American Update: Voodoo Thingies & Witches’ Doodahs
*Vintage Magazine-Sized Comics: Twenty+ vintage horror mags new in this week, in the ‘Miscellaneous Publishers’ sub-section – and these are more miscellaneous than most! In the wake of Warren Publications critical and commercial success in the early 1960’s with Creepy and Eerie, restoring the traditional twist-ending horror story to the field by publishing them as magazines (not subject to Comics Code censorship), it was inevitable that imitators would arise. One of the earliest was Eerie Publications, which, under both its own heading and its sibling imprint of Stanley, launched in 1966 with Weird, and became incredibly prolific, with at least a dozen titles and scores of bashed-out mags reprinting pre-Code horror material, re-edited to be even more gory and cheesy than ever! The lurid and miasmatic covers add to the feeling of a bad drug trip, incoherent and garish, giving the series a definite ‘feel’ that was the antithesis of Warren’s carefully-crafted thrillers. New in for your – if this is the right word – enjoyment, we have issues of Ghoul Tales, Horror Tales, Shock, Tales From The Tomb, Tales of Voodoo, Terror Tales, Weird, Weird Worlds and Witches’ Tales. Buy them! Try them! And get ready to recalibrate your definition of schlock!