by
M.I.K.
Okay, without further ado, here’s the second half of “Curtis Bronson, (Ghost Hunter), Meets The Snake Mummy“.
If you missed the first part, you can read it here.
As mentioned when I posted the first part of this strip, it’s actually an altered Cursitor Doom story. Cursitor Doom originally appeared in Smash! comic in 1969 and was usually written by Scott Goodall and illustrated by Eric Bradbury.
The Buster Book of Spooky Stories wouldn’t be the only place he’d appear under a pseudonym. His stories have also been reprinted, (in colour), in Quality Comics‘ Spellbinders, alongside the likes of Nemesis The Warlock and Slaine, where he was known as Amadeus Wolf.
In 1992, the 2000ad Action Special was published. It attempted to update classic British comic characters for a modern audience. The results were mostly dire, Mark Millar’s version of The Spider being the worst offender. However, the Cursitor Doom story, The Man Who Died Every Day, (written by John Tomlinson and drawn by Jim Baikie), was a notable exception, probably because the character wasn’t really altered at all. The story itself would not have looked out of place in an issue of Scream!
Although one of the stories in the special, Kelly’s Eye, would spin off into a series in 2000ad, further modern tales of Cursitor Doom from the 2000ad stable were not to be, which is probably just as well for 2000ad, as it turned out they didn’t own the rights to the characters featured in the special in the first place.
Cursitor Doom resurfaced in 2005 in what would be a pivotal role in the Leah Moore and John Reppion scripted mini-series, Albion. Plotted by Alan Moore, the story reveals that, unbeknown to the public at large, the characters from the British comics of the past actually existed.
Another early Cursitor Doom tale, Cursitor Doom and the Dark Legion of Mardarax appears in Albion Origins, a collection of classic comic strips which also reprints early adventures of Kelly’s Eye, House of Dolmann and Janus Stark.
by
M.I.K.
Here’s something which might interest fans of old British horror comics. 32 pages of Solomon Knight from the 1970s DC Thomson comic, Bullet. The quality’s not brilliant and the copyright watermark is a bit distracting and makes some of the text difficult to make out, but they’re just about readable.
Click here to read them.
by
M.I.K.
To my knowledge there were two Buster Books Of Spooky Stories published, one cover-dated 1975 and one 1976. The following story is from the latter. According to an article by Edward Berridge in Hibernia‘s Thirteenth Floor collection, the Buster Book Of Spooky Stories was conceived as a way of using strips from an unpublished horror comic which would have been named Chiller, but didn’t surface due to the publishers getting cold feet. This may be where the other Curtis Bronson story published in the book is from but not the one reproduced below. This one is actually an altered reprint from elsewhere.
So where did this story originate? From the pages of a comic called Smash! , circa 1969. The Buster Book version has been changed so that it features the character of Curtis Bronson. The character Bronson replaces originally had blonde hair, no moustache and went by the name of Angus McCraggan.
And the mysterious Septimus Drood? He was originally beardless and went by the name of Cursitor Doom. I’ll be telling you more about him when I post the second half of this tale.
Continued Next Week!
by
M.I.K.
I found this while perusing the Comics UK site. Plug from classic British comic strip The Bash Street Kids, (from The Beano), and someone who looks suspiciously like Vincent Price on the cover of the same comic.
I really want to read that story now. I also found something related to Scream! comic. The cover of the last issue of Cor!!, featuring the Really-Ghastlys from Fiends and Neighbours. Cor!! was the comic in which they originally appeared.
by
Ghastly McNasty
I’m a member of the Alan Moore Fan Club group over on Myspace. One one the other members, aaron, has created these great South Park characters based on the heroes in the legendary graphic novel Watchmen.
You can have a go at making your own using the South Park Studio
by
M.I.K.
Sick of zombies yet? Well, if you aren’t, The Dead is a new ongoing zombie comic, out this august. It’s written by Alan Grant and illustrated by Simon Bisley with cover art by Glenn Fabry.
Britain has been overrun by zombies, but in Oxford a team of firefighters, allied with a pair of misfit soldiers, are about to strike back.
The official website has more information and a three page preview of the first issue. The preview seems awkward to view full-screen, (for me, at least), so I’ve included it below.
The Dead interview
The Dead MySpace
Official website
by
Ghastly McNasty
A very, very small peek at my horror comic debut ‘Beaten Path’. It’ll appear in FutureQuake’s Something Wicked. I’m the writer and Neil Roberts is the artist. Due out sometime in the Autumn.
http://www.futurequake.co.uk/fq/forums/index.php?showtopic=264&st=0&#entry10651
Watch this space.
by
Ghastly McNasty
Back from the Depths has always been interested in promoting new comic book ideas on the internet. We are currently looking for new comic book stories to appear in the Theatre of Terror. Do you have a new story we could showcase on this site? Need help raising awareness of your comic book skills?
