After the Edgar Allan Poe Post, I wanted to do More Horror Classics in Black & White. Warren and Skywald obliged nicely. Poe wasn’t the only author to receive adaptations. Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Rudyard Kipling, Washington Irving, and Oscar Wilde all had a story or two in glorious black & white. For the publishers, the fact that these Victorian and Edwardian classics are in the public domain doesn’t hurt.
As with the Poe stories, they were reprinted on occasion. I have listed only the initial appearances. Unlike last time, Warren and Skywald didn’t do rival versions.
Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing” (Creepy #4, 1965) was adapted by Archie Goodwin. This was Goodwin’s second attempt at adapting, with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” starting things off in Creepy #3. Of course, Archie wasn’t the first to try. Frank Belknap Long pretty much invented Horror comics with Adventures into the Unknown #1 (Fall 1948) where he adapted The Castle of Otranto.
Bram Stoker’s “The Judge’s House” (Creepy #5, October 1965) was adapted by Archie Goodwin.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body-Snatcher” (Creepy #7, February 1966) was adapted by Archie Goodwin. This one got a movie back in the day starring Boris Karloff.
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mark of the Beast” (Creepy #19, March 1968) was adapted by Craig Tennis.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (Creepy #19, March 1968) was adapted by John Benson. It’s nice to see “Carmilla” here because it inspired the next one, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest”. You may know it from The Vampire Lovers (1970) with its lesbian undertones.
Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest” (Eerie #16, July 1968) was adapted by E. Nelson Bridwell. Frank Bolle’s work on this comic and the next really changed my mind about his work. I think of all of the incredibly mediocre stuff he did for Gold Key. Here his work is finely detailed and on par with Reed Crandall or Gray Morrow.
Ambrose Bierce’s “The Death of Halpin Frayser” (Eerie #17, September 1968) was adapted by Craig Tennis.
Bram Stoker’s “The Squaw” (Eerie #19, December 1968) was adapted by Archie Goodwin.
Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (Eerie #23, September 1969) was adapted by Archie Goodwin. Main character might have been meant to look like Bierce but he looks like Clark Ashton Smith instead. You may know this one from The Twilight Zone.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Markheim” (Nightmare #9, October 1972) was adapted by Al Hewetson.
Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (Scream #5, April 1974) was adapted by Al Hewetson. Several film versions but I like the original.
Washington Irving’s “The Headless Horseman” (Scream #7, July 1974) was adapted by Al Hewetson. So often, as with this illo, we forget that the Horseman wasn’t real. Does it matter?
Ambrose Bierce’s “Oil of Dog” (Creepy #67, December 1974) was adapted by Jack Butterworth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Hollow of the Three Hills” (Eerie #63, February 1975) was adapted by Rich Margopoulos. For another Hawthorne tale, go here.
Conclusion
The adaptations stop after February 1975. The Poe adaptations also drop off after mid 1976. I’m not sure why. In Skywald’s case, they went out of business. But Warren was around for another seven years. Was there enough material now that adapting classics wasn’t necessary? I suspect it was the movie monsters who pushed them out. Running series about mummies, werewolves, Dracula and other vampires along with Frankenstein’s monster filled the pages. Mining Universal’s film catalogue may have proven easier, especially when you could have the characters back for the next issue and the next…
I’m glad for more Horror Classics in Black & White (and some color comics too). They bring a part of Horror’s literary history to the comics. All too often the ideas are used (and re-used) without any acknowledgement of their sources. For instance “The Severed Hand” by Fred Ott from Creepy #49 makes no reference to Guy de Maupassant, William Hauff or even The Beast With Five Fingers. The idea has become a standard trope of the Severed Hand and lost much of its magic.
“The Mark of the Beast,” “Dracula’s Guest,” and “The Death of Halpin Frayser” were reprints from the 1966 Pyramid Books paperback Christopher Lee’s Treasury of Terror packaged by Russ Jones, the original editor of Creepy. Dracula didn’t have Cousin Eerie’s head pasted over his in the paperback! “Carmilla” was, as the Grand Comics Database notes, out of inventory from Jones at Pyramid, as a follow-up to Treasury of Terror went unpublished.
Thanks for that. I didn’t know that.