld, or if you got another good script, would you be interested in returning for more?

No idea. Can’t possibly answer [laughs]. I’ve always said “Not” but I think I’ve cried wolf a few too many times to properly answer that question.

It’s a female-led franchise, but now you finally have a female

Even close-up in the shadows, she’s strikingly beautiful. And extremely dangerous. TM & © Sony Pictures Entertainment

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VAMPIRE VISAGES

IN VINTAGE COMICS & PULPS

by Michael Bonesteel

T

he same ghost story competition that gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) also produced Lord Byron’s “Fragment of Novel” (1819)— an unfinished vampire tale. After Byron dismissed the yarn as being unworthy of further attention, his physician John Polidori took it up as the basis for his novel The Vampyre (1819), which was at first erroneously published under Byron’s authorship, then later attributed to Polidori. His titular

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character, Lord Ruthven (pronounced “Rivven”) of Scotland, bore an uncanny resemblance to the darkly alluring, moody, and philandering Byron himself. Thus, the modern myth of the vampire was cast in the guise of a cultured gentleman: Elegant, charismatic, seductive, and deadly—but as yet not quite undead.

From 1845 to 1847, lurid British “penny blood” publisher Edward Lloyd printed an enormously popular 220-chapter saga titled Varney the Vampire or the Feast of Blood by Malcolm

Above, the People’s Edition of Lord Byron’s The Vampyre (1884) TM & © John Dicks. Strange Tales of Mystery & Terror V3 #1 (Jan. 1933) TM & © Clayton Pubs and Weird Tales (June 1936) TM & © Weird Tales Inc. Across the page, Frank Frazetta’s cover painting for Creepy #7 (Feb. 1966) TM & © Warren Pubs.

Rymer & Thomas Peckett Prest, which introduced a different sort of entity—the vampire as bestial fiend. Here we have an animalistic and even corpse-like depiction of the vampire that is more inhuman than human, more ghoul than refined lord. This primitive creature recalls the earlier shape-shifting vampire/ werewolf legends of Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman folklore which may have been based upon derogatory perceptions of shamanic practitioners worldwide who—psychically if not physically—transformed themselves into totemic spirit animals such as wolves and bats.

Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu created the first significant female vampire in his 1872 novella Carmilla. A quarter century later, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) combined the qualities observed in Ruthven and Varney into a complex hybrid—a diabolical monster camouflaged within a beguiling Byronic exterior. Stoker further fleshed out the female vampire archetype with his personification of Dracula’s brides.

Having set the backdrop for this sojourn with the undead, come with us now, as we take a deep dive into the vampire’s rich lineage to see it evolve through pulp magazine illustrations and the artwork of the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages of comic books.

The Byronic Vampire

In The Vampyre, Polidori described Lord Ruthven’s face as having a “dead grey eye” and a “deadly hue.” And yet “its form and outline were beautiful” and “caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him.” There is no mention of pointed teeth or sharp canines. And although at this stage he has not acquired many of the vampiric trappings that would later be associated

with him, he does feed on the blood of women, possess some superhuman powers, and may reanimate himself any number of times. Subsequent retellings by other 19th century authors and playwrights added more lore to Ruthven’s story, including the ability to disappear and reappear, sprout wings and fly, as well as engendering new female vampires.

Early 19th century depictions of Ruthven portray him in traditional attire, from Scottish kilts to evening clothes. The most accurate portrait might be that of Lord Byron himself, since Polidori patterned Ruthven after the dashing young poet. Curiously, the vampire that most resembled Ruthven in the 20th century was Bela Lugosi’s characterization derived from Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston’s 1927 theatrical production of Dracula, which Lugosi reprised in Tod Browning’s groundbreaking 1931 movie. According to scholar Michael McGlasson, Lugosi’s cleaned-up and defanged Drac was a makeover of the silent film’s bestial vampires like Max Schreck in Nosferatu (1922) and Lon Chaney in London After Midnight (1927). Lugosi’s revamped vampire was closer to Polidori’s Lord Ruthven than Stoker’s conception of Dracula, not to mention Rhymer/Prest’s Varney.

Pulp fiction magazines such as Weird Tales and Strange Tales often showcased the Byronic vampire. HW Wesso’s cover painting for Hugh B. Cave’s “Murgunstrumm” in Strange Tales for January 1933 spotlights two greentinged pasty-faced vampires in tuxedos.

