Tales Twice Told WEIRD WORLDS "Creature"

What happens when you take a 1950s comic story, and redo the art...

...but re-use the original dialogue and captions...a couple of decades later?
Read for yourself...

With a script taken almost verbatim from the (then) 20 year-old tale "Lost Kingdom of Althala" (which we showed you Tuesday), this story from Eerie Publications' Weird Worlds V1N10 (1970) had a complete redo on the art by Argentine illustrator Oscar Fraga, whose work in the American comics market was exclusively for Eerie Publications and consisted solely of re-illustrating 1950s stories!

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Tales Twice Told STRANGE WORLDS "Lost Kingdom of Athala"

Here's a tale that would make a great "popcorn" CGI action flick!

It's hokey, doesn't make much sense, but boy, it's loaded with action and it looks great!

Written by Gardner Fox, penciled by Joe Orlando & Wally Wood, and inked by Wood, this fast-paced story from Avon's Strange Worlds #4 (1951), would make a great Saturday afternoon flick, thanks to current state-of-the-art special effects!

EXTRA: Here's the b/w inside cover for this issue, which featured an illustrated preview of all the stories in the issue by Wally Wood.

Note the heavy use of "craftint" texturing which Wood used to create a distinctive "look" for his art...

The script was re-used, almost verbatim, in 1970 by Eerie Publications, but the artwork for the retelling was nowhere near as good.

You'll see that version on Thursday!

Lunar Reading Room / Tales Twice Told STRANGE WORLDS "A Nation is Born"

Here's the original Golden Age version of a Bronze Age story...

..we ran on Tuesday!

Illustrated by Golden Age journeyman Rafael Astarita, this tale appeared in Avon's Strange Worlds #4 (1951) and was reprinted in IW's Strange Planets #9 (1959).

It was then re-illustrated, with only minor changes to the script (including a re-titling), in Eerie Publications' Strange Galaxy V1N8 (1971) as we showed on Tuesday.

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Lunar Reading Room / Tales Twice Told STRANGE GALAXY "Moon is Red"

In the late 1960s-early 1970s, numerous b/w comic magazines popped up...

...to publish risque older material the Comics Code Authority banned from color comic books from the mid-1950s onward!

Despite being drawn in 1970, this tale from Eerie Publications' Strange Galaxy #V1N8 (1971) has the feel of a 1950s tale, which isn't surprising since Eerie both reprinted stories from defunct publishers when they could find photostats/printing film or re-illustrated stories using old scripts nearly verbatim when they couldn't.
In fact, this story's script is adapted from a tale in Avon's Strange Worlds #4 (1951) called "A Nation is Born", which we'll re-present Thursday so you can compare them!
BTW, this issue, despite being #8, was actually the first issue under that title.
What it was before then is unknown, since the publisher did numerous titles in various categories including astrology, romance, crime, etc.

"Oswal" was the pen-name of Osvaldo Walter Viola, an Argentinean writer/artist who began his career in the early 1960s creating Argentine's first super-hero, Sónoman.

His only American comics work was for Eerie Publications' titles.

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Tales Twice-Told BLACK MAGIC "Screaming Doll!"

You Saw This Tale on Tuesday...

...to be more precise, you saw a re-illustrated version of the same script!

This is the first, never-reprinted, rendering of the story!

Illustrated by Bill Benulis, and scripted by a currently-unknown writer (Though it could be Simon & Kirby Studio bosses Joe Simon and/or Jack Kirby) this story from Prize's Black Magic V4N4 (1954) has some oddly-unique attributes!

It's only 5 pages, when most of the stories are 6-8 pages.

(The re-drawn version is 6 pages!)

There's no half or full-page splash panel, though almost all Black Magic stories (except for one or two-pagers) have them!

Was the original story condensed/re-edited for space or content?

At the time (early 1954), there was a rising rage against comics in general and horror comics in particular due to Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent witch-hunt!

Sadly, we'll never know...

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Tales Twice-Told WITCHES TALES "Thing That Screamed!"

Once More, We Present the Re-Drawn  Version of a "Tale Twice-Told" First...

...because it is a total re-visualization of the original story!

In fact, this version from Eerie Publications' Witches Tales V6N6 (1974) by Alberto Macagno is so visually-different, it's a full page longer, even though the script hasn't been altered!
But the pacing and the emphasis on gore are quite different...as you'll see on Thursday!

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Tales Twice-Told STRANGE GALAXY "Vampires from Dimension 'X' "

 We Have Already Seen...

...this exact story, but presented, in color, by a different illustrator, who did it almost 20 years earlier!

Inspired by the success of Warren Publications' b/w horror magazines (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella), schlock publisher Myron Fass dropped his line of poorly-selling color comics and decided to do a line of b/w horror magazines uncensored by the Comics Code Authority.

Though some of the material was pure reprint of b/w stats and photo negatives from defunct comics companies like Avon, Fawcett, and Farrell, Fass' supply of them was limited.

So he had new material produced based on stories in printed comics from those same out-of-business companies, employing South American artists who worked for lower rates than American or European artists the major companies used!

Illustrated by Argentinian artist Antonio Reynoso, this re-telling of Tuesday's story was, itself, reprinted several times throughout the Eerie Publications line after it's premiere in Strange Galaxy V1N11 (1971), though I suspect Reynoso was paid only for its' initial publication!
Eerie Publications continued from 1969 to 1980, when the birth of the Direct Market and comic book stores (who didn't carry the Eerie Publications titles) doomed it to diminishing sales.

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