With a regular fanbase of UK comic enthusiasts, Back from the Depths can help you get your work to the masses. We show weekly scans of old comics such as Eagle and everyones favourite horror comic Scream! You could see your work, showcased alongside these classics, here on this site.
We are mostly looking for horror comic strips but if you have the quality to make outstanding stories then please get in touch.
by
Ghastly McNasty
“What’s that thing?”
“A knife.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Descending.”
–The Raven (1935)
When you think of horror films from the 1930’s, the first thing that might come to mind is their historical value. After all, without the huge successes of the original Dracula and Frankenstein, horror movies would have been off to a slow start indeed, and we probably wouldn’t have the more modern classics that we take for granted today. No Night Of The Living Dead, no Alien, no Scream…a bleak prospect, indeed.
What else does 1930’s horror make you think of? They do have a certain glamour (refreshingly different after the endless fashion revivals of the Sixties and Seventies), the screen presence of greats like Karloff and Lugosi, and a particularly gleeful “full speed ahead” feeling. There’s none of the moral complexity and downbeat mood of, say, Forties horror, like Isle Of The Dead or The Body Snatcher.
You can also see the twisted reflections of the problems of the day in Thirties horror movies. The Depression drained people dry, just like Lugosi’s Dracula, and who wasn’t anxious about the latest Frankenstein Monster-like technological advances? (Looks like the Nord had a dark side.) These pleasures are mostly for students of that era, however.
The most attractive thing about these horrors from the 30s is just how fun they were. They comprise a separate little world of their own, an old-fashioned but thoroughly moderne world where you can be chased by zombies, mummies, vampires or man-made monsters, experimented on, stuffed and mounted in a glass case, sacrificed to Satan, and rescued by David Manners. And all depicted in the most tasteful Deco manner. No boring gore; the horrors were all left to your imagination. And isn’t the imagination sometimes the scariest thing of all?
It’s more than just the meeting of mad science and perennial terrors, however. These films all have a certain similar structure, and a cast of characters so familiar that they make any horror fan feel right at home. These films were the source for all the horror movie conventions we take for granted, which makes things predictable, but fun and satisfying.
Each film starts with our heroes, the Charming Young Couple. They are usually either newlyweds or engaged (although sometimes they meet during the course of the film, as in The Mummy). One thing’s for sure, though, it’s True Love, which is why their relationship endures all kinds of monsters.
If only real life were that simple…And as for charm, well, this couple are sometimes interesting as a reflection of the ideals of their time and place. But let’s face it; the audiences want to see the monster, not Madge Bellamy or David Manners.
The Charming Young Couple consists of the Monster Bait (her) and the Useless Hero. More about him in a moment.
Next, there’s the Wise Old Man. He alone knows of the threat posed by the monster, villain or force of nature, and combats the threat while trying to warn the others. Thanks to the Useless Hero, however, he sometimes has an uphill struggle.
Here’s an example from Dracula, when Van Helsing and Harker are at the lunatic asylum, trying to figure out who the vampire is:
- Van Helsing: “The vampire casts no reflection in the glass. That is why Dracula smashed the mirror.”
- Harker: “I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s something I’d expect one of the patients here to say!”
The Monster Bait usually wakes up to what’s happening, but the Useless Hero persists in his dangerous ignorance. (Hubby knows best, dear.) Here’s an exchange from “The Raven”, where Jean wakes up to see Bateman, the villain’s sidekick, sneaking into her room through a trapdoor in the floor:
- Jean: “Jerry, I saw a man coming up through the floor!”
- Jerry: “Darling, I can understand you imagining all sorts of things, but not a man coming up through the floor!”
And now we come to the good stuff: The monster, or villain, and his sidekick. (The monster and villain are not always one and the same, however. In Bride Of Frankenstein, the monster is portrayed in a very sympathetic way, and actually becomes the sidekick, whereas Dr. Pretorious is most definitely the villain.)
The villain is usually very charismatic as well as powerful, for example, Dr. Vollin, Dracula, Dr. Pretorius and Hjalmar Poelzig. Although he tends to be pretty one-dimensional, somehow this strengthens the character rather than detracting from him. As a rule, we don’t see much of his motivations, although Dr. Vollin from The Raven is one exception.
