Tag: Twilight Zone Comics

Pop Culture Squad > Twilight Zone Comics
With Further Ado #163: Hosting Halloween

With Further Ado #163: Hosting Halloween

Posted on by Ed Catto

Halloween is seemingly right around the corner. There’s a lot of candy in the stores. Of course, we know that this is all part of a pantry loading strategy. That’s consumer-package-ese for a plan to make you buy more than you need right now.  In other words, the candy companies want households across America to buy their Halloween candy ‘early’, then give in to temptation and eat it, and then rush back to store to buy more candy to give out to trick or treaters.

Of course, in the this crazy world of delta variants and anti-vaxxers, it’s hard to predict just what will happen this Halloween.

I can safely predict that (1) I won’t be buying bags of Halloween Candy for trick-or-treaters (We always give away comics.) and (2) I’ll be reading a spooky story or two.

And in that… vein, let’s turn the spotlight on a few wonderful comics I recently rescued from bargain boxes from various comic shops.  And the theme for this week is Horror Hosts.

Spooky radio shows and comics have been using Horror Hosts to introduce, or queue up, creepy tales for years and years. They typically don’t engage in the story itself but rather just make a few ghastly puns and set the stage for a story. The fine of art of horror hosting is almost a lost art, I’m afraid.

Do You Believe in… Ghosts ?

This issue of DC’s long-running Ghosts touts the fact that is the 10th anniversary of the title (with 27 Spine cracking pages), but even cheesy sales copy can’t keep you from admiring the brilliant Joe Kubert cover.

The horror host for this one is a bit of a puzzler. He’s called Squire Shade, but he seems to be an almost total rip-off of that perennial Hawkman foe, The Gentleman Ghost. In some issues Squire Shade has a portly girth, but in this issue he could’ve been a ….dead ringer… for the confounding arch nemesis of the Winged Wonder. Continue reading “With Further Ado #163: Hosting Halloween” →

With Further Ado #030: Twilight Zone Comics – Part 2

With Further Ado #030: Twilight Zone Comics – Part 2

Posted on by Ed Catto

There’s that old saying about imitation as the sincerest form of flattery.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the Twilight Zone, and I am focusing on that show, and Rod Serling, as it will all be a part of the 44 annual Ithaca Comic Convention.  My focus has expanded, and now I’m even taking a look at competitive, and or derivative, properties.

In the world of this particular niche – Twilight Zone type comics – I’m finding that imitation goes hand-in-hand with the notion of copy degradation. There’s less use of the actual Xerox machines today, but you understand the concept: every time you make a copy of a copy it tends to lose something. That’s exactly what I’m finding with comics series similar to Twilight Zone comics – copies of copies tend to lose something.

The Outer Limits was a science fiction anthology show from the Golden Age of Television. It was ushered in right about the time that The Twilight Zone was being ushered out by CBS. Despite scripts by top-notch writers (Harlan Ellison, Robert Towne, Joseph Stefano, etc.) and some great acting (Robert Culp, Jill Haworth, etc.), this series is often remembered as an also-ran to The Twilight Zone.  Continue reading “With Further Ado #030: Twilight Zone Comics – Part 2” →