Nightmare #21

This issue of Nightmare features a cover by Jose Miralles and is cover dated October 1974. Unfortunately we're back to another reprint dominated issue (two in a row now for Nightmare), with only the first story being a new one.

Said new story kicks us off, with "Let Her Rot in Hell", by Al Hewetson (story) and Jose Cardona (art). A man is sentenced to a night in the Cardona prison. The man begs the judge for anything else, but is taken away. A young woman is then brought before him and also sentenced to the prison. Once inside, she wonders why the man before her was so frightened. When the man is let out he begs to be kept there, but when they free him he instead jumps to his death. The woman is then brought into the cell, which seems normal. But later that night a vampire appears and bites her neck, turning her into one. As the guards come to free her the next morning she begs to not let them leave, to expose her to the sunlight. But they don't listen, so like the man before her she jumps to her death. This is a fairly strong story, with a good twist. Cardona's art is well done, as usual.

"Let Her Rot in Hell"

Next is "Valley of Blood" by Chuch McNaughton (story) and Jack Katz/Frank Giacoia (art), from Psycho #2. A couple, Bart and Valerie head to a mysterious temple in the Himalayas. On the way they are warned by a man, Dargos, about a vampire castle and find a dead vampire skeleton in the ruins of the temple. After getting into a car accident, Valerie is found to need a blood transfusion and gets one from Dargos. The two of them then disappear. Suddenly vampire attacks from a pair of vampires start occurring. Bart eventually comes across the vampire woman, staking her and Valier turns back to human, dying. Dargos then appears and attacks him.

Next is "The Cosmos Strain" by Steve Stern (story) and Mike Kaluta (art) from Nightmare #6. The story features the starship Parnassus, which travels the universe, studying a contagion that has destroyed all life on the planet Medallion. The scientist Broome, his assistant Zork and the robot Darukk investigate, heading to the planet where Zork mistakenly lets out the contagion and Broome is killed. Zork and Darukk realize the only thing to do is use the Sterilibomb, blowing up the planet, and killing them.

"The Cosmos Strain"

Fourth is "Comes the Stalking Monster!" by Tom Sutton (story) and Tom Sutton/Syd Shores (art) from Psycho #4. Dr. Aleister Kohner is obsessed with the occult and along with his girlfriend Erica summons the demon Asmodeus in a pentagram. Asmodeus agrees to teach him the knowledge of the ancients, which he does. However over several weeks Al finds himself growing weaker, his hair losing color and falling out. He summons Asmodeus who reveals that radiation has been emitting from the pentagram. Erica, having worn a pentagram necklace is unharmed and at story end is revealed to be the master of Asmodeus.

Next is "Sleep" by Steve Stern (story) and Jeff Jones (art), originally from Psycho #6. This story takes place in space on a space pod where a Doctor Zim hypnotizes his assistant, Robinson. He then has Robinson speak of what he senses an hour from now (at which point Zim expects him to have been dead from an injury) so he can find out about life after death. As the hour approaches, Zim realizes the horrible truth though, that they will both be dead as their space pod has approached the sun! Jones' art is quite good here, and this was a fairly good sci-fi story.

"Sleep"

Next is "Corpse by Computer!" by Robert Kanigher (story) and Doug Wildey (art), from Nightmare #6. Millionaire inventor Phillip Talbot has created the supercomputer Debbie, which operates many things in his mansion. Upon bringing a woman home with him, Debbit kills her with a mechanically controlled knight. Debbie desires Phillip as her companion and won't let him have anyone else. When Phillip starts a relationship with the psychiatrist Karen Benton, Debbie kills her too. Phillip has had enough and tries to delete Debbie's memory, only for her to electrocute him to death.

