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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 8, 2014 21:19:01 GMT -5
Great picks here ! Bronzeagebrian, I too was raised Catholic and shied away from Son of Satan as well as Tomb of Dracula. As a kid I was too afraid to look at em ! As for my entry, it's a story that I only have part of but will definitely collect the other issues of. It's Black Hole by Charles Burns.   </div>Black Hole nearly made my #5 spot, I'm glad someone else thought this was a worthwhile read. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2014 21:25:02 GMT -5
Black Hole would almost certainly make my list.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 8, 2014 21:40:49 GMT -5
Hoosier X's #4: "Batman Versus The Vampire"
Writer: Gardner Fox Artists: Bob Kane, Sheldon Moldoff
From: Detective Comics #31 and #32
Publication Year: 1939
Explanation: I first saw this story very early in my comic book collecting years. I think it was reprinted in Batman From the Thirties to the Seventies, a great reprint collection from the 1970s that had a bunch of key stories within its pages.
So I was 11 or 12, and maybe that's why it has stayed with me all these years. It gave me the creeps! And I still find it to be one of my Top Batman stories.
It's a pretty straightforward story. Bruce Wayne's girlfriend Julie Madison is bewitched by a vampire known as the Monk, so Wayne becomes Batman and pursues the foul creature and his minions to Europe where he faces a female vampire named Dala and the Monk's other threats until he saves Julie and kills the vampires.
In addition to the vampires and the werewolves and the creepy castle, this story is unsettling for a number of reasons. For one thing, the art, much as I love it, is kind of crude, and it puts me in mind of those German woodcuts of Dracula eating his dinner surrounded by people impaled on stakes. (A display of these woodcuts in London was (allegedly) one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker's novel.) The figures are primitive and violent, the settings are like a crude nightmare, and it's a dark dream-land that draws Batman deeper and deeper into an otherworldly realm, like some of those weird worlds in Spectre and Dr. Fate comics a year or so later.
Another creepy thing about it is how random it seems to be. Why do they come to Gotham for Julie? Is no one safe no matter how far from Transylvania they are? And there's this gorilla: 
The werewolves and the vampire woman are to be expected, but the giant gorilla is not from central casting. It makes you wonder: What else does the Monk have up his sleeve?
Batman, of course, just takes it in stride.
So little of this story is explained. Things just pop out of the woodwork almost at random, which gives this story a very mysterious and frightening atmosphere. I imagine Batman is keeping his cool just until it's over, but when it's done, this one goes into the Black Casebook!
This story has been revisited twice, in the 1980s (with beautiful Gene Colan art) and about ten years ago by Matt Wagner. Both stories expanded the narrative, got rid of some of the more fantastic elements, explained a lot more about what the Monk was up to and completely missed the point.
I like both of the later re-tellings, but the original is the scariest because of the mystery. Seventy-five years later and we still don't know what was going on in that one.
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Post by DubipR on Oct 8, 2014 22:14:58 GMT -5
NUMBER 4: CREEPSHOW  Writers: Steven King & George Romero Artist: Bernie Wrightson Cover: Jack Kamen Year: 1982 Published by: Plume (Penquin imprint) Creepshow came out in the cinemas in 1982 and scared the living hell out of a young DubipR. From the insanely awesome movie poster to the film itself. Then a week later, a classmate of mine brought in this graphic novel adaptation of the film and it scared me even more than the film itself. King and Romero wrote the stories from their script and Bernie Wrightson did the interiors. This was the first time I saw a horror comic and it freaked me; literally couldn't sleep for a couple of nights. But now, knowing the history of horror comics and knowing the artwork of Bernie Wrightson, it's truly a delightful to read. The stories now a schmaltzy but man, Bernie hits it all out of the park.   
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 8, 2014 22:43:54 GMT -5
Yay! More Jack Kamen!
