IT ROSE FROM THE
An all-new celebration of the 20th Century’s best horror comics
by Peter Normanton
It Rose From The Tomb is published by
TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC, 27614 Phone: (919) 449-0344 www.twomorrows.com email: store@twomorrows.com Editor: Peter Normanton Publisher: John Morrow Proofreading: Kevin Sharp All characters are TM & © their respective companies unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorial package is © 2024 Peter Normanton and TwoMorrows Publishing. All rights reserved. All illustrations contained herein are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders and are reproduced for historical reference and research purposes. No material from this book may be reproduced in any form, including print and digital, without the express permission of the publisher. First printing: February 2024 Printed in China ISBN: 978-1-60549-123-3 Amazing Adventures, The Avengers, Captain America, Dracula Lives, Epic, Fantastic Four, Frankenstein Monster, Giant-Size Chillers, Giant-Size Creatures, Giant-Size Dracula, Giant-Size Man-Thing, Giant-Size Spider-Man, Giant-Size Superheroes, Giant-Size Werewolf, Journey into Mystery, Man-Thing, Marvel Mystery Comics, Marvel Preview, SpiderMan, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tomb of Dracula, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, USA Comics, Werewolf by Night, Where Monsters Dwell, Vampire Tales, Venus, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • All-American Comics, Batman, Blue Ribbon Digest, The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, DC Special Edition, Detective Comics, Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, Ghosts, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Mystery in Space, Phantom Stranger, The Sinister House of Secret Love, Strange Adventures, Swamp Thing, Tales of the Unexpected, Witching Hour TM & © DC Comics • Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, Crime Patrol, Crime Suspenstories, Shock Suspenstories, Weird Fantasy, Weird Science & © Wm. M Gaines Agent • Black Magic TM & © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estates • Creepy and Eerie TM & © Warren Publications. All other characters and properties TM & © the respective owners. 2
A Word From The Tomb............................................................................................................ page 4 In The Beginning......................................................................................................................... page 6 A Step Into The Unknown........................................................................................................ page 16 Chamber Of Chills #18 From Start To Finish......................................................................... page 28 Resurrected: Horror Comics From The Grave...................................................................... page 30 Out Of The Night #10................................................................................................................ page 42 Out Of The Night #10 The Spectral Bride............................................................................... page 43 The Dark Architecture Of Bernie Wrightson......................................................................... page 47 Raised From The Dead: Resurrected Horror From Brazil................................................... page 58 When Horror Comics Ruled The Newsstand June 1953....................................................... page 61 The Skywald Horrormood Behind The Cover....................................................................... page 82 The Many Faces Of Doctor Death........................................................................................... page 94 The Face Of Death.................................................................................................................... page 98 Pablo Marcos UK Dracula Lives #1....................................................................................... page 108 Al Luster.................................................................................................................................. page 110 The Dark Mansion Of Romantic Mystery............................................................................ page 116 Segredo De Morte: The Spectre of Death In Brazil’s Horror Comics............................... page 128 Post Code Chillers................................................................................................................... page 135 Creepy Number #3................................................................................................................... page 144 Giant-Size Terror.................................................................................................................... page 147 This Magazine Is Haunted: A Chilling Post Code Selection................................................ page 158 That Horror Guy Larry Woromay........................................................................................ page 164 The Coffin Creature House Of Mystery #205........................................................................ page 172 Hypodermic Horror................................................................................................................ page 174 The Hitler Of The Lamp........................................................................................................ page 187 The Weird Tales Of The Atlas Seaboard Horrors................................................................ page 188