We wrap up with "Sand Castles" by Ed Fedory (story) and Pablo Marcos (art), originally from Psycho #6. A pilot is transporting two criminals, Benny and Tony, to Mexico, when their plane's engine explodes, forcing them down to the desert sands below. Thus starts a long journey to civilization. With their water running out, the pilot kills Tony, then fills the canteens with his blood. So it probably shouldn't come as that big a surprise pages later when the pilot reveals to Benny that he is a vampire! he kills Benny, filling his canteen with his blood but the days continue to pass and the blood congeals, becoming undrinkable. The pilot eventually finds a castle however and makes his way inside, finding Benny and Tony's ghosts waiting and they throw him down a chasm into hell. Yet again a Skywald story has a rather confusing ending though as our last panel shows their destroyed plane, with several skeletons there making one wonder if any of what happened was real. This was a fairly good story (although a bit too drawn out) and I don't mind them mixing things up at the end, I just wish it was more definitive on what was real.

Scream #2

Jose Miralles provides the cover for this issue of Scream, featuring the character Lady Satan. It is cover dated October 1973.

First is Lady Satan in "The Macabre Beginning" by Al Hewetson (story) and Ricardo Villamonte (art). A young woman, Anne Jason, is brought by friends to a tourist attraction in Salem, but is then grabbed by some Satanists, who claim she's the Black Queen of Salem Witches, returned from the dead. Anne shocks them by revealing that she is in possessed by her. The Satanists reveal it was all an act, but she considers things real and calls forth for Satan, to marry him. Around this time Anne is able to repossess her body and not wanting to be married to Satan, flees and jumps off a cliff to her death. This is a bit of a confusing origin story, and VIllamonte's art is rather mediocre

Next is "I Was a Vampire for Hire" by Al Hewetson (story) and Felipe Dela Rosa (art). A man named Watson comes across an advertisement for Stanley, a pretend vampire for hire! Watson hires him to dress up as a vampire and smash through a window at an upcoming party he is holding. Stanley does as he was hired, but it has horrendous results as people freak out and Watson's father in law dies of a heart attack! Stanley finds out that it was all a plot schemed by Watson though, as he is set to inherit money due to his father in law's death. Stanley decides to get revenge, putting on a mask of the father in law and pretending to be him at the funeral, then reveals himself to be alive during it. This causes Watson to blab out that this was all a scheme both he and his father in law cooked up to enable them to easily transfer some holdings. Watson and the others demand to know where the father in law is, as he was only unconscious. Stanley reveals that he hid him in a frozen body compartment in the morgue, and he's now dead for real. Some pretty good twists in this story, A rare Skywald story that ends up not having any actual supernatural element to it.

"I Was a Vampire for Hire"

Next is "Gothic Fairy Tales: The Thing in the Black Dress" by Al Hewetson (story) and Jesus Suso Rego (art). This may be the first in a series, perhaps modeled after EC Comic's Grim Fairy Tales? We get another brief feature in this series at the end of the issue. In this story, an aging woman, angry that she can no longer compete with younger women decides to move to the village of Garg in Transylvania, hoping there she can regain a powerful position in society. She gets a bit of attention, but not as much as another, far younger and more attractive woman. Our protagonist decides she wants to get rid of her and starts telling everyone her rival is a vampire, including showing everyone a dead body with bite marks. A mob forms, and grabs the rival, then pulls her outside, where our protagonist is shocked to find the rival is in fact a vampire and is killed due to exposure to sunlight. Upon her death she calls out our protagonist as a witch. The mob quickly changes their focus, believing it, and our protagonist ends the story bound in a public stock in the middle of town. How volatile the mob was in this story was pretty ridiculous, but Suso's art is quite strong.

Fourth is an Edgar Allen Poe adaption, "The Pit and the Pendulum" with adaption by Al Hewetson and art by Ricardo Villamonte. This classic Poe story features a man who is sentenced to death and is jailed in a cell which contains a large pit in the middle. He avoids the pit, but drinks a drugged cup and later awakens bound on a board, with a pendulum swinging above him and slowly lowering. Our protagonist is able to escape by rubbing food on the ropes binding him, causing rats to bite at them until he is loose. Our protagonist is once again faced with the pit, but now the walls are moving in, forcing him closer and closer to it. But suddenly he hears voices and is freed by a friend. This is a fairly decent story, but I'll admit that Villamonte can't really hold a candle to Jose Ortiz, who also drew an adaption of this story for Warren.