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Crimebuster
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Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Oct 8, 2014 23:12:14 GMT -5
Archie Comics agrees with your pick!  Coming in two months.  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2014 0:50:22 GMT -5
Charles Burns is such a fantastic artist. His work is pretty much exactly what I like to see. Wrightson is also a fantastic artist, and I did not know he illustrated a Creepshow adaptation. I'll have to keep an eye out for that. I should probably note that while Weapon X was my number five pick, at this point it becomes difficult to place them in any particular order. So that being said, here's my number four. My Friend Dahmer 2002 Derfcity Comics By Derf  This isn't quite horror, but it's definitely unsettling, and shows the long downward spiral of Jeffrey Dahmer and ends right as he becomes a serial killer. There were so many clues that nobody noticed until they were seeing them in hindsight. At a class reunion, right before Dahmer's arrest, his high school friends wondering about his absence even jokingly said "He's probably a serial killer now." |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 9, 2014 9:36:02 GMT -5
Hoosier X's #4: "Batman Versus The Vampire"
Writer: Gardner Fox Artists: Bob Kane, Sheldon Moldoff
From: Detective Comics #31 and #32
Publication Year: 1939
This one and the Wagner retelling nearly made my list, but I wasn't aware there was yet another retelling of this story, what issue was it in? |
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 9, 2014 9:53:16 GMT -5
Hoosier X's #4: "Batman Versus The Vampire"
This one and the Wagner retelling nearly made my list, but I wasn't aware there was yet another retelling of this story, what issue was it in? It's from the era when the continuity went directly from Batman to Detective every month. Dala is in a subplot with Robin (at Hudson University) for a few issues, but the bulk of the story is in Batman #349 to #351 and Detective #517 and #518. Written by Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz. Art by Gene Colan and Don Newton. Inks by Alfredo Alcala, Tony DeZuniga and Bruce Patterson. (It's an expanded version of the story. Heck, Deadshot is in it, as well as the Human Target.) |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 9, 2014 10:19:58 GMT -5
Thwhtguardian's #4: Batman & Dracula: Red Rain
Of course  Not reading your description, of course. I can't wait to get to this story in the Batman reviews thread! Other than the first two pages I posted at the bottom my entry was pretty spoiler free as I decided to write more about Batman as a horror character than the plot of the story, but I anxiously await your review! This one and the Wagner retelling nearly made my list, but I wasn't aware there was yet another retelling of this story, what issue was it in? It's from the era when the continuity went directly from Batman to Detective every month. Dala is in a subplot with Robin (at Hudson University) for a few issues, but the bulk of the story is in Batman #349 to #351 and Detective #517 and #518. Written by Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz. Art by Gene Colan and Don Newton. Inks by Alfredo Alcala, Tony DeZuniga and Bruce Patterson. (It's an expanded version of the story. Heck, Deadshot is in it, as well as the Human Target.) I seriously need to check this out. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 9, 2014 18:48:16 GMT -5
Hoosier X's #4: "Batman Versus The Vampire"
Writer: Gardner Fox Artists: Bob Kane, Sheldon Moldoff
From: Detective Comics #31 and #32
Publication Year: 1939
The early 1980s remake of this story, with Conway, Newton, and Colon at the helm, made my Top 10. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2014 20:50:36 GMT -5
Had you read Harris/Dark Horse comics Creepy series from 1992 a four issue run 48 page black and white . Not a bad mini set to read .
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2014 20:55:50 GMT -5
Is that hooded figure the titular vampire? I like that design.
Black Hole is a great choice. Burns' art has a great style that seems to fall just short of realism that I feel adds to the mood perfectly.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 9, 2014 22:43:31 GMT -5
Is that hooded figure the titular vampire? I like that design. YES! He is known as the Monk. He can also turn into a wolf.
You used to be able to order this story digitally from Comixology. Something like 99 cents for the Batman stories in Detective Comics #27 to #33 or something.
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 10, 2014 9:57:09 GMT -5
I have not reread this in too long, but it haunts me still, as any great story should. Like Dante, the Swamp Thing ventures into Hell, with classic DC supernatural entities (The Demon, the Spectre, Deadman, and the Phantom Stranger) serving as counterparts to Virgil. Alan Moore, as always, takes characters we all know so well, holds them up to the light of his imagination and tits them just enough so that we can see a side to them we never realized existed, form a non-rhyming Etrigan, a Spectre of enormous size and power who retains an ability to be bemused, and a blank-eyed Phantom Stranger whose origins Moore hints at deftly in a couple of lines of dialogue. Moore and Totleben are at their creepy best, with a take on Hell that is far from infernal: no lakes of fire, but far more macabre, repellent punishments drawn straight from Graham Ingels and Tales from the Crypt. All that is excellent, of course, but what stopped me in my tracks when I first read it and what lingers with me still are a question and its brief answer. The question is posed by one of the souls condemned to hell, his body a sprawling, slithering mountain of insects and decaying flesh and God-knows-what-else. His deformed, monstrosity of a head, lolling atop that pile of slop, says to Swamp Thing, "How many years have I been here?" Swamp Thing replies, "Since yesterday." And somewhere, nuns and fundamentalist preachers smile.  |
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