A painted cover by Margaret Brundage portraying Thorp McClusky’s “Loot of the Vampire” for Weird Tales (June 1936) pictures a fetching blonde in the clutches of another well-dressed and distinguished-looking blood sucker. In Virgil Finlay readied the vampire to bear its fangs in Weird Tales for July 1936. TM & © Weird Tales Inc. an uncredited Virgil Finlay interior line

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teeth and claws. Fawcette’s very different rendition of him in the opening interior splash panel, however, is serious, somber, and older. He’s scowling with just a hint of hungry fangs, and hovering with several bats—perhaps his three wives—over Jonathan Harker’s stagecoach arriving at Castle Dracula.

Almost a decade later Max Elkan’s refined figure fronting Dell Comics’ Dracula (Oct.-Dec. 1962) bears the hallmarks of a digest paperback cover. It too features two discreet fangs against the interior blackness between Dracula’s parted lips as he stares lustily at the comatose lady in his arms.

Both Alascia’s and Elkan’s Byronic vampires are transitioning into Stoker’s hybrid combo, although both are a little coy about it. After issuing that single issue in 1962, Dell did not return to the series until 1966, at which point Drac was reconceived as a ludicrous The archetypal vampire arises on Warren Kremer’s cover for The Beyond #2 (Jan. 1951) TM & © Ace Silver Age superhero wearing a navy blue Magazines. Eerie #12’s moody Dracula cover (Aug. 1951) TM & © Avon. unitard. Because Dell felt itself to be its own drawing, the stippling is so dense and the reproduction quality impeccable judge and jury, it never adhered so murky, it is difficult to discern any noticeable sharp teeth. to the Comics Code. Thus Dell and an offshoot company, The only indication of something Gold Key, felt entitled to issue horror comics in the 1960s like horrifically amiss occurs in Part Dracula, Frankenstein, Dark 2 of that series (Weird Tales, July Shadows, Boris Karloff Tales of 1936) which discloses a skull in Mystery, and Twilight Zone— the vampire’s mirror reflection. years before the Code relaxed The staid Byronic vampire in 1971. remained in evidence throughout By virtue of its publications the comics of the early 1950s, being in a magazine format, despite the conspicuous excesses Warren Publishing also of pre-Comics Code Authority dodged the Code. It entered horror titles. Warren Kremer’s the space age by featuring artistry on the cover of The vampires on or from other Beyond #2 (Jan. 1951) features planets. Vampirella hailed from a pale and baleful vampire with the planet Draculon, rarely ever an extreme widow’s peak rising divulging her canines (more out of coffin. He’s dressed in a about Vampi coming up) while stage magician’s dapper blue suit Gray Morrow’s ink-washed and red cape. While the Stan vampire Remick in “Blood of Lee scripted “Burton’s Blood!”

Krylon!” scripted by Archie reveals a vampire who survives Goodwin (Creepy #7, 1966) was an atomic war for Menace an amiable Byronic daemon #2 (April 1953), Bill Everett’s with a fangless grin who prescient pencils and inks lent emigrated to fresh worlds when Burton an odd similarity to human blood on Earth became the future WOR-TV horror scarce. movie host Zacherley of the late 1950s.

The Bestial Vampire Gene Fawcette’s boyishly Malcolm Rymer and Thomas handsome Dracula, possibly Peckett Prest provided the inked by Vince Alascia for following details regarding Sir the cover of Eerie #12 (Aug. Francis Varney’s appearance in 1953), bares his elongated the mid-19th century. He was canines in such an affable “tall and gaunt,” and his face Max Elkan’s exquisitely rend smile that his Byronic assets high ered cover for Dell’s Dracula was “perfectly white—perfectly (Oct.-Dec. 1962) lights both the allure and the terror of the vampire count. tend to outweigh his sharp bloodless.

The eyes look like TM & © Dell.

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KILLER B’s

by Steve Kronenberg

The Vampire (1957) The Return of Dracula (1958) Grave of the Vampire (1972)

A

vampire who draws his bloodlust from Big Pharma. Another who settles in sunny, small-town California. Still another who teaches a college night class in occult arts. All three fanged fiends stray long and far from the fog-strewn forests of Transylvania.