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It had been a frustrating few hours, spent wading through box upon box of comics, in the hope of finding a story I remembered from my earliest days of comic book reading. Irritatingly, it had once again proved elusive; still the contents in those boxes had rekindled memories of the tales that set me off on this strange course. My story isn’t so unusual, comics have always been there, getting me through the ups and downs life has thrown my way. As a youngster I began with TV21, then came the superheroes, mainly those in the British Marvel reprints Mighty World of Marvel, Spider-Man Comics Weekly and The Avengers Weekly, although occasionally I would chance upon a US Batman or maybe a Flash, courtesy of one of the neighbours. While the best part of my collection was made up of superhero comics, more than any, the short mystery and science fiction stories roused my interest. This could be down to their being self contained; I was hardly the most patient of youngsters. You might recall the scenario - having relished 20 odd pages of breathtaking excitement, you were left with a cliffhanger, with little prospect of getting to see the denouement a month later. When the skies became overcast and the heavens opened, these stories would take on a life of their own, whisking me away from the rain soaked streets of my neighbourhood to a place where I could ponder the inconceivable. My reverie would conjure visions of time travel, alien contact, the dead shambling forth from the grave, flying saucers shooting across the sky and the one way beyond my imagining, the point where the universe finally reached its end. In those days of adolescence, my imagination would journey on into the infinite, only to diminish with the gradual passage of time. My sense of imagination may no longer be what it once was, but the tales that gave rise to those sojourns would never quite fade, at least not all of them. What follows is no more than a sampling of these stories, each destined to make such a difference to my comic book reading, bearing a poignance that continues to endure. 6
We didn’t have too many family holidays when I was a youngster. Like everyone else in the streets where I grew up, we simply didn’t have the money. For all that, in the early ’70s we were lucky enough to enjoy a few memorable getaways, staying at the same guest house in Morecambe, which I can assure you was never a hardship. Over the next few years, these holidays and day trips to this Lancashire seaside town would become an essential part of my comic book collecting. A walk along the promenade and the adjacent side streets would invariably turn up something of interest. If there was a way of returning to the August of 1971, we would see a youngster in his sandals, t-shirt and short pants gazing in awe at a magazine stall on the auspicious West End Pier. A couple of comics had caught his eye, each placed annoyingly out of reach. The most prominent was an issue of Marvel’s Greatest Comics #27 (June 1970), alongside which was a copy of Fear #3 (March 1971), festooned with a mind-blowing Jack Kirby-Steve Ditko “Zzutack” cover adapted from Strange Tales #88 (September 1961). I’ll leave it to you as to which one induced a state of uncontrollable slavering bordering on the deranged. However, such was the fervour pulsing from these covers, he just had take them both. A wise decision if ever there was one, for upon handing over a portion of his holiday money, his reward was a bounty of untold riches. Each issue ran to an impressive 68 pages, chock full of reprints from Marvel’s incomparable inventory. The “Zzutack” tale, scribed by Stan Lee and Larry Leiber, then delineated by Messrs Kirby and Ditko, was a breathtaking roller-coaster ride for sure. However, nothing could have prepared him for Ditko’s artwork on “A Monster Waits Outside.” The evidence suggests Stan Lee masterminded this tale of an astronaut’s near calamitous training session on the outer limits of the earth’s orbit. For years to come this little fellow would return to this story, convinced those closing panels would somehow change, thus ensuring that this, alongside the accompanying tales, remained every bit as exciting as
they had done on their first read. Ditko’s monstrous creation was just the beginning. A few weeks later, on the Sunday preceding the start of a new school year, I was enjoying an eventful family outing to Howarth, the haven of the Bronte sisters, although their works wouldn’t have meant a jot to my young self. Minutes ahead of setting back home, I came upon a bric-a-brac shop, of a kind that were so commonplace during my fledgling years. Amidst the interminable clutter was a humongous stack of Alan Class reprints. Unable to contain my excitement, I fell to my knees, burrowing ever deeper into the seemingly endless pile. This was comic book nirvana, made all the better by my grandma, who kindly offered to pay for a couple of my discoveries. We’ll get to my second purchase a little later, but the first of these was Astounding Stories #77. Who in their right mind could resist Sal Buscema’s pulsating image of Ultron-6, inked by Sam Grainger, previously seen adorning the cover to Avengers #67, in the August of 1969? The Roy Thomas tale, “We Stand at Armageddon,” from Avengers #68 (September 1969), showcasing the artwork of Barry
These were the comics that sparked my interest in these short stories Alan Class’s Astounding Stories #77 and the splash to the Charlton tale from those same pages. I have included the original cover from Avengers #67 to show how the cover was slightly altered due to the size of each magazine. Above, both versions of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko’s memorable Zzutack cover, from Strange Tales #88 and Fear #3, but it was the latter’s “The Monster Waits Outside” which captured my imagination. 7
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For Richard Hughes and his team, it was indeed a real life adventure into the unknown as Adventures into the Unknown, Lovelorn and Blazing West prepared to debut in the summer months of 1948. Until now, the American Comics Group had been more associated with funny animal and humor titles, notably Giggle Comics and Ha-Ha Comics, their amusing premieres having come in 1943. In the run-up to these releases, Richard Hughes had been doing his homework; alongside this joviality, he could see romance and western comics were now well established on the newsstand. Adventures into the Unknown however, was something of a curiosity. The decision to devote its entire content to an assemblage of rather creepy tales, months before any of ACG’s competitors had dared set foot in this darkened terrain, carried a certain amount of risk.
