Reading Room SIR LEO "End of a Legend"

When Last We Left Our Hero...

...Victorian-era adventurer Sir Leo Wooldrich encounters a Lovecraftian-type being lurking in the appropriately-named Black Lake...

This two-part tale from New English Library's Dracula #1 & #2 by writer/artist Jose Bea and co-writer Luis Vigil was the only Sir Leo story published in Warren's HTF Dracula anthology from the early 1970s which reprinted #1-6.

The series continued in Dracula #7 through #12, which have never been reprinted in the US, so most American fans have never seen them...unless they keep checking this blog, where we'll be re-presenting them before Halloween.

Reading Room SIR LEO "Thing from the Lake"

For Halloween, we're presenting the 1970s adventures of...

...a Victorian monster-hunter done in a wild, semi-psychedelic style by Jose Bea (The pen-name for writer/illustrator Jose Maria Bea Font).

You'll find out if a lead projectile will stop the creature (and if it doesn't...what will?) in our next exciting entry!

This first part of a two-part tale from Dracula #1 (1971) was co-written by Luis Vigil.
The Sir Leo series was published irregularly in Dracula (1971), a 12-issue partworks magazine* by Great Britain's New English Library, the first two Sir Leo tales made their American debut in Warren Publishing's HTF Dracula TPB in 1972 which reprinted #1-#6 of the British Dracula's run.
The remaining tales from #7-#12 have never been published in the US.
*Partworks magazines are a limited series issued from weekly, fortnightly, or monthly.
They usually run 12-24 issues for each volume.
When the final issue in a volume is published, the publishers offer a wraparound cover to make the complete set into a hardbound book. 
The buyer is offered the option to bind the magazines themselves or send the set to the publisher who professionally-binds the mags and sends the bound volume back to the customer.
This concept is extremely popular in Europe, but has never caught on in America, despite numerous attempts.

Reading Room PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Quest for Blood" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

...(actually we haven't seen this, since there's no scene like it in the book.

Nor is there a cloaked, sinisterly-snarling vampire!

But it's a great Neal Adams/Dick Giordano cover, eh?)

Escaping the scientific blood-suckers who inhabit the Dome in the center of a devastated Manhattan, our four surviving astronauts team up with the primitive, but human Street People.

Rigging a stolen aircraft as a booby-trap, they destroy two pursuing ships sent to recapture them.

There's only one more, never-reprinted issue of this series from 40 years ago, and you'll see it in a couple of weeks.

But the sci-fi scares continue...tomorrow!

Reading Room PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Quest for Blood" Part 1

In the 1970s, science fiction writers thought the 21st century was going to be rather dystopic...

...as this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Planet of Vampires #2 (1975) demonstrates!

It's always fun to end a chapter with a BANG!

But LOTS more action awaits us...

...TOMORROW!

With the departure of writer/co-creator Larry Hama, John Albano (Jonah Hex) stepped in to the scripting slot, working off Hama's basic plot for the issue as well as several pages already laid out by penciler/co-creator Pat Broderick.

It'a a pretty good job, making the transition pretty seamless between the two writers.

Be here tomorrow, as the astronauts and street people take the fight back to the "domies"!

Trespassers Will Be EATEN!

Trick-or-Treaters Will be Licked! 

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Order now or you'll be baying at the moon with regret!