A "Gothic Fairy Tale"

Fifth is "The Phantom of the Opera", a two page feature from Al Hewetson (story) and Maro Nava (art). The first page of this features us seeing how Lon Chaney put on his makeup for the titular role. The second page features a short scene from the movie, of his unmasking. Makes me wonder if this was originally intended for the "Scream Scene" feature we recently saw in some other Skywald issues.

Next is the one page "The Vampire Hunters" by Al Hewetson (story) and Domingo Gomez (art). It features, what else, but some vampire hunters, who come across a crypt with 8 open coffins and stake all the bodies within.

Seventh is "The Vampire Letters" by Al Hewetson (story) and Emilio Bernardo (art). An editor as a newspaper (Howie Anderson, a pseudonym for Al Hewetson, for whom the character is modeled after) publishes a classified ad from a vampiress wanting to meet up with a male vampire. Some bizarre vampire photos start coming into the paper and after he publishes them some actual vampire killings start occurring. Howie investigates and finds the source of the ad, and meets up with the vampiress, the beautiful Anne, who claims it was all a joke. As they embrace and start to kiss he realizes he really is a vampire though. Anne is in love with Howie for real, but he leaves. She chases after him, outside, and the sunlight starts immediately decaying her body. Howie changes his mind, turns around, bites her on the neck and changes into a vampire himself... then instantly dies as well. A somewhat decent story, its always fun to see Hewetson involved in the story in some fashion. Bernardo's art is just okay, but he at least provides a rather gruesome final page.

Another one pager is next, "The Thing That Left No Fingerprints" by Al Hewetson (story) and Ferran Sostres (art). This story features a rabid dog that was shot by its owner come back to life and kill him!

Ninth is "The Fetid Belle of the Mississippi" by Al Hewetson (story) and Jesus Suso Rego (art). This story is told in interesting fashion; the caption show lines from a screenplay while the word balloons include narration. A steamboat, the Robert E. Lee travels down the Mississippi river in Tennessee. Things are initially calm, but then chaos ensues. The body of a woman is found in the wheel of the boat. Then another boat, occupied by corpses bears down on the Robert E. Lee, crashing into it. Then a giant Loch Ness Monster type beats rises from the sea and attacks! It is here where the captain of the Robert E. Lee loses it, shouting out that the script is all wrong. He beats the monster into submission, then grabs an ax and starts chopping away at the captions and says he will rewrite the screenplay. Another one of those crazy, break the fourth wall Skywald stories, which helps what may have otherwise been a rather dull story.

"The Vampire Letters"

Tenth is another entry in the Nosferatu series, "The Name is Sinner Cane... And the Name Means Evil!" by Al Hewetson (story) and Zesar Lopez (art). Similar in fashion to the prior story in this series, the titular Nosferatu has summoned various hooded fiends to eat dinner with him. He calls upon one of them, Sinner Cane, who was a voodoo priest in Haiti. We flash back to his conflict with a man named Papa General, and how he would curse him with unexplained pain. The general starts having Cane's followers murdered, but Cane rises them up as zombies and comes to the General's home. The general is revealed to be holding a doll through which he is able to control Cane's actions, and causes him to burn and mutilate his own body. Cane eventually jumps out of a window and the general causes him to shoot himself in the head. We return to the present and Cane removes his hood, revealing his mutilated corpse body. Zesar's art and atmosphere is quite strong, helping hold up an only slightly better than average story.

The issue concludes with the one page "A Gothic Fairy Tale: A Tale of 2 Macabre Snakes" by Al Hewetson (story) and Felipe Dela Rosa (art). Despite being credited to Dela Rosa, this doesn't really look like his artwork. This is a very simple feature, two snakes attack and eat each other.

Nightmare #9

Jose Miralles provides the cover for this issue of Nightmare, cover dated October 1972. Interestingly enough, around 10 years later, Warren would use this same cover painting for the final issue of Creepy! Quite the oddity as James Warren apparently despised Skywald. Al Hewetson's takeover as editor becomes quite apparent with this issue and he writes literally every story/feature within.

The table of contents pages feature the introduction of a child host character that I've heard is named Mr. Pook (although he isn't named here) and is drawn by Pablo Marcos.