Filmmakers Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy, and Arthur Gardner met in 1943 while making training films for the Army Air Force. After their discharge in 1945, they decided to venture into feature films with their own independent production company. Levy-GardnerLaven Productions (LGL) was formed in 1951, cranking out low-budget noirs like Without Warning (1952), Vice Squad (1953), and Down Three Dark Streets (1954). UCLA Theater Arts graduate Pat Fielder, a lifelong horror fan, began working for the group as a production

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assistant and convinced them to let her script some scare-fests for the burgeoning monster movie market. Her first two efforts for LGL were the monstrous mollusks of The Monster That Challenged the World, double-featured with the highly unusual The Vampire (both 1957).

Directed by former Universal Studios editor Paul Landres, The Vampire stars veteran stage and screen actor John Beal as Paul Beecher, a kindly and popular small-town doctor who lives with his devoted preteen daughter Betsy (Lydia Reed). He’s asked to investigate the death of a Carol (Coleen Gray) at the mercy of Dr. Paul Beecher (John Beal), colleague whose research now transformed into a deranged killer. TM & © Gramercy Pictures. into “primitive instincts” resulted in a pill made but when he asks Betsy to hand him his from the blood of vampire bats. Beecher migraine medicine, she accidentally gives pockets a bottle of the pills for analysis, him the wrong bottle. Those toxic tablets turn Beecher into a ravening monster whose deadly bite carries a disease that kills his victims and slowly dissolves their corpses. The pills are also addictive: Beecher desperately needs them to remain human and hide his Hyde-like alter ego. His secret is ultimately revealed to both his comely nurse (Coleen Gray) and the local sheriff (Kenneth Tobey).

Landres’ direction keeps things moving while maintaining a constant state of suspense. The Vampire clocks in at a brisk 75 minutes and none of it is wasted. The tension builds largely due to Landres’ deliberate pacing and Beal’s understated performance, endowed with a mounting sense of dread and horror as he slowly discovers what he’s become and his inability to control it.

It’s a finely-honed, modulated portrayal.

Reminiscent of the phalanx of actors who assayed cinema’s Jekyll-Hyde adaptations, Beal also conveys both pathos and

“The Dead Remember” Looking Back on the Strange History of Director Tom Holland’s “Fright Night” in NOW Comics I t r a P

By Ryan Vandergriff

IN THE BEGINNING

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n August 2, 1985, Columbia Pictures unleashed upon an unsuspecting moviegoing populace a most unusual horror film called Fright Night. Part love letter to the old Hammer vampire movies with an equal dose of humor thrown in for good measure, Fright Night was director Tom Holland’s ode not only to the stakes and crucifix genre,

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but also an affectionate tip of the hat to the Alfred Hitchcock directed Rear Window based upon Cornell Woolrich’s short story “It Had to Be Murder.” Audiences turned out in droves to check out the story of a teenage boy named Charley Brewster (a charming and impossibly young William Ragsdale) whose new next-door neighbor Jerry Dandrige (Oscar-nominated Chris Sarandon) just happens to be a vampire. Faster than you can say “Christopher Lee,” Charley enlists the aid of an on-the-way-out

television horror movie host and faded big screen horror movie icon Peter Vincent (deftly and heartbreakingly essayed by an on-point Roddy McDowall) to do away with this bloodsucker who threatens not only his best friend (a scene-stealing Stephen Geoffreys), but also his best girl (Amanda Bearse of Married...

With Children fame) and the entire blessed metropolitan area.

It’s tough being a teenager, isn’t it?

Fright Night was a box-office hit when it landed at mall multiplexes in the summer of ’85, and it wasn’t too long before the drumbeat for a sequel began to emerge. The two principal leads from the original film—Ragsdale and McDowall—quickly enlisted for its 1988 New Century/Vista Tommy Lee Wallacehelmed follow-up, Fright Night Part II. With Columbia—as well as original writer and director Tom Holland and several key cast members from the first film—now out of the picture, publicity and getting the word out about the upcoming sequel was critical.

Enter NOW Comics, a little upstart comic book publisher run

by Tony Caputo out of Chicago, Illinois and the soon-to-be home of the Fright Night Universe. Caputo and Co. wanted to add an ongoing monthly featuring the characters from the first film in continuing adventures, reasoning not irrationally that the release of the sequel would shine even more light on the fledgling title and their up-and-coming company. The mensches over at New Century/Vista obviously saw some merit in such cross-pollination between film and comics, and quicker than you could utter the words “Back, spawn of Satan!” a license had been secured: NOW Comics was officially in the Fright Night business.

