Madhouse
#95-97 (Red Circle Productions/ Fawcett/ Archie Comics, cover dates
September, 1974- January, 1975)
Writers:
Don Glut, Marv Channing, John Jacobson, Bruce Jones, Frank X Doyle,
Stan Goldberg, and Ralph Alphonso
Artists:
Vicente Alcazar, Doug Wildey, Carlos Pino, Jesse Santos, Sal
Amendola, Bruce Jones, Frank Thorne, Gray Morrow, and Al McWilliams
A
pox upon you, Facebook comic book groups! Folks post covers to
issues, and last Hallowe'en a friend of mine posted the cover to #97
(the one on the bottom). I took to ComicBookDB and then to eBay,
patiently bidding on copies within a predetermined price range. It
took me 9 months but I obtained all three for under $20.00. I have
also quit all of those groups to avoid further temptation. I saved
these comics for my Hallowe'en sabbatical (I took the whole week off)
and tore through them. I love the Bronze Age of comics, and these are
about as good as what DC was doing at the time in House Of Mystery
and their other assorted titles. The series starts out strong with
#95 but each issues gets a little weaker, with the series morphing
back into a humor title with #98.
This
would make a pretty cool collected edition. All three issues total 74
pages of content including covers and text story pages, a bit thin
for a trade paperback. Red Circle, which was Archie's Horror/ Sci-Fi/
superhero imprint, also published other Horror comics during this
time period: Chilling Adventures In Sorcery #3-5, and Red
Circle Sorcery #6-11. Given Archie's runaway success with
Afterlife With Archie and now Chilling Adventures Of
Sabrina, maybe it is time for Archie to revisit this material
with two trade paperbacks or one deluxe hardcover. You could compile
these issues with Chilling Adventures In Sorcery #3-5 in one
and then do Red Circle Sorcery #6-11 in the other for
softcovers or all of them in one deluxe Archive-style hardcover.
There are many notable creators who worked on these issues and it
would go over pretty well, methinks.
Junk
Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5.
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