First story is "Markheim" by Al Hewetson (story) and Jesus Duran (art), in his Skywald debut. This is an adaption of the story by Robert Louis Stevenson. A man murders a shop keeper by stabbing him in the back with a knife. He then wanders around the man's home thinking about what to steal. The murderer soon starts having strange visions, first the old man crawling up the stairs with the knife in his back, then some police arriving and beating him. He has a vision of another man telling him to murder the maid when she arrives. Instead our protagonist decides to turn himself in. This story seems similar in nature to Ray Bradbury's "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl", a story which was adapted by EC with Crime SuspenStories #17. Duran's art is pretty decent and well themed for the story.

Jesus Duran makes his debut in "Markheim"

Next is "The Nightmare World of James Edgar: Call Them Ghouls, Call Them Trolls, Call Them Things" by Al Hewetson (story) and Pablo Marcos (art). This story is the first of a multi-story feature where a fan would send in a dream they had and it would be adapted into a story! The first is from a man named James Edgar, who tells of how he was falling asleep in a cabin, reading some Skywald magazines when there are loud noises outside. He heads outside, seeing beautiful amazon women, accompanied by some trolls! The trolls start slamming him into a tree and welcome James to join them. they then go inside the cabin where James starts shrinking! James then awakes, finding himself snowed in! This story is rather surrealistic, as you would expect from a story based on a dream. I'm looking forward to this feature and think it has a lot of potential.

Third is the one page feature, "The Guillotine" by Al Hewetson (story) and Felipe Dela Rosa (art). I wonder if this was originally intended to be a frontispiece. It tells of the inventor of the Guillotine, Joseph Guillotin, its usage in France, and how he eventually died by his own invention!

Next is "Zoo for the Beasts of The Universe", a two page feature from Al Hewetson (story) and Maelo Cintron (art), also in his Skywald debut. Another very brief feature, it shows us a man and woman in a cage, part of a zoo on an alien planet. They are accompanied by a variety of strange looking beings, while aliens watch them from outside. Cintron provides a really strong art job here for his first story.

Things get weird in the Nightmare World story

Next is "The Skull Forest of Old Earth" by Al Hewetson (story) and Zesar Lopez (art), the third artist making his debut with this issue. This story, which I believe to be the first of a series is influenced by HP Lovecraft's works, although it appears to be an original story. On ancient Earth, the inhabitants of Uranus (who look just like humans) have inhabited Earth. These beautiful aliens live in apparent paradise and luxury, but one of them discovers his lover missing. Upon searching for her they find just a skeleton. Nearby they find an old civilization, occupied by Shoggoths, beast like beings that has captured several of them, either tying them up or eating them. The Shoggoths end up killing all of them, sans a child who plays with some monkeys that the narrator tells us eventually lead to the origin of man on Earth. Very happy to see Zesar's Skywald premiere. He was an artist who did around 5 or so stories in Vampirella after Skywald had folded (including 2 stories featuring Vampirella herself) and I always hoped he would have done more. Looking forward to seeing lots more stories from him here.

After that is "The 300th Birth Day Party" by Al Hewetson (story) and Ramon Torrents (art). Cecille is married to the ugly and scarred, yet rich Walter, and is carrying on an affair with her doctor. When Cecille discovers she has cancer, the only option is to freeze her body, until a time in the future when a cure is found. Cecille willingly goes through with it, hoping that when she awakens she'll have her husband's money, but he'll be long dead. She wakes up 3 centuries later, but finds to her horror that due to advantages in medicine, Walter is still alive! Not much of a horror element to this story, but I always enjoy seeing art from Ramon Torrents.

Next is "The Gargoyle Trilogy" by Al Hewetson (story) and Felipe Dela Rosa (art). This story doesn't appear to be connected to the Gargoyle story from Psycho #8, even though it is drawn by the same artist (and the Gargoyles look quite alike). It is about three different gargoyles which are created, based on the famous 3 monkeys of which one can't see, one can't hear, and one can't speak. The first gargoyle is the one who can't speak and causes much destruction as it comes to life. We then go into the future, the year 2092 in an advanced society. A young girl heads into a forest where she is killed by the gargoyle who cannot hear. The story moves forward another approximate 100 years when the renaissance of the arts is announced. A gargoyle, the one who cannot see terrorizes and kills some actresses. Dela Rosa's odd art style fits things pretty well; and while none of these stories are too fulfilling, it is good to see the unique story telling feature.

