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Continuing with our annual Longbox Junk Halloween Horror party, let's keep on keepin' on with the spooky stuff, shall we? We've got another horror anthology comic on deck for this one.
This time I'm taking a look at something from what is probably my favorite NON DC/Marvel Publisher of the 1980s, Eclipse Comics. It's TALES OF TERROR! Let's do it!
TALES OF TERROR #4
Eclipse (1986)
COVER: John Bolton
THE COVER:
Our first Halloween entry this year sported a Richard Corben cover, and this one throws down with the great JOHN BOLTON! I'm feeling a little spoiled here, folks. Bolton is another long-time favorite from my younger days swiping my cousin's copies of Heavy Metal, until he caught me and beat my lily white ass for it. . .BUT I DIGRESS!
John Bolton is a MASTER painter. Not just a great comic artist, but a great artist period. His work is supremely detailed and I've rarely seen anything from Bolton that isn't almost perfect. This cover is no exception. It tells a full story without a single word. A strange noise. . .an intruder waits. . .the monsters aren't always supernatural. Damn, I love a good John Bolton painting.
THE STORIES:
Four stories here. Looking at the creator credits, I see Bruce Jones, Chuck Wagner, Gray Morrow, and Timothy Truman! I can tell before I read a single word that this is going to solid. With names like that, how can it NOT be? Let's get in there!
Last Laugh
SCRIPT: Bruce Jones
PENCILS: Gray Morrow
INKS: Gray Morrow
Harvey Bems is a dour man with a dead end job. Constantly laughed at until he can't even stand the sound of laughter. He believes his big chance is coming with a large inheritance from his uncle, but is surprised to find out that he's been cut from the will in favor of a long lost relative that's recently been discovered.
Bems cracks and decides to kill the long-lost relative. . .under the cover of a maniac killer that has been prowling the streets of the city. He buys a knife and goes to investigate his victim. To his surprise, Mary Jo is kind to him and accepts his offer to go to dinner.
Bems quickly becomes infatuated and asks to marry her during their first date. She informs Bems that she's already married and almost drives him mad with her laughter!
Bems has had enough! He decides to go through with killing her like he'd originally planned.
But as Bems stalks his victim, he hears her scream! Rushing toward the sound, he discovers her dead. The police quickly arrive and find Harvey over the dead body, holding a knife. He tries to escape, but is shot by the police.
As he lays dying, he sees Mary Jo's friend from the bookstore she worked at. He realizes that SHE'S the killer. He dies laughing. . .knowing that if he'd just waited, he could have been a millionaire.
THE REVIEW:
We're starting off with a pretty good Golden Age throwback. A humble man with the world against him driven to madness and then JUST missing his chance at good fortune in the end. It's a story that would be right at home on a Twilight Zone episode or a 1950s EC comic.
Gray Morrow's clean, classic comic art fits the story very nicely, contributing a lot to the Golden Age feel of it. Unfortunately the sloppy, somewhat garish colors don't do his art justice. It's not just here, though. The bad coloring brings down every story in this issue.
All in all, a good start to this one. Let's see what's next!
Bear-Bear
SCRIPT: Beppe Sabatini
PENCILS: Cara Sherman
INKS: Timothy Truman
A mother tells another expectant mother the harrowing tale of the night she fought death itself to protect her children. It starts when the monitor attached to her newborn alerted her that the child was having problems breathing. Acting quickly the mother gives the baby CPR and saves his life.
The relieved mother finds a strange, dead-eyed red teddy bear she didn't remember buying in the child's crib. . .
She realizes something strange is going on when she keeps finding the bear in the baby's crib. She tries throwing it out, but still it returns! And THEN, to her horror, she sees the bear walking by itself. . .moving into the baby's room.
It looks into her eyes and she somehow understands that the bear is a spirit of death!
A terrifying battle through the dark house between the mother and the bear ensues! The mother protects the baby, so the bear goes to her other children. They struggle, the battle goes one way and then the next. Finally, the mother destroys the bear once and for all with a lawn mower! It's over. . .or IS it?
