Both Tony Rivers (Teenage Horror Factory) and myself are Tarzan fans. So there. Here’s Tony’s scans for the Tarzan and the Lost Safari pressbook to go bananas over.
Tony Rivers delivers some tana leaves by moonlight, along with Realart's The Mummy's Tomb pressbook…
From the Tony Rivers collection comes this pressbook for Charlie Chan (Roland Winters) in The Sky Dragon. Classic television fans of Superman will also notice Noel Neill’s name is in the credits.
Zombos Says: Good
Unfortunately, I can only give you two reasons to pick up Vertigo's one shot, Ghosts: the unfinished story by Joe Kubert, The Boy and the Old Man, and the Geoff Johns and Jeff Lemire story, Ghost-For-Hire. Reasons for not picking up this anthology would include the remaining stories, although Run Ragged would have been a treat if the whole story was here and not just the first part.
Comic anthologies usually are a mixed bag of trick or treat. Either you get a unified series of stories around a theme, or you get a bunch of stories searching for one; Ghosts lies somewhere in the middle. The stories that fall flat and fail to "terrorize" (or fit uncomfortably) within these nine tales are: Wallflower (beautiful artwork, worn-out storyline); A Bowl of Red (half-baked horror concering a bowl of hellfire hot Chili); The Night After I Took the Data Entry Job I Was Visited by My Own Ghost (artwork matches story mood perfectly, but the "message" story itself has been done to death ); Bride (will someone, anyone tell me what the hell this story's about?); and Treasure Lost, which is lost in this anthology themed around ghosts, although I get the tenuous allusion.
The poignant The Dark Lady fits in with the anthology's theme well, but it is incomplete, a mere slice of a larger storyline. The same problem occurs with Run Ragged, part one of a Dead Boy Detectives tale. Part two will appear in the next anthology. Running a continued story in separate anthologies seems awfully gauche to me.
As for the two reasons to stick around, Kubert's The Boy and the Old Man is more a curiousity piece, and one that doesn't fit well within the ghosts theme. But for fans (like myself) who appreciate seeing his last work, this is worth a look, not so much for the story as for the art. Here you can see Kubert's first draw-through, laying out the action and positioning, which he would later embellish. Ghost-for-Hire is a predictably scripted plot, but the characters keep it humorous while adding depth. This would make for a solid series on its own.
Reading various comic anthologies these days, you may get the haunting sense they were loosely put together with stories that had no clear publishing intentions. Ghosts suffers from this and I expect more sweetness-kick from my Halloween treats than this saccharin anthology provides.
Here's a key take-away: name talent isn't enough to make an anthology; you need to do something consistently worthwhile with it.
A courtesy reviewer copy of Ghosts was provided to me for this review.
Courtesy of Tony Rivers comes this Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) pressbook for Dangerous Money. (Note: Please defer any modern interpretations and criticisms of Hollywood's casting choices and stereotypical characterizations to our lawyer, Mr. Jimmy Sosumi.)
Five questions asked over a glowing Jack o’Lantern, under an Autumn moon obscured by passing clouds…from Hurricane Sandy…in between mouthfuls of candy corn…with Monster Cafe Saltillo man Matthew Green…
Why is Halloween important to you?
It represents dress up time. I love the whole spookyness of it. Dress up time is so important to me. I have always had the acting bug. I am SURE Halloween was a start in heading down that direction. I even graduated from AADA in New York. The opportunity to play other people and dress up is thrilling.
As for favorite costume I can only go with the Ben Cooper line. They had such imagination when it came to costumes and individual choice. Nothing was off limits. I always liked Dracula because of the cape.
Describe your ideal Halloween.
Now I celebrate it all year round. I created Monster Cafe because I love the holiday so much. So for now having Monster Cafe filled with people and teaching them the Monsters, there is no greater thrill.
What Halloween collectibles do you cherish, or hate, or both?
I cherish pretty much anything from the seventies. The halloween blowmolds for one. I HATE kiddie halloween stuff. Pretty much anything smiling. Save that for Christmas.
When was your very first Halloween, the one where you really knew it was Halloween?
I was probably 5 or so. I was the Ben Cooper Spiderman. A friend I have till this day whose name is Dale…he was the Devil Ben Cooper. We MET on Halloween night.
What’s the one Halloween question you want to be asked and what’s your answer?
Q: Do I have any Halloween collectibles?
A: No. They got lost in the fire of 1991.