Reading Room / Tales Twice Told WEIRD "Deadman's Ship"

For a change, this week's entry into Tales Twice Told begins with the re-done version by artist Enrique Cristobal...

...from Eerie Publications' Weird V8N4 (1974).

Though the scripter of this re-working is unknown, he/she/they are likely the story's original author, who is probably...nope, not gonna tell you now.

You'll have to come back Thursday to find out!

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Reading Room / Tales Twice-Told TERROR TALES "Horror Bugs"

Last Tuesday, We Presented a Frightening Future by Simon & Kirby HERE!
Now, We Present Another Artist's Version of That Same Story!

Illustrated by Antonio Reynoso, this retelling from Eerie Publications' Terror Tales V5N6 (1973) of Simon & Kirby's "Slaughter-House" shows the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) of editor Carl Burgos.

• Find an old story from a now-defunct publisher that hadn't been reprinted since the 1950s.
• Use the original script almost verbatim, usually making a couple of changes in the opening and closing narratives and assigning it to one of the team of talented South American artists hired to work at rates lower than US illustrators!
• "Update" it, making technology and aliens look like what tv/movies were currently showing.
• And, in this case, making one of the primary characters in the originally all-White cast a Black guy!

Curiously, though most of these reworked versions were reprinted throughout the publisher's various titles, usually a year after the previous publication, this story was only run once!

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Spooky Space Force Saturdays STRANGE GALAXY "Space Monsters"

Last Saturday, we posted the final adventure of Kenton of the Star Patrol...

Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

...except, it both was and wasn't the final tale!

The script was used, almost verbatim (but with a renamed lead character), for a new story in the first issue of the short-lived 1970s b/w magazine Strange Galaxies!

All the other names, including the female lead, Maeve, and various locations, remained the same...

In fact, all the stories in Eerie Publications' Strange Galaxy V1N8 (which was the first issue), were re-dos of earlier stories from various defunct comic companies!

I guess they figured that no one would remember the original 1950s tales in 1971...

The rewriter/adaptor is unknown, but could be editor Carl Burgos, who created, among others, the Golden Age Human Torch and the first Silver Age Captain Marvel (the android who said "Split"!).

The stories don't have individual art credits, but according to the Weird World of Eerie Publications by Mike Howlett, the illustrator is one of the artists who were regular contiburors to the Eerie Publications line, Oscar Fraga.

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Spooky Space Force Saturdays WEIRD WORLDS "Space Vampires"

How did this tale from Avon's Strange Worlds #4 (1951)...

...end up being used (almost verbatim) in Eerie Publications' Weird Worlds #V1N10 (1970)?

In the early 1970s, Eerie Publications used photostats and negatives from defunct comics companies as source material for their b/w magazine line.

About a year in, they started using South American artists eager to break into the US comics market and American artists like Dick Ayers and Chic Stone who were losing work as the Silver Age ended and comics companies cut back their lines, to re-do old stories with a more contemporary style.

Some illustrators totally-redid the art, using new "camera angles" and clothing/technology designs reflecting contemporary tastes.

In this particular case, artist Cirilo Munoz just lightboxed and re-inked the existing Wally Wood/Joe Orlando artwork!

Editor Carl (Golden Age Human Torch) Burgos rewrote the opening captions and changed the hero's name, but otherwise left Gardner Fox's original script intact.

The same premise was utilized (even more graphically) almost 35 years later in the 1985 film LifeForce, based on the 1976 novel Space Vampires by Colin Wilson.

Want to bet Wilson read "Vampires of the Void" as a kid or "Space Vampires" as an adult?

Next Week: More Spooky Space Force Action!

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Reading Room: WEIRD "Frankenstein: the Monster's Story"

Here's a one-off tale taking elements of several of the Frankenstein Monster's many incarnations...

...and combining them into a fascinating tale!

Written by the magazine's associate editor Roger Elwood and illustrated by it's editor/art director Carl Burgos (who created comics' first android hero, Timely's Golden Age Human Torch), this story from Eerie Publications' Weird V1N10 (1965) is one of the few stories (after Mary Shelly's original) that doesn't leave the door open for a sequel!

Trivia: despite the numbering, this is the first issue of the magazine!

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Reading Room / Tales Twice Told WEIRD "Thing in a Box"

On Tuesday, we posted the original 1950s version of this tale, entitled "Death on the Earth-Mars Run!"!

Here's the re-titled and re-illustrated, but not re-written (except for the opening caption) 1970s version!

You'll note the rich Martian and his adopted Venusian daughter are much more "alien" here than in the 1950s art.

In addition, the ship, technology, and clothing are more in line with late-1960s/early 1970s visualizations of such things.
(No more capes and other fashion elements so prevalent in Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon!)

Sadly, artist Antonio Reynoso's storytelling style isn't quite as sharp as original artist Everett Raymond Kinstler's, with the captions covering story elements the artist doesn't quite get across in this story from Eerie Publications' Weird V6N1 (1972).
As in the case of the vast majority of Eerie Publications' comic magazines, all the stories in this issue were either direct reprints of 1950s comic stories or redrawn (and re-titled) versions of 1950s comic stories.
Remember, at that time, there was no Grand Comics Database...or even a World Wide Web the average reader could access to figure out where the stories, from defunct publishers, originally-appeared!
Nor were there even reference books (like the one conveniently-listed below) which contained such minutia for the serious aficionado of graphic arts!

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Weird Indexes of Eerie Publications