Vampirella of Draculon Mountain

Last year I had a few requests for more wicked Warren posts, and since nothing specific was mentioned title-wise, I guess that leaves it up to old Mr. Karswell to continue with my-- errr, his own choice process of creepy curation! And okay, since half of the country is currently chilled to the bone under mountains of snow and extremely frigid, icy temps, let's see what happens to one lovely young lady in a similar, shivery predicament-- only trapped with a rather unpleasant fellow, to boot! Beautiful, sketch-style artwork from "Jay Taycee", aka legendary Johnny Craig who also wrote the script, from the April 1966 issue of Creepy #8, and highlighted with a terrific Gray Marrow vampire cover painting! But first up, and since we're stalkin' / talkin' vampires, let's see where it all began with one bloodthirsty lil babe from Planet Draculon-- va-va-va-voom it's awesome Vampirella in her September 1966 debut collector's edition issue appearance via Vampirella #1! Forrest J. Ackerman script. Tom Sutton story art. And freakin' Frank Frazetta cover and ad art, all adding up to one helluva great origin issue, as well as THOIA double fear-ture post! Sink in...

Ghoul Girl

In all the years I've been producing this blog, I've posted less than a half dozen stories from Warren's original b/w Vampirella magazine series. I'm not talking about Vampi's own ominous adventures, I'm talking the ones where she horror hosts the various tales of other macabre monsters and murderous mayhem. Maybe we'll finish out the month with a few frightening examples, and let's start it off with this hot lil specimen from the June 1970 issue of Vampirella #5. Yep, this plan also gives me an excellent excuse to post Frazetta covers too! Tough titties from Drakulon to any complainers...

The Thing in the Fens

If you're still exhausted from all that trompin' around the swamp with a cat girl in our last post-- too bad! Cuz today it's time to traipes around a fen-- with a thing! It's also been a while since we're seen joltin' Jay Disbrow around these parts, so let him lead the weird way, from the July 1954 issue of Beware #10. And while I don't believe this story made the final cut for our Jay Disbrow Chilling Archives collection, this freakin' awesome Frank Frazetta / Sid Check art did grace my Return of the Zombies hardcover, which still seems to be available through Barnes and Noble HERE! (Psst, you cooler ghouls will remember this book as the one with the bite taken out of the front cover corner!) 

The Ghouls! / It!

The January 1983 issue of Creepy #144 is tagged as the "Giant Graveyard and Ghosts Issue!" and it really delivers, reprinting earlier 70's stories, as well as Frazetta's fantastic (though slightly re-colored) cover from Creepy #5. "The Ghouls", with its appetite destroying ending, is originally from Creepy #61, while Tom Sutton's awesome "It!" originally crawled forth from Creepy #53. FYI: An unfortunate printing error (?!) on a few pages of "It!" muddy some of the detail, but it's still readable, and still very worthy of posting for those of you unfamiliar with it.

Dragula, Queen of Darkness

***ADULTS ONLY!!*** If you've missed the recent posts over at AEET, we're celebrating Halloween a month early there by "Skipping September" altogether and jumping right into the spooky stuff. This also includes the kooky stuff, and no one was kookier than National Lampoon Magazine, who unleashed their great, all "HORROR" issue in November 1971. For obvious reasons I saved this Neal Adams illustrated vampire spoof classic for posting here at THOIA, add to that the additional cover art by Frank Frazetta, as well as a pulpy bonus image from Gray Morrow-- and well, this is definitely one hell of a fun issue! See more HERE!