Ever since that night, the mother has dreaded the return of the bear. SHE now sleeps with a monitor attached to warn her of its coming.
THE REVIEW:
Okay, not a bad story. It's left ambiguous whether or not the events actually happened or they were all in the mother's mind as some sort of post partum psychosis. . .which hits a little harder considering the current wall to wall news coverage of Lindsay Clancy, a woman accused of killing her own children under the effects of post partum psychosis.
I'm not commenting on Clancy's guilt or innocence, I'm just saying that for ME this story hits harder because of the ongoing current public discussion regarding post partum mental health. It's strange to find myself reading a story like this at this time.
That aside, the story is tight, suspenseful, and well-drawn, with dark and nightmarish inks. It suffers from the same coloring issues that haunt this entire issue (maybe not as much, due to the very dark inking), but other than that, this is a pretty good little chiller.
NEXT!
Bubby
SCRIPT: Timothy Truman
PENCILS: Timothy Truman
INKS: Timothy Truman
A young boy builds a scarecrow for a friend. One night it magically comes to life to protect the boy from a strange creature that attacks him. Nobody believes the kid, but he knows the truth. That's it, that's the whole story.
The End.
THE REVIEW:
When I saw Timothy Truman on the creator credits for this issue, I was pretty hyped. Truman is EASILY one of my top ten favorite comic artists. . .probably top five.
Unfortunately his contribution to the issue is a little. . .lacking. He did the inks on the previous story, which definitely added to the quality of it, and he provided writing and art on this "story", which is really more of a two page vignette than an actual story.
The "story" itself is extremely light and barely even there. Truman's art is reliably great, but this tiny little taste of Truman just makes me want more. It's a bit disappointing.
MOVING ALONG!
Bag Limit
SCRIPT: Chuck Wagner
PENCILS: Mike Hoffman
INKS: Mike Hoffman
A year has passed since Craig's best friend, Frank, was shot and killed during a hunting accident, but Frank is still tormented by what he's done. WAS it an accident, or did he unconsciously murder his best friend?
Suddenly, Craig hears gunshots outside his home! He finds his beloved hunting dog dead! And then more shots! Craig discovers the bloody body of his girl, Marge. . .a woman he and Frank had both wanted before Frank's untimely death.
Craig now realizes that somehow, Frank has returned from the grave for revenge!
The police arrive to find Craig standing over Marge's body. They haul him off to jail, but later that night the spectral form of Frank visits Craig in his cell!
Craig demands that Frank kill him, but Frank tells him he can't. He's reached his bag limit. As the specter vanishes, Craig can't help but laugh. Frank always WAS an honest hunter. He'll have to wait until next season to finish things. . .
The End.
THE REVIEW:
This one's another pretty good Golden Age horror throwback story. . .revenge from beyond the grave (with a little twist). It would fit just fine in any EC horror comic. It's not a masterpiece, but you know what? It doesn't have to be. It's just a fun little horror story.
CONCLUSION
Tales of Terror #4 is a winner! There's nothing GREAT here, but it's a solid horror comic from start to finish. There's some coloring issues all the way through, and the little two page Timothy Truman story is a little disappointing, but other than that, this was certainly a fun read for Halloween.
Like a lot of 80s horror comics that are getting harder and harder to find in the bargain bins, you'll need to dip into the regular back issue stacks for some Tales of Terror if you want a copy. It doesn't look like they were ever collected, so you'll have to hunt down the individual issues.
I'd say it would be worth the hunt. There's only 13 issues and this series is PACKED with talent. Other issues feature John Bolton, Timothy Truman (in better stories than the one here), Larry Elmore, John K. Snyder III, Ron Wagner, Graham Nolan, Scott Hampton, Sam Keith, Stephen R. Bissette, and MORE!
That's a lot of great talent for a random 13 issue late Bronze Age (or early Copper Age, if you're one of those people who break it down like that) horror comic from an indie publisher. Hunt 'em down, horror fans!
Up next. . . let's keep this Halloween party going with MORE 1980s anthology horror!
Awww. . .YEAH! Be there or be square!