“When a man of genius is denied of his great love, he goes mad! His brain, instead of being clear to do his work, is tortured, so he begins to think of torture. Torture for those who have tortured him!”
This doesn’t explain all his villainy, though, because Dr. Vollin was into hobby torture before his ill-fated attraction to Jean.
If the villain has a sidekick, this character will usually have a change of heart, sometimes inspired by the kindness or beauty of the Monster Bait, which will cause him to double-cross the villain and allow the Charming Young Couple to escape.
Who can forget Bateman locking Dr.Vollin into the “room where the walls come together” in The Raven, or the Monster pulling the lever that destroys the lab at the end of Bride Of Frankenstein? (By the way, why did Dr. Pretorious install that lever? I’ve been in a few medical labs in my time, but I’ve yet to find one with a lever that will “blow us all to atoms!”)
And now, last and often least, we have the Painful Comedy Relief. “Bride of Frankenstein” is a perfect example. It has plenty of arch humor in each of the horrific scenes, beautifully incorporated, so why did James Whale include the unbearable Minnie (Una O’Connor)? Am I the only one who was waiting for her to become the next victim of the Monster?
The Black Cat also has two fairly painful “funny” characters, who both try to persuade the hero to visit their home towns, along with the hypochondriac Colonel from The Raven. (Personally, though, I quite like the party guests). The humor of a horror film always seems to work best when it’s a sly by-product of the horror, rather than put into a separate character or scene.
So there we have it–a set of fascinating horrors just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of guys and dolls. Let’s have a toast: “To a new world of Gods and Monsters!”
by
M.I.K.
Alrugo Entertainment is releasing the full movie of Italian Spiderman to the internet in 10 weekly installments from May 22nd and it will be available from MySpace, Youtube and Yahoo.
For those of you unfamiliar with this lost classic of Italian cinema, here’s the story behind it’s production, as related on Alrugo’s MySpace profile ; (sic throughout)…
“Alrugo Entertainment was founded in 1961 in Palermo, Italy by Orange Farming mogul Alfonso Alrugo. After collecting huge wealth in the citrus trade Alfonso decided to start a film production company that produced films that he felt “did the job”. Alfonso was very supportive of up and coming practitioners and helped to nurture the blossoming career’s of a spate of Italian Directors like Gianfranco Gatti, Massimilliano Buonatempi, Carlo Zoffa and of course Giacomo Dentibiachi.
Alrugo Entertainment began producing low budget, nudie cutie pictures such as Busto Busto (1961) and Sex Cops II (1962). During this period, Alfonso was to discover two men who would play a large role in the next part of his life, director Gianfraco Gatti and Actor Franco Franchetti. In 1964 Alrugo went into production of Gatti’s Opus, Italian Spiderman. Spiderman was a heavily adapted and abridged interpretation of a novel Gatti had read during a summer in Moldova entitled ‘Death Wears a Hat’. When applying for the option, however the Author felt Italian Spiderman held such little resemblance to his work that payment was not necessary and felt that his name should be distanced as far as possible form the production.
After three years of turbulent production and about 15 million dollars later (a sum unheard of for any production of the time) Italian Spiderman was finally completed in 1968. Even though Alrugo had survived the epic production period, a venture that Gatti described as “Opening the gates of hell” the company was in debt. There was no money left to distribute the picture, Alfonso pulled every last favour he had during the production process. In a desperate attempt to show Italian Spiderman to the world, Alfonso sent the only existing print across the atlantic on a cargo ship to a distributer friend of his in New York, the ship however, never reached it’s destination.
In the summer of 1969, Alfonso Alrugo closed the gates to Alrugo Entertainment and donned his orange picking glove once more. Gianfranco Gatti went on to direct hard core pornography and Franco Francheti died in a spear fishing accident. On Alfonso Alrugo’s dying wishes, his two Grandsons Vivaldi and Verdi Alrugo led an expeditioan to scour the Atlantic for the cargo ship carrying the only existing print of Italian Spiderman. On the 9th of January 2006, after four years at sea, they discovered the sunken vessle with the cans intact inside. In the excitement of this amazing discovery, Vivaldi and Verdi re-opened Alrugo Entertainment and spent two years restoring the full length print of Italian Spiderman from it’s water grave.
Vivaldi and Verdi believe that the internet is the best device to expose Italian Spiderman to the world. In November 07, they uploaded the Theatrical Trailer and in 2008, ten remastered excerpts form the feature will be roadcast for free over myspace, youtube, yahoo and other video hosting websites. Hopefully through the internet, the world will now have a chance to behold Alfonso Alrugo’s dream, Italian Spiderman.”
You can see the trailer for yourself here…
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