In the February 1988 edition of the in-house trade fanzine NOW Comics News (Volume Two, Issue Three for all you completists), aficionados of Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent were greeted with the thunderous front-and-center headline “NOW TO PUBLISH “FRIGHT NIGHT” MONTHLY COMIC!”

“NOW will produce the regular monthly adventures of Peter Vincent and Charley Brewster, the Vampire Killers of the ’90s,” an obviously forward-thinking and enthusiastic Tony Caputo announced to readers of NOW Comics. “The movie has mystery, adventure, humor, and wonderful special effects. After reading the script for the sequel, there is no doubt that Fright Night II will be even more successful.”

In that same article, Caputo ticked off the qualities of the comic series which were set to align with those of Holland’s film: Intrigue, action, “and wonderful special effects.”

“The book will have the same feel as the movies,” revealed the Big Wheel of NOW. “Suspenseful, with a touch of humor. It’s a book that will appeal to many people, not just comic collectors.”

Pressed for specifics by his in-house reporter, Caputo revealed that he had read the script for the forthcoming Fright Night Part II, proclaiming it to be a film that would surpass the original at the all-important box-office.

That bit of hopeful yet murky prognostication to the side, avid fans of Fright Night were given their first real hints as to specifics about the upcoming ongoing comic book. For instance, it was revealed that the adaptation of the first film was slotted in for a one-shot prestige format comic, separate from the main series itself with the series proper kicking off with an adaptation of Fright Night Part II. That done-in-one of the original film would ship on July 15, 1988, with plans calling for a wraparound cover from artist Tony Akins of NOW Comics Rust fame. The regular monthly title would emerge from its coffin the following month. There was method to Caputo’s creative madness, at least in theory: “We’re releasing the adaptation of the original movie to coincide with the release of the sequel in July,” explained Caputo to NOW Comics News.

In anticipation of the upcoming series, NOW began launching a one-page ad in many of its current comics (Caputo by this time had a healthy stable of books all jockeying for public attention from his fledgling company, including the likes of Speed Racer, Racer-X, Ralph Snart Adventures, Astro Boy, The Terminator, and The Real Ghostbusters). The ad was as simple as it was effective: Against a pitch-black background, the image of a set of serious vampiric choppers menacingly invited readers to “Have a nice day.”

Underneath that imposing illustration was the legend “FRIGHT NIGHT: THE MOVIE. THE SEQUEL. THE REGULAR MONTHLY COMIC,” followed by the promise of “THIS SUMMER.” So much for the best laid plans of mice, men and Cover-dated October 1988, the Fright Night comic book debuted, providing a worthy adaptation of Tom Holland’s wellcomic book publishers: remembered film from 1985. Relative newcomers Lenin Delsol and Jeff Dee provided the artwork. TM & © Now Comics.

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The Vampire

Still Undead in the 1980s

by Peter Normanton

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or the vampire brethren, cinema at the beginning of the 1970s picked up where the ’60s had left off, with a succession of leathern winged chillers. Horror was definitely en vogue, but with so much competition and the withdrawal of their American financial backers, the most celebrated of these fearsome film producers, Hammer Film Productions, observed a downturn in their fortunes, and with them, so faded the vampire from the big screen. Thankfully, it wasn’t quite the end for this heinous band of bloodsuckers.

George A. Romero’s unique take on the vampire, Martin, had plenty of people talking upon its release in 1977, with Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, John Badham’s romantic horror Dracula, and of course Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot, all vying for the horror buff ’s attention during 1979, keeping the undead very much alive. Alas, for all their efforts it appeared the vampire was about to be laid to rest, for with the dawn of a new decade, the grisly slasher was now ascendant.

Given the quality in each of these presentations, the vampire breed should have been readied to continue in its terrorizing of theaters across the globe, but it has been argued Love at First Bite, also from 1979, had driven a stake deep into the once pulsing heart of the genre. Its jocular shenanigans certainly

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didn’t amuse those who held the vampire close to their hearts.

Consequently, for the next few years the vampire remained dormant, lost in the ice-cold embrace of its velvet lined coffin.

