Halloween Hospital Horrors HAUNT OF HORROR "Nightmare Patrol"

We lead off out annual Halloween Horror-fest with a fascinating Vietnam War-set tale...

...created in 1974, just after American participation in the drawn-out conflict ended!

This never-reprinted tale from Marvel's Haunt of Horror V2N1 (1974) was part of a wave of horror tales prompted by the loosening up of the Comics Code to allow "traditional" monsters (who had been banned since the mid-1950s) back into comics!

DC was having some success with their new Weird War Tales book as well as the long-running Our Army at War/Sgt Rock and several others, but Marvel's war titles had been reduced to just Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos...and that had just gone reprint!

So a new war-oriented title was out of the question, and the story found a home in the premiere issue of the second version of Haunt of Horror (the first was a short-lived digest featuring novelettes and short stories).

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Showcase Presents
Weird War Tales
Volume 1
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Countdown to Halloween 2024

TOPS "Anthony Comstock: Fanatical Reformer"

Is it any wonder Republicans are using the work of a puritanical, conservative con-man from the 19th Century...

...to promote and serve their anti-choice agenda in the 21st Century?

Both Federal and local Republican politicians are currently attempting to use the ancient Comstock Act's19th Century definitions of "obscene material" (which includes birth control printed information and contraceptive drugs) to prevent them from being provided to pregnant women in 2024!

Written by George Hansen and illustrated by Lee Ames, this feature from Lev Gleason's TOPS #2 (1949) presents itself as a "review" of a biography of Comstock, Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord (1927)..which praised the man!

However, where the book put Comstock on a pedestal, the comic strip savaged him, taking the material from the tome and presenting it in a historical context.
BTW, you'll note the art here is larger than we usually present.
That's because the periodical it was presented in was tabloid-sized, like Marvel and DC Treasury Editions of the 1970s and 80s and the lettering would be unreadable in our usual 525-pixel wide format.
Editor Charles Biro conceived and produced the mag as an attempt to do an "adult oriented" magazine using the comic book format.
Sadly, it only lasted two issues and either issue is incredibly hard to find!
Happily, Fantagraphics worked with noted writer/artist/historian Michael T Gilbert to produce a superb book reprinting those two issues with an astounding amount of historical material about the periodical...

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TOPS

Complete Collection of Charles Biro's Visionary 1949 Comic Book Series
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Valentine's Day in the Emergency Room SOUL LOVE "Dedicated Nurse"

This story is unique because it is presented from scans of the hand-drawn art...

...from Jack (King) Kirby's proposed 1970s b/w magazine Soul Love!

We would have presented pages from the printed comic/magazine the way we usually do...except it wasn't published...until very recently!

(We'll explain below!)

NSFW / NSFS note...it is somewhat "politically incorrect"...but not for the reason you might think!

(Hey, look! A "Kirby Quote"!)

You'll note pages 5 and 6 aren't as "clean" as the other pages, which are scanned from the actual original art!

They're scanned from photocopies, which are the only versions I could acquire, but they're legible enough to "fill out" the tale!
(Oh, man! More "Kirby Quotes"!)

Written/penciled/edited by Jack Kirby and inked by Vince Colletta, the story takes the typical attitude of the period about overweight women, though Aleda's not actually obese.

(In fact, I was involved with a woman who had a similar body type, which I found extremely-appealing!)

You can read about the Soul Love magazine project by clicking HERE.
The Soul Love tales were finally published as a full-color comic book-style insert in 2020's Dingbat Love hardcover book, which we conveniently linked-to below!

Thanks to Kracalactaka for the scans.

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Dingbat Love

(covering Jack Kirby's unique, previously-unpublished projects, including Soul Love and True-Life Divorce!)
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Halloween Hospital Horrors TALES OF THE ZOMBIE "Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth"

If you can't figure out what this story is going to feature just by reading the title above...
...you're definitely reading the wrong blog!

Written by Gerry Conway and illustrated by Virgilio Redondo and Rudy Nebres, this story from Marvel's Tales of the Zombie #10 (1975) was a non-series feature.

The book featured tales of Simon Garth: the Zombie and Brother Voodoo (who was also appearing in his own feature in Strange Tales), along with one-shot stories like this one plus articles about voodoo and zombies in both pop culture and real life!

Sadly, this was the final issue...but it would (appropriately) rise from the dead from time to time...as shown below!

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Essential Tales of the Zombie

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TRUMP "Tranquilizers"

Ironically, from a 1950s magazine called Trump...

...(not named after a stress-inducing a-hole) comes this feature by artist Al Jaffee and (likely) writer Harvey Kurtzman about the "benefits" of stress-relieving drugs!

Note the Alfred E Neuman-esque figure at the end of the piece!

"What, me worry?', indeed!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

MAD "Failing Health Magazine"

Let's make fun of real-life horror...

...by showing those who over-react to the slightest medical problem (and some problems that don't really exist) in a never-reprinted feature from EC's MAD Magazine #159 (1973)!

Scripted by Tom Koch and illustrated by the legendary Jack Davis, this was the sort of spoof MAD did better than anybody else in the humor mag business!

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Absolutely MAD Magazine

50+ Years on DVD-Rom

The only place this story's been re-presented, albeit in digital low-res!
(Make sure you get the revised 2012 version for as complete a collection as possible)

EMERGENCY! "Silent Death" Conclusion

When Last We Left Los Angeles Firemen Gage and DeSoto...

...they had been trained as paramedics, but were unable to legally-use that training in life-or-death situations they encounter daily, due to legal restrictions.

That is about to change...

The story, written by Joe Gill, was adapted from an early draft of the pilot episode, "Wedworth-Townsend Act", of the 1970s TV series Emergency!
The script dealt with the then-new law allowing specially-trained firemen to administer more than basic first aid to accident victims.

The series, from producer/actor Jack (Dragnet) Webb was a companion show with his other ongoing series Adam-12.

There were several crossovers between the two series during their runs, including this pilot episode!
However, since two different comic companies had the rights to Emergency! and Adam-12, the comics themselves didn't do a crossover!

Though the series began in 1972, this b/w magazine and the companion color comic (which presented different stories) weren't introduced until the show's fifth season, in 1977.
BTW, this story from Charlton's EMERGENCY! #1 (1976) adapts the remainder of the two-hour pilot.
"Crusty Bunkers" was the nickname assigned to a varying team of artists who worked on assignments for packager Continuity Associates (who provided art for various Charlton projects including this and Six Million Dollar Man.)
This particular team consisted of Joe Brozowski, Joe Barney, Mark Rice, Sal Amendola, Carl Potts, Terry Austin, Bruce Patterson, Bob Wiacek and John Fuller with Dick Giordano and Continuity Associates owner, the recently-deceased Neal Adams, overseeing and also providing layouts.