Horror Reanimated… the home of Bloody Books

Welcome, Fiends, To My Crypt of Nostalgia…by Bill Hussey

September 15th, 2008

My love of all things grisly and ghastly can be traced back to one glorious summer day in 1984. I even know the date – 15th July – the time of day – mid-morning – and can have a pretty good stab at the exact time: it was 10.30… ish. How do I recollect these details with such precision? Well, it was my birthday for starters – how portentous is that, guys and ghouls? – and my treat for the day was to be dragged along to one of the thousands of car boot sales which clog up Lincolnshire’s car parks during the summer months. Holidaymakers, wending their way to Skegness in a never-ending caravan of, well, caravans, like nowt better than spending their Sunday mornings picking through other people’s God-awful tat. But, hands up, my family take an unhealthy delight in just the same hunt for bargains – a hunt, I feel, which is as illusory as any Grail quest, no matter what gappy-toothed and perma-tanned daytime antique dealers would have you believe.

I was miserable, scuffing my trainers across the gravel, grunt-answering questions, giving my poor little sister endless and pretty lethal Indian burns. Hey, I was only seven – and I believe that particular defence still holds water in a court of law today. Anyway, suffice to say I was being, in the words of my long-suffering old man, ‘a right little sod’. Still, it was my birthday and so punishment had to be my parents’ last resort. A bribe was the way forward. And so my dad suggested we check out a stall selling comic books.

Right, here’s where my writer’s instinct wants to take over and embellish the tale. I could tell you that the stallholder was an aged Chinese gentleman with rheumy eyes and bird-like talons for fingernails. I could say that he chuckled dryly as my dad asked if he had anything to keep a snot-nosed brat quiet for an hour or two. I could describe how that creaky-boned, cadaverous character handed over a monkey’s paw, winked with a knowing malevolence (something which my old man would not have noticed, of course) and told us this was ‘just the thing to entertain a wilful child.’ And, as we trotted away, I might have glanced back to find… litter swirling in the empty space where the old guy’s stall had been…

Sherlock Holmes once said that reality was far more interesting than anything the mind of man can conceive… not so here. The stallholder was a stout Yorkshireman with vaguely pornographic tattoos and a beard which could have served as an aviary for a pack of undiscriminating starlings. His line in sales patter – barked prices followed by a steely-eyed stare – might have made Genghis Khan ferret about nervously in his pocket for the correct change. All in all, he was the kind of guy Geoffrey Boycott would call ‘salt of the earth’. He informed us that he was selling his son’s comic books because ‘the lad’s of an age when he shouldn’t be reading such stuff.’ I look back now at that statement, from the point-of-view of a thirty-one year old comic book geek, and my heart bleeds for Beardy’s boy. Still, his loss was my gain.

I picked through dozens of stacks of well-kept comics. These were treasured things but, as a self-centred creature of seven, I felt nothing for the previous owner. I flicked through old issues of Green Lantern, Spiderman, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Superman, even a few newer Ghost Riders.

And then I saw it and stopped dead.

At first I thought I must be seeing things. Surely the company’s logo was the more familiar ‘DC’ – not ‘EC’. But no, this was something called ‘Entertainment Comics’. And then I took in the cover – THE COVER, PEOPLE! – a thing of beauty and of teeth-chattering horror! I held it out at arm’s length and, I kid you not, shuddered!

‘TERROR’ screaming down the side banner.

Portraits of three creepy ghouls – our hosts of horrible – running down the page.

And that stunning and beautifully rendered full colour cover illustration –

A terrified man, locked in the embrace of a decomposing corpse, being sucked into a pit of quicksand.

This was TALES FROM THE CRYPT – issue 24 – and, by way of its disgusting, despicable host, THE CRYPT-KEEPER, I was introduced to the genre I would come to love. I walked away from the comic stall with an armful of Tales… and it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair, not just with the horror genre but with horror comics. I went on to collect beautifully bound copies of Tales, the Haunt of Fear, the Vault of Horror and Weird Science. After gobbling down the staples of the genre years later, I still maintain that the best of these trashy old comics are the equal of the masterpieces of the form. Indeed, Ray Bradbury had several of his first-class short horror stories adapted by EC for Tales. These artists and writers (underrated luminaries like Jack Davis, Feldstein, Jack Kamen etc), directed by a comics publishing genius called William M Gaines, fired my imagination as much as HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and, dare I say it, MR James. Their creeping corpses, vicious vampires and double-crossing, murderous business partners stirred my writer’s juices, while their busty femme fatales caused other stirrings I’d rather not discuss here! These stories, admittedly not all works of genius, were full-bodied, scream-in-your-face horrors, and I loved their boldness. In this day and age of shy literary terrors, I often think that a good dose of EC could liven up some of the feebler horror novels we find in Waterstones and Borders. The clarion call of EC could have been: let the flesh rot, let the blood flow! Hear hear, say I!

I tucked myself up in bed that night and gave myself a good creep out. I found that thrill an addictive drug and have been chasing the dragon ever since. I hope I never tire of it.

So I say – thank you, Crypt-Keeper, you grotty old schlock-meister! Thank you for visiting me at bedtime and disturbing my night’s slumbers. Thank you for encouraging me to write my own stories. Without you and Kamen and Feldstein and the others I wouldn’t be a writer.

And now – my question to you, lovers of the lycanthrope, devotees of the demonic arts, necrophiles all – can YOU pinpoint the time when your passion for horror was ignited? Was it a particular writer? A movie? A TV series? A tale told by your evil old granny as you sat trembling at her knee?

Add your tale to this collection…

Entry Filed under: The Infection Spreads