It wasn’t until 1983 the seals on these caskets were once again pried open. This unholy event may well have passed unnoticed, for many of the commentators of the day chose to overlook Tony Scott’s stylish directorial debut The Hunger (1983), preferring to beat the drum in praise of his subsequent box office hits, among them Top Gun (1986), Beverley Hills Cop (1987), and Enemy of the State (1998). If I’m being frank, The Hunger wasn’t about to put the vampire film back on the map, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Northumberland born Tony, the brother of Ridley Scott, unwittingly created a film set to become a cult favorite, one that was to make even the most ardent disciples of vampire lore rethink their desire to consort with this age old pestilence.

Bloodthirsty Curiosity

While John Badham’s Dracula (1979) had romanticized their deathly charm, Tony ventured a little further in eliciting the eroticism suggested in so many of Hammer’s encounters with these long dead creatures. This bloodthirsty curiosity would attract

MONSTERS I HAVE KNOWN AND PAINTED

by Will Murray

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lot of toys press my nostalgic hot buttons, but none hit the sweet spot better than Aurora’s monster model kits of the early 1960s.

You remember them. They came in long thin cardboard boxes with moody box art. Inside, the mono-colored pieces lay waiting to be trimmed, sanded, glued and painted with Testor’s enamel paint. Or if you were like impatient me, hastily glued together and painted.

Trimming occurred after the fact.

Sanding, never.

The kits cost a whole buck, with a penny change. Today, that’s nothing.

Back then, it constituted a whole week’s allowance. Not something a ten yearold spent lightly.

Aurora’s classic kits were a product of the television revival of the Universal monster films in the late ’50s. They kicked off a wave of Monstermania that

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ran from the debut of Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958 to the tail end of the 1960s. My introduction to this stuff was through a local TV program called Creature Feature, hosted by a tiny squeaky-voiced spaceman puppet called Feep, who was basically a sock puppet with a light-bulb head.

Lumbering Monster

The first kit the Aurora Plastics Company produced was the most famous and probably most popular of all time, Frankenstein. It was also the simplest kit. Frankie walking on his own grave. No frills. No creepy pets.

Just a lumbering version of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein monster, striding away from a headstone on which was chiseled: Frankenstein. It sold like crazy when it was released early in 1962.

I don’t honestly remember the first

The Leaf Spook Cards, originally released in 1961 would, for many, be the gateway to the spine-tingling world of Universal horror. TM & © Leaf Brands Inc.

time I laid eyes on an Aurora monster kit, but it was probably in 1962. I do know it was in a dingy mom-and-pop 5-cent store called Burrell’s in my native Boston. It was run by an aging couple. At one side, you could buy anything from can openers to foundation garments. I walked past all that ordinary adult stuff to the glass case in the back where you could pick out penny candies or buy gum cards. I remember the first gum cards I bought there in 1961, Leaf Brands’ Spook Theatre, also known as Spook Talk. They featured Universal monster stills with humorous captions and ghostly—some would say ghastly—gags printed on the back. I bought them with every spare nickel I could dredge up, but never managed to capture every card.

You might say the Leaf monster gum cards were the gateway addiction that led to all the rest. For in the back corner of Burrell’s, strategically placed near the candy case, was the toy department. Cheap toys, mostly. Tin junk made in Japan—a sure sign of low quality back then—and some better made toys that were overpriced by comparison with the big department stores.

Nestled among this array were the model kits. Cars. Planes. Warships.

None of that stuff appealed to my youthful imagination. It was the monsters who called to me. After all, thanks to those gum cards and Creature Feature, we had already been introduced.

Sibling Rivalry

If I had been an only child, it would have been so simple.

But I had a younger brother Dan who also loved monsters. He beat me to the Frankenstein kit. I could have killed him, because we shared a bedroom. Once he had that critter assembled and painted and displayed on the old walnut desk we shared, it was

forever off-limits to me, purchase-wise.

Don’t think some family rule commanded me not to buy a Frankenstein model of my very own. It didn’t work that way. Danny beat me to it, fair and square. I could not match him with another Frankenstein, painted my way. No, I had to best him to the next monster, if not trump him with a better monster. This was an unspoken rule between brothers. The same one that stipulated he could not buy any comic book I collected. He could read mine, sure. But two copies of The Incredible Hulk #4 were not allowed under the same roof.