The demise of the Golden Age superhero, in the wake of the Allied victory over the Axis powers, had impelled the comic book industry into a period of experimentation, paving the way for an array of highly successful crime, comedy and romance titles, but no one had given the viability of a regular horror comic any serious thought. Hughes wasn’t to be deterred, having high hopes for his latest additions to the company roster, one of which would very quickly transcend his wildest dreams. As we shall see, having already scripted a zombie tale in Pines’ The Black Terror #6, dated May 1944, his foresight was not without precedent. If he had been keeping an eye on his fellow publishers, he would have been aware Avon had already set the ball rolling
Edvard Moritz was chosen as the cover artist for the earliest issues of Adventures into the Unknown. As the covers across the page to issues #1-4 attest, he proved an exceptional choice, preferring to unsettle his readers rather than letting the blood flow. His creepy haunted house scene for this title’s premiere worked perfectly, luring the casual observer in to uncover what lay behind the door. They would have to wait until this issue’s finale, “Haunted House,” to discover the ghastly truth.
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Somewhere way beyond the edge of town there lies a path mortal man dare not tread, for along this godforsaken course there are tidings of a rumbling emanating from beneath the earth, the herald for gnarled hands clawing their way through the loam in a bid to escape their eternal slumber. Long since consigned to the grave, they now slowly make their return, gathering to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world. No, this isn’t a citation from “The Book of Revelations,” this was the carnage terrorising the horror comics on sale across America at the beginning of the 1950s. Time was, those unversed in this devilry would have been understandably perturbed by such an abominable premise, however for that growing band now seasoned in this unholy fare this was the very essence of the comics they so enjoyed, eventuating a craze that would flourish for a heady five years.
With few exceptions the publishers of those vile horror comics fairly revelled in returning the dead to an odious semblance of life as evidenced above in Story’s Mysterious Adventures #3 from August 1951. Across the page Quality Comics threatened with the grim prospect of being buried alive as the introduction to Web of Evil #11, dated February 1954. Similarly, Atlas couldn’t resist with the deathly scene fronting Marvel Tales #121 from March 1954. ACG regular Ogden Whitney raised the departed for the cover to Adventures into the Unknown #20 first seen in June 1951, as weeks before the formulation of the Comics Code, Web of Mystery chanced a comparable encounter for its 27th issue, cover-dated November 1954. 30
Along with their being gifted a fine crop of artists paired with an imaginative collective of writers, the success enjoyed by the comic book publishers of the period owes much to their wanton disregard for the precepts of good taste. Their relish for the abhorrent was unrelenting, as month upon month they conspired with a legion of atrocities in their desire to shock an ever demanding readership. The formula was all so simple: the more extreme the content the greater the sales, so what better way to do this than by inflicting a decaying corpse on their eager followers? The kids of course loved it! However, as vile as so many of these tales were, and believe me they were, there was a reluctance to make any direct reference to the notion of resurrection in the titles of the stories they introduced. Surprisingly, every once in a while the conservatism of these years did have some leverage on these comics, even those hell-bent on achieving a damning kind of notoriety. The comic book archive from the 1950s reveals only one instance of this word being used in the title of one of these stories, the bizarre encounter with “The Resurrected Head” published by Fawcett, a company of remarkably wholesome repute, in the fourth issue of Worlds of Fear, cover-dated May 1952. In this foray there was no exhumation from the grave, rather a severed head was witnessed assuming control of the body that had once been its own with a single purpose in mind, retribution. It was this heinous crusade for retribution that impelled so many of the recently departed to take leave of their final resting place. Nowhere else was this better portrayed than in EC’s triumvirate of terror, a line long acknowledged for their pre-eminence in this deathly narrative. While their rivals were every bit as willing to bequeath new life to the dead, EC did it with a putrescent panache. Early on in the company’s reign of terror, Johnny Craig braved a ghoulishly conceived mortuary scene for the cover of Crypt of Terror #18, dated June-July 1950. Admittedly, this image was nowhere near as repugnant as so much of that which followed, but the threat contained in that ice cold hand as it prepared to wrap itself around the unmindful
