July 7th, 2008 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Blah, Comic Scans |

Curtis Bronson Meets The Snake Mummy (part two) / Cursitor Doom

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.