As it happened, Aurora started cranking out monster kits at a rate of two or three a year. Pretty fast for a humble plastics company that also produced cars and aircraft. But too slow for us. So I grabbed the Dracula kit the next time I had a spare buck and no new comic books to buy.

Released in 1962, Aurora’s Frankenstein would mark the first of these monster kits.

TM & © Aurora.

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OPENING the TOMB

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MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN & TOM PALMER VENTURE INTO HORRORS WITH DRACULA

by Daniel Dickholtz

remorseless attack on humanity. And behind them? There lurked Stan Lee and the spectacular Spider-Man. Since its inception in the 1950s, the Comics Code Authority ruled on what publishers could feature in their own titles. In addition to all manner of what they saw as depravity, they also forbade the depiction of pure supernatural terrors, which meant that while kaiju-like creatures could crush whole cities, nosferatu, werewolves, zombies and other abominations could not appear, much less take even a drop of blood. But following Stan Lee’s decision to publish Amazing Spider-Man #96-98, which contained an anti-drug use storyline, without their okay, the Authority’s grip on the industry loosened on the use of a number of taboo subjects, including occult occurrences.

The Vampire Returns

While horror was finding a new place on bookshelves and movie theaters with the likes of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, Marvel began raising up things they dared not touch before. In Amazing Spider-Man #101, Morbius, a scientist who foolishly experimented on himself, became a living vampire. Man-Thing appeared just once in May 1971 in Savage Tales and then wouldn’t be seen again for over a year. Werewolf by Night debuted in the tryout book Marvel Spotlight in February 1972, but Tomb of Dracula launched as its own title just two months later.

Colan was determined to be involved almost from the

Across the page: Neal Adams’ cover for Tomb of Dracula #1 (April 1972).

Above, Clifton Graves discovers Dracula’s coffin. TM & © Marvel Comics.

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rank Drake was not alone that bleak night in 1972 when he chose to claim his inheritance: a vast, crumbling, European edifice shrouded in pitch darkness. Glimpses of it appeared only when lightning would tear gashes in the thick storm clouds. At that time, it was home only to legends, not to mention hungry bats, furtive spiders, and other, lower creatures. Or so he thought. With him was his girl friend Jeannie and his pal Clifton, neither of whom would stand by Frank for long. Clifton had found a cloaked skeleton with a wooden stake driven through its rib cage. He removed that stake, and in so doing destroyed his life and Jeannie’s. For he had foolishly unleashed a centuries-old evil upon the world, and committed his friend Frank to a life of relentless horror, as he would every month thereafter try to end a monstrosity from his own family’s past. They had disturbed the Tomb of Dracula.

No, Frank was not alone then. Aside from Clifton and Jeannie, there were others there that night. Writer Gerry Conway, plotter Roy Thomas, and artist Gene Colan were present, documenting the Lord of Vampires’ return, and recording the resumption of his

Not for the first time, Gil Kane and Tom Palmer set Blade loose—a modern day vampire slayer in Tomb of Dracula #30. TM & © Marvel Comics.

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HORROR COMICS EXCESS

by Peter Normanton

CAUGHT in THE WEB of the VAMPIRE M ore often than not, those wellmeaning parents who scrutinized junior’s comic book reading, would have turned a blind eye to much of Ace’s portfolio of terror. Even among modern day collectors, their comics have never been considered the most horrific from that macabre phase of comic book publishing. As innocuous as they may have seemed, Ace weren’t to escape the defamatory comments of Dr. Fredric Wertham in his damning tome Seduction of the Innocent, where he cited the extreme degree of violence in one particular story the company had only recently cooked up, The Beyond

#27’s “Strange Potion of Dr. Lorch”(July 1954). In their defense, the brutality in this Jekyll and Hyde inspired tale wasn’t quite as incessant as the good doctor made out, but the same could not be said of the numerous confrontations with the vampire ilk in the pages of its companion title Web of Mystery. As will shortly be revealed, Web of Mystery may have escaped the acrimony directed at so many of its nefarious companions on sale at that time, but given some of the outrageous content in these pages, how it managed to avoid the eagle-eyed probing of the anti-comic book crusaders is beyond belief.

