BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY ARCHIVES VOL. 5 (Dark Horse, 2011; Hardcover)
Collects
Boris
Karloff Tales of Mystery Nos.
25-32 (originally published by Gold Key Comics, cover dates March,
1969- November, 1970)
Writers:
Dick Wood and other, unidentified writers
Artists:
George Wilson (covers), Sal Trapani, Art Saaf, Mike Roy, John
Celardo, Joe Certa, Frank Bolle, Bob Jenney, Oscar Novelle, Luis
Dominguez, Tom Gill, Jack Sparling, Alberto Giolitti, Ed Robbins, and
other, unidentified artists (possibly Till
Goodan)
While
not as edgy as the Warren Magazines of the day (Creepy and
Eerie), Boris
Karloff Tales of Mystery
is still a fun, solid dose of homogenized newsstand friendly
mystery/horror comics. Fans of DC titles of the era like House
Of Mystery
and the like will enjoy this book. Those weaned on Saw
films who think that Crossed
isn't edgy enough...well cripes, you've got bigger problems than not
liking this book!
The
stories all tread the same familiar ground, featuring ghosts,
monsters, lost species/civilizations, haunted houses, and curses.
Some of the edgier ones have swamp monsters and even zombie sailors.
Boris Karloff plays the role of host and narrator, appearing in the
splash page and final panel of every story, as well as popping up
during the story like Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone.
Speaking of which, now that Dynamite has the license to that property
I hope that we see reprints of Gold Key's 1960s The Twilight Zone
comic book. I had hoped that Dark Horse would do them while they were
cranking these books out a couple of years ago, but no dice. Dark
Horse has seemingly abandoned their Gold Key Archives, since there is
only one more volume in this line. It's a shame, since the series ran
for a good long while afterward.
The painted covers by George Wilson are incredible. Painted covers for magazines and book covers are a lost art. While I am not anti-technology when it comes to computer aided artwork, I admire the skin and bones craftmaship of hand painting and drawing. There is no cheating and it is harder to correct errors. Also, art supplies were more expensive, so these cats had to be good if they wanted to make any money.
Issue
25's Death Is The Hunter is a cool story about Lord Jason De
Wolfe, an 18th century English huntsman who often ruined
farmer's crops during his hunts. He casually murders Silas Krane's
son. Krane's grandmother was a witch, and the old black arts run in
the family. Silas ends up casting a spell on De Wolfe, changing him
into a wolf-like creature...which his own hunting party kills,
mounting the head on his wall with his other conquests.
Issue 26's The Petrified Creature has really unique artwork. Listing creator credits was sadly not an industry wide practice even at this point in time. This book does not list the artist, while my beloved Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org) credits Till Goodan. It is possible that the artist was identified after this book was published. Even the GCD doesn't have any information as to who wrote most of these stories. It is sad that so much of the history of our hobby is lost. That same issue's Beast Of The Bayou is a fun “swamp monster” riff predating DC's Swamp Thing. The original swamp monster in comics was The Heap back in the 1940s. Issue 28 has another swamp monster story, this one called Creature Of The Swamp.
My
favorite regular artist in this book is John
Celardo, particularly his work on When
Children Speak. That tale is about a
boy sent to live with his aunt and uncle after his parents die. Life
on the farm is boring, so he designs robotic monster suits that “look
just like the ones in the woods”. While many of these stories are
fairly predictable, the craft and execution are all effective. Other
favorites of mine is this book are issue 32's Eyes
Of The Monster and The
Goddess Of Greed.
These stories are all fun escapist reads. While this series didn't set the world of comics on fire, sometimes reading something for the sheer pleasure of being entertained is enough. You could certainly do much, much worse than this book. I'm just sad that the sales of these Archives weren't strong enough for the line to be completed. Icv2 showed that only 421 copies of this book shipped during the month of it's release (March, 2011).
Junk
Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5.
The
OCD zone- Dark Horse Archives are really nice books.
DVD-style
Extras included in this book: Foreward by
Sir Christopher Lee (1 page)
Introduction
by Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1 page)
Linework
and Color restoration rating: 4.75 out of 5. There are a handful
of pages with slight pixelation, but the restoration is about as
tight as it can be. I would say that this was scanned from the
original issues rather than film. The printing on the original issues
was godawful crap, so that's another reason why things look “rough”
at times- because the source material was rough when originally
published. The color palette is faithfully maintained. I'll leave it
to colorists to philosophize about whether there should be 10% more
cyan here, 25% less there, so on and so forth. It looks good to me,
it is faithful enough to the original comic books, and it looks
worlds better than the original issues.
Paper
rating: 5 out of 5. Thick semi-glossy coated stock with that
sweet smell that the Chinese sweat shop printing presses achieve by
using only virgin Amazon rainforest trees.
Binding
rating: 5 out of 5. Beautiful Smyth sewn binding. The book block
flexes a little in the casing but the book lays almost entirely flat.
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