Zesar, one of my favorite Skywald artists debuts

After that is "The Night at the Wax Museum" by Al Hewetson (story) and Xavier Villanova (art). A woman makes her way into a Wax Museum which is full of various wax replicas of famous monsters, such as the Frankenstein monster, as well as historical figures such as Cleopatra and Hitler. She eventually comes across the wax figure of Dr. Jekyll, who turns into Mr. Hyde. She flees, finding many of the wax figures have come alive! As the story comes to a conclusion she is now a wax figure herself, the victim of a beating from Mr. Hyde.

Pablo Marcos then provides a one page feature of Dracula.

Our final full length story of the issue is "The Beast Within" by Al Hewetson (story) and Amador Garcia (art). A group of hunters pursue and kill a wild alligator in the jungle, despite it being illegal. The hunters find a cabin nearby in the woods. One of the hunters, a woman, comes across a werewolf and is slain by it. Things quickly escalate as the hunters start getting scared and paranoid. One of them shoots another, another gets sucked into quicksand, another gets shot, and we quickly find ourselves down to 3 of them left. they start speculating about who of them can be the werewolf, and eventually all die to the true werewolf, revealed to be the dog! Basically the exact same ending we got to a story back in the first issue of Nightmare, I liked it better the first time. This story is a bit of a confusing mess with too many characters and so much going on.

The next issue advertisement towards the end of this issue provides a pretty memorable skull drawing by Pablo Marcos.

One final feature for this lengthy issue is the one page text story "The Thing in the Alley" as written by Al Hewetson and featuring art by none other than Berni Wrightson himself, making his sole appearance in a Skywald magazine.

Vampirella 57

My first ever issue of Vampirella is the one I cover today, and its a pretty damn good issue. The cover is by who else, but Enrich.

First up is "City of Ghosts" by Jose Gonzalez (art) and Roger McKenzie (story). Vampirella is stranded in the desert and comes across a deserted town where she meets her husband from Drakulon, Tristan. Adam arrives but is shot by him. Eventually it ends up that it was all an illusion and Vampi is reunited with Pendragon and Adam.

Second is "Rusty Bucklers" by Esteban Maroto (art) and Bruce Jones (story). The story is about an old man, Dete, who joins a young knight on his trip to defeat a nearby sorceror and rescue the lady trapped there. It is revealed that many years have passed, the sorceror's dragon has died of old age, the sorceror himself is gone, and the lady is old too. Dete sleeps with her and is killed by the young knight, who overreacts.

Third is "Stand-In" by Carmine Infantino & Dick Giordano (art) and Bruce Jones (story). The story takes place in the future, where people's deaths can be predicted. A company, Surgo Inc offers to replace the victim with an employee in whatever accident may occur. The story surrounds one of these employees and his relationship with a reporter he meets.

Fourth is one of my top 5 Warren stories of all time, "Magnificent Ephemeral" by Ramon Torrents (art) and Bruce Jones (story). The story is about a newspaper reporter, Scott Westly, working on a story about the mysterious Gloria Winsome, a Marilyn Monroe-esque actress who vanished off the face of the Earth after a single movie. Scott becomes completely obsessed with her and spends months trying to research what become of her. Eventually he discovers the truth and is able to meet with her and she shows him a video which reveals the truth, that she's actually a man! Wanting to preserve the secret forever, he asks Scott to kill him and he does so, then hangs himself. Amazing story with one of Warren's biggest shock endings and terrific art by Torrents.

Last is "An Insult to Science" by Jose Miralles (art, in his sole story) and Fernando Fernandez (story). The story is about a disbeliever in the spirit world who has an experience with a woman whose been dead 25 years that changes his opinions about the subject for good. Miralles's art is fairly good, kind of like Fernandez's.