While a menagerie of supernatural manifestations menaced the covers of this title, the vampire was never once among them, although its presence was evident in more than a dozen of the stories in its 28 issue run. As early as the Summer of 1950, its ghastly countenance cast a shadow over Challenge of the Unknown #6 in “Villa of the Vampire” (September 1950), later reprinted in Web of Mystery #19 (July 1953). In this, the company’s first venture into the dark side—albeit a one-off—Lin Streeter set the standard for Ace’s vampire kin, adorning this frightful beast with a pair of huge leathern wings. As can be seen here, there was a provocative element to this splash, one that would inveigle its way into more than a few of these tales. On this showing, the damsel in distress was observed lying prostrate before this ungodly creature, fated to succumb to its vile intent. This intent would become the harbinger for the depravity to follow.

Rancorous Fangs

On the left, Lin Streeter’s vampiric creation for Challenge of the Unknown #6 set the benchmark for Ace’s portrayal of this bloodthirsty legion, prior to Marty Rose exposing the vampire’s fangs in Web of Mystery’s premiere. TM & © Ace Magazines.

A few months later, this iniquity emerged from the shadows in the debut of Web of Mystery, cover-dated February 1951. While Marty Rose, or Martin Thrall, as he was referred to in the tale “Venom of the Vampires,” produced little in the way of comic book art,

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HORROR COMICS EXCESS Ace vampire story, their young audience was introduced to the charm of a femme fatale, her allure doubtlessly enkindling the wrath of those taking a stance against these troublesome comics. From the outset her sensuality was oh so evident; she was no ordinary woman. Louis’ use of shadow would work to exacerbate the perturbation in this short piece, as this delicious temptress IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, attiredTO inORDER the tightest CLICK THE LINK THISof ISSUE IN PRINTblack OR DIGITAL FORMAT! satin gowns called upon everything at her disposal to seduce her husband coupled with those in attendance.

This salacious theme was promptly pursued in issue #10’s “Weird Web of Mystery #2’s “Legacy of the Accursed,” on the left, presented an ancient creature with a characteristically huge wingspan, while the torture chamber deep in the castle in issue #5 would have been the source of far more concern. TM & © Ace Magazines.

Bells of Wozzeck” (June 1952), illustrated by of a castle of Westphalian construct. the malevolence he evoked in this foul the up-and-coming Bill Molno. When There was considerable emphasis placed creature was overwhelming. Those fangs a vampiress was unwittingly revived on the vampire’s enormous bat-like may well have been the inspiration for following the removal of a dagger from wings, with references to its superhuman Hammer’s Dracula (1958); indeed, there CRYPTOLOGY #7 the lid of her casket, carnage inevitably VAMPIRES! We examine the career of BELA LUGOSI, feast on strength, yet it was the depiction of an are few displays of such rancor found Universal’s classic Dracula’s Daughter, Blood of Dracula’s ensued.

Maybe this tale wasviewscripted age-old torture chamber of the most anywhere in the comic books of the period. As for those wings, there was no question this viperous monstrosity had long since given up its humanity. Soon after, this malfeasance was observed hanging high up in the roof of a cave, a possible precursor to The Lost Boys, of 36 years hence.

As these vampiric tales took shape, it became apparent both Marty’s depiction of this depraved breed and Lin Streeter’s creation for “Villa of the Vampire” were the blueprint for the company’s vampire.

George Appel made ample use of this schema when he rendered “Legacy of the Accursed” for Web of Mystery #2 (April 1951). Those characteristic wings were again unfurled, this time over a Scottish castle, where any kind of mirror was curiously forbidden.

The prolific Lin Streeter returned a few issues later with “Vengeance Weaves a Tapestry” for the fifth issue of Web of Mystery (October 1951), set in the depths

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sadistic order that had the more mature reader wondering: Was this really suitable for a child?

Castle, MARV WOLFMAN discusses his Tomb of Dracula comic (with artwork from GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER and GIL KANE), plus the roots of comic book vampires, Underworld’s KATE BECKINSALE, vampire toys, Hammer’s legion of the undead, and The Return of Dracula and Grave of the Vampire!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_194&products_id=1847

No Ordinary Woman

Maybe this outing had raised an eyebrow too many, for it would be another few months before one of this deathly breed was again given leave to enter these pages. The reader’s patience was rewarded with Ace regular Louis Zansky’s “Vampire Bride” in Web of Mystery #9, dated May 1952.

For the first time in an

Louis Zansky’s surreal brushstrokes gave the reader a rather sultry femme fatale in issue #9’s “Vampire Bride.” TM & © Ace Magazines.