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As they have spread across the once verdant landscape, modern day cities have grown ever colder, overwhelmed by a surfeit of towering glass and steel edifices, each and every one of them devoid of life. They seem to attract the uncaring affluent, lost in their pursuit of material gain, their soulless presence marginalising those of a more easygoing order. Mine has always been a preference for the time worn streets of the city, alleyways imbued with history, old book shops, secondhand stores and the hostelries the en vogue thankfully choose to ignore. Over the course of these next few pages you will catch a glimpse of some of these locales as the architecture and interior design of Bernie Wrightson, much of it conceived over half a century ago,
is laid before your eyes. For the unenlightened, these age old constructs may in some measure appear foreboding, the quarters seen on the covers above to Welcome Back to the House of Mystery #1, dated July 1998, Swamp Thing’s second appearance from December-January 1973 and the second House of Mystery paperback from August 1973 are undeniably abstruse in their design. However, despite their brooding aspect, it is hard to resist their archaic charm, each in turn drawing the reader ever deeper into their shadow laden lair. The intimidating manse standing tall in the background to this introduction was first presented as the opening page to the 47
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The image of the Grim Reaper, scythe in hand, made it to Ken Bald’s cover for Adventures into the Unknown #27, dated January 1952; with similar appearances at the finale of Astonishing #14’s “Silence,” Mystic #11’s Stan Lee collaboration with John Romita for “Death and Tommy Norton” and the rarely seen February 1931 edition of Detective Story Magazine painted by John A. Coughlin. Across the page, the Iger Shop gave us this rather stark deathly figure for Strange Mysteries #14, dated May 1953; while just over 12 months before, Lee Elias crafted a very disturbing take on the Grim Reaper for the cover of Witches Tales #8.
Regular readers of the horror comics flourishing during the early 1950s would have felt a little short changed if death in some shape or form wasn’t in evidence in their pages, a prospect awaiting countless of the unfortunates caught up in these sinister tales. For most of these younger readers the true concept of death was of little concern, but every once in a while, amid the grisly carnage, the shadowy figure of the Grim Reaper deigned to put in an appearance. His presence only augmented the chill in these narratives, for even these youthful readers knew very well, no man could ever
escape the clutch of his icy grasp. The cowled, scythe bearing image of the Grim Reaper was first observed during the 14th century, when Europe along with parts of Asia and North Africa, began to fall to the ravages of the Black Death. This bubonic plague would kill millions in the years between 1347 and 1351, with several further outbreaks taking the lives of many more for the duration of the century. Such was its virulence, around a third of Europe’s population is believed to have succumbed to its deathly embrace.
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Jerome Podwil’s brooding canvas would form the cover of the second issue of Sinister House of Secret Love. While it doesn’t adhere to the trope of the true Gothic romance cover, it is nonetheless an atmospheric piece, the impact of which was sadly diminished on the actual comic. Neal Adams’ cover for House of Secrets #88 remained true to the idea of Gothic romance and introduced a generation of young readers to this increasingly popular genre. 116
As one decade slipped away into the dreamscape of memories lost, it was the beginning of the next and maybe something new. It had been a decade in which Julius Schwartz had come to the fore in his role as editor for DC. Amongst his many admirable qualities was an eye for distinguishing some of the publishing world’s most popular trends, latterly the fervour for Gothic romance. From the 1950s on into the 1970s, it was almost impossible to walk into a bookshop without being overwhelmed by an array of such paperbacks, each adorned with an exquisitely painted cover portraying a hapless girl in her flowing white robes fleeing the threat of a sinister manse. Gothic styled romance was nothing new, dating back to 1764 when Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto was first circulated, a tale referenced earlier in this book. The imaginative pen of Ann Ratcliffe would soon develop the concept, principally in her tale A Sicillian Romance, published in 1790. As the years passed Gothic romance was to blossom into a much cherished genre, one to which Schwartz was only too keen to avail himself. Schwartz had previously taken on the editorial reins of Batman in 1964, charged with reviving a character whose sales had been in decline since the advent of Marvel’s rollicking roster of Silver Age superheroes. He very quickly succeeded, turning to the darker facets of Batman’s perplexing character. This return to the Dark Knight’s brooding persona was reflected in the covers of both Batman and Detective Comics from the end of 1969 through until the mid 1970s. Although Neal Adams’ sombre cover for Detective Comics #403, cover-dated
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