Saturday, April 3, 2010

Shock Theater: A Ron Goulart, Jim Starlin, Gene Colan, and Rich Buckler Triple-Feature of Terror

One of Ol' Groove's all-time favorite authors, Ron Goulart, dabbled with writing comics for Marvel during the early-70s. The writer of sci-fi, horror, humor, mystery, adventure, fantasy, and comics history spent the better part of 1972 writing terrific tales for Journey Into Mystery, Supernatural Thrillers (you can find two of those tales here and here), and Warlock. Today's focus is on a trio of terrifying tales Mr. Goulart authored for Journey Into Mystery issues 3-5 (November 1972-March 1973). The first, "The Shambler from the Stars!"with art by Jim Starlin and Tom Palmer, adapted a 1934 Robert Bloch classic. The second, "The Haunter of the Dark!" with art by Gene Colan and Dan Adkins, adapted an H.P. Lovecraft shocker, and the third, "The Shadow from the Steeple!" with Rich Buckler/Frank Giacoia art, was an all-original sequel to "Haunter". Turn down the lights, pull the covers up to your chin, and prepare for some high-quality chills, Groove-ophiles!




5 comments:

  1. I love these 1970's anthologies. Its too bad that stuff like this has fallen by the wayside.

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  2. Starlin and Palmer...now there's a pairing I never thought I'd see.

    Groove, if you take requests, is there any chance you might (if you have any copies) present one of Sam Glanzman's "USS Stevens" stories? I first read about them years ago in Comic Book Artist and would like to see if they live up to the big rap they received there.

    cheers
    B Smith

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  3. I'll see what I can dig up, "B". The USS Stevens stories are great, and yeah, I need to share some'a those. Thanks for the request!

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  4. I really wasn't aware of these Marvel titles in the 70's, though I certainly followed their DC equivalent closely.

    Thanks for the introduction -- these really are quality stories.

    It's funny that the EC titles are the ones that the wider public know about -- but many of the titles that perhaps started opportunistically, taking advantage of the interest EC created, are in fact superior artistically and in terms of narrative.

    Many thanks. If you have time, I'd love to see more of these some day.

    Gnostic.

    ReplyDelete

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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