CHARLES DALLAS AND HIS PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES

In his "Meet Your Artist" intro in the first issue of PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES ILLUSTRATED (Company & Sons, 1972), Charles Dallas claims his name is a pseudonym. If true (he also claims he has lived in Dunwich for almost 250 years!), it only deepens the mystery of who this person was, as Dallas remains one of the handful of enigmas who were active during the last years of the first underground comics wave, then seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

He was called "Charlie" by those who knew him while he was breaking into the San Francisco comics scene in the early 1970's. His style was striking, bold, heavy and darkly twisted, and his stories were lurid, grisly and oftentimes nearing brilliance. A devotee of horror and H.P. Lovecraft, and with few exceptions, he pushed the envelope just as far as any other underground artist of the time. He shopped the first issue of his book, PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES ILLUSTRATED to Company & Sons and they agreed to print it.

Company & Sons was owned by underground comics publisher John Bagley. Bagley published a number of titles, but mysteriously, all of them were one-shots. Titles included BOGEYMAN COMICS #3, THE COLLECTED CHEECH WIZARD, PARANOIA (includes a story by Dallas), and his best-selling YOUNG LUST by Jay Kinney and Bill Griffiths. The reason for the paucity of continuing titles became evident when Bagley closed up shop in 1973, claiming that he had a fatal disease, but it was more likely the result of a combination of poor sales and creators bailing to other publishers after rumors circulated regarding his shady accounting methods. His business partner, Michael R. Levy, high-tailed it out of California for Texas and founded TEXAS MONTHLY, which is still being published today. A devoted CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED collector, Bagley apparently lived longer than he predicted as Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner claims to have seen him in 2001 making jewelry out of a farm in Northern California.

Underground comics historian Mark James Estren wrote this contemporaneous comment about Dallas:

"...this relatively unknown artist was included in the same book (SKULL #4) as Dave Sheridan, Jaxon [Jack Jackson] and other 'big names in the field'. Dallas himself credits Jaxon with bringing him into underground comics...Dallas studied art for a year a Syracuse University, but dropped out and moved to the West Coast. Less committed to West Coast life styles than many other cartoonists, he continues to return East fairly often, and feels he lives on both sides of the country. Dallas describes himself as 'just generally turned on to comics.'"

Jay Kinney mentions Dallas in Patrick Rosenkranz's history of underground comics ("Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution, 1963-1975, Fantagraphics Books, 2002):

"People began to move away from San Francisco. A typical example was Charles Dallas, who most people don't even remember anymore. He was a fine cartoonist doing horror stuff. He was out here for a couple of years and doing a lot of work and trying to make a go of it. And then things started petering out. There weren't as many comics being published. So he moved back to Pennsylvania. That was repeated with a lot of other artists."

Kim Deitch also comments about Dallas in fellow underground cartoonist Roger Brand's tribute article on THE COMICS JOURNAL web site (October 12, 2011):

"The whole dichotomy about Charlie dallas [sic]. In a nutshell; unwholesome work, wholesome guy. Sweet natured honorable, but with a rather jaded aesthetic. He was discovered by Jack Jackson. Where I first saw his work was at Jackson's pad. All on big huge pieces of illustration board and wash shading, which made for reproduction problems, which is why Jackson sat on the fence for awhile before publishing him but the big problem for Charlie; too late to the party. Dallas wasn't a Wilsonesque [S. Clay Wilson] loud mouthed drunken braggart as one might imagine looking at his work. He was a decent guy and I'm betting he's still out there somewhere. I wouldn't even be surprised if he was still married to his equally sweet, essentially wholesome nude dancer wife. He struck me as an essentially steady guy."

Dallas himself shares his exposure to and influence of EC Comics in BLAB! #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, 1986).

At the Comixjoint website, Dallas and PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES ILLUSTRATED is reviewed:

"Throughout the series, Dallas portrays everything from cannibalism to ruthless murder with lurid, unflinching detail, which made his work popular with some of his fellow creators and not so popular with others. But no one could deny the haunting quality of his stark, knifelike inkwork, and most of the violence presented in his stories was inherent to the plot, not gratuitous. Of course, it could be argued that the stories themselves were gratuitous, but nothing in this series suggests that Dallas was either a chauvinist or a misogynist; he was simply relaying stories with horrifying content, much like Poe or Lovecraft or any of the masters who preceded him."

One final mystery: In the indicia to this issue Dallas announces a contest and a fan club on page 47. Since nearly all underground comics were 36 pages long, this appears to be a hoax  -- maybe the same goes for his "pseudonym"?

Charles Dallas original art:

SKULL COMICS NO. 5

Skull (#5), published in August 1972, could also very easily have been titled, “Special Lovecraft Issue”, as every story is either a Lovecraft adaptation or derivative of his work. The cover title is cleverly rendered in the shape of bones. The “Last Gasp” logo (Last Gasp Eco-Funnies had published Skull since issue #2) is still there and is accompanied by another, new logo. It is clearly meant to be a parody of a union stamp, as it shows a fist encircled by the phrase “Underground Cartoon Workers”. The cover artwork is by Spain Rodriguez and portrays a scene that is evidently meant to be some kind of ritual chamber inhabited by a gaggle of unholy, debauched denizens, and titled, fittingly enough, “Satan’s Slaves”.

The issue begins with a re-working of Lovecraft’s “The Rats In the Walls”. Written and drawn by Richard Corben (signing his name “Gore”, perhaps in homage to E.C.’s “Ghastly” Graham Ingles?), this version is grislier, and ultimately more horrifying (and better) than the version seen in Creepy just a few years before.

Next up is “The Hand of Kaä”, introduced by and starring a Skull version of “above ground” Charlton Comics’ Dr. Graves, named Wilfred Kreel, Seeker of the Strange. Kreel states: “In my many journeys into the strange, macabre and at times, fascinating, world of the unknown, the case of James Wormwood remains one of the most profoundly disturbing of my career”. The title page shows the one named Wormwood peering with amazement into a copy of The Necronomicon while a giant, corpse-like hand hovers menacingly over his … skull. Drawn by Spain, “The Hand of Kaä” is an over-the-top story of the supernatural that could only have appeared in a title such as this.

The next offering is a two-page spread of Lovecraft’s poem, “To A Dreamer”, drawn by Charles Dallas and Kim Deitch. Originally a part of the series of verse known as “The Ancient Track” in the 1963 Arkham House, Collected Poems (Fungi From Yuggoth & Other Poems in the Ballantine paperback version from 1971), “Dreamer” makes for an ethereally effective interlude between the more gruesome tales.

The last entry is entitled, “The Shadow From the Abyss” and is an illustrated version of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time” by Larry Todd, who collaborated for a time with the infamous underground comix legend Vaughn Bodé. Once again, using only a few word balloons, Todd succeeds in inducing the narrative style of Lovecraft in combination with his own dark and evocative artwork. A fitting finale to the Lovecraft cycle brought to life in Skull comics.