09 Thursday Feb 2023
Posted in poetry
haunted
the day you killed yourself
you appeared as flies
and rats giving birth
in my garden you never tended
even after all those years apart
you swarmed me with your noise
you built a nest like a wasp
in all the places near my heart
poisoning every room
defiling every memory
even in death
you will not leave me alone
14 Friday Oct 2022
Posted in occult
Tags
coffin, Death, EC Comics, EC Comics reprints, halloween, Haunt of Fear, horror, Ray Bradbury, wake for the living
‘Tis the season to be spooky, so let’s enjoy a horrifying tale.
Back in October 2012, I celebrated the monstrous month of morbidity by sharing with you all the scans I could find of Ray Bradbury stories that had been adapted by EC Comics. You can access them all by clicking this link to my tagged archives. Since then, some delightfully obsessed readers contacted me to fill in gaps in my research and share additional scans. And, oddly enough, several institutions of higher learning now include a few of my Bradbury blog posts in their literary curricula for students.
No, that isn’t the horrifying tale. Use your head!
The horrifying tale for today is called The Coffin. It appeared in Haunt of Fear #16 in 1952, written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Davis, and was reprinted in 1996 by Gemstone, who made so many great EC Comics available and affordable for a new generation. I believe this version also appeared in a rare collection called The Autumn People.
Bradbury’s original version appeared in his first published book Dark Carnival in 1947, and is sometimes called Wake for the Living. If you want a copy of that vintage tome, you will need around $1000. But The Coffin was reprinted in 1980 in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which you can currently get on Kindle for $12, and affordable print copies still exist. Finally, The Coffin was adapted for television as part of Ray Bradbury Theater in the mid-1980s.
So, without further ado, here is a gallery of this slice of spooky weirdness from EC Comics.
31 Saturday Oct 2015
Posted in occult
Every year, the Burton Barr Library, the main hub of the Phoenix Public Library system, dedicates its first-floor art gallery to a Dia De Los Muertos exhibit. The exhibit presents altars made by locals in remembrance of family, friends, and others who inspired and influenced the altars’ creators before dying. This year’s exhibit features not only tributes to artists like Jim Henson, Salvador Dali, Sylvia Plath, and Shel Silverstein, but also memorials to grandparents, cousins, and co-workers.
The brightly-colored altars contain images and objects of meaning to the departed, from books they loved to food they liked, from memorabilia of their favorite sports teams to images and quotes that meant something to them. Every altar has an artist’s statement about what the departed meant to them on a very personal level. These are intimate statements, and one cannot help but be moved by their candor and affection.
Traditional motifs of Dia De Los Muertos abound: multi-colored paper marigolds, candy skulls, and sculptures of people and animals painted black and then painted over with skeletons. The exhibit always contains a piece where people have written names and messages on bright paper butterflies and hung them on lines stretched below a colorful arch of paper marigolds. I imagine the butterflies are symbols of transformation, and also flight and rising above—a deep contrast to the familiar Halloween imagery of graveyards and haunted houses where spirits remain trapped.
Halloween holds little appeal for me. Halloween focuses on fright and creepiness. Halloween imagines the dead come back to haunt us. Halloween portrays the dead as tortured souls come back from the grave to share their torment with us. Perhaps that is one way people confront their fears of death.
But Dia De Los Muertos imagines the dead quite differently. Rather than the dark and gloomy colors of Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos revels in color and brightness. Dia De Los Muertos imagines the dead continuing to do the things they loved to do in life. The dead joyously ride bicycles, make art, love their pets, and play musical instruments. Los Muertos are quite happy, and the day celebrates the joy and love they felt in life—and that we felt for them.
So, I like to make an annual trip to Burton Barr to see this exhibit. I always find it profoundly moving in the way it celebrates those who have died. Though tinged with sadness, the altars focus on why we loved those we have lost, and what brought them joy while they were alive. This year, I took my camera phone to snap a few shots for this blog, but then had second thoughts.
Instead, I took one of many copies of the Lakota prayer, scanned below, from one of the altars. I did not know Carole, but she worked in the public library system here, and worked in libraries all her adult life. Her multi-level altar—created collaboratively by friends, family, and co-workers—includes a diorama of Carole in skeletal regalia seated in a comfortable chair, watching her favorite sports team on television, surrounded by shelves of books and the pets she loved in this life. Above this diorama is a poem composed for her. It tells of her life and her eventual death from cancer. It mourns her passing but celebrates her life. If, as the mythology of Dia De Los Muertos says, the dead do gain permission one day each year to visit their living loved ones, then I have no doubt Carole would be touched to find the exhibit made in her honor. I found the following verse much more meaningful than any spooky and scary Halloween imagery.
23 Monday Dec 2013
Tags
We discovered the short story “Samurai” in one of our favorite comic blog features: Black-and-White Wednesdays at Diversions of the Groovy Kind. Gene Day’s incredible artwork appears in 1977’s Star Reach #11.
22 Sunday Dec 2013
Posted in first issue, indie
Tags
Death, Eclipse Comics, first issue, God, indie box, Indie Comics, Jim Starlin, origin, science fiction, Star Reach, Star Reach Classics
Jim Starlin’s single-page origin of god and his short origin of death originally appeared in the first issue of the 1974 series Star Reach. Star Reach Productions published its own Greatest Hits in 1979. In 1984, Eclipse reprinted six issues of highlights from the series as Star Reach Classics. We recommend it for fans of classic 70s science fiction. It’s in stock far more often than the original issues, and Eclipse printed it on high-quality paper, a really nice production. You can get most of them for just a couple dollars a piece.
Starlin gives us some of his finest 70s illustration, artistically superior to his more famous work on Captain Marvel, and on par with his best Warlock stories. If you enjoy these, you will enjoy Starlin’s Darklon the Mystic from that same era. Diversions of the Groovy Kind hosts some pages from Warren’s Eerie magazine where you can read part of Darklon in black and white. Or, you can drop a dollar on a back issue by Pacific Comics that reprints the complete Darklon story in color.
Collector’s Guide: From Star Reach Classics #1; Eclipse, 1984.
14 Monday May 2012
Posted in science fiction
Tags
Death, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four By John Byrne Omnibus, Galactus, John Byrne, Nova, Skrull Homeworld, Skrulls
John Byrne created some of the most memorable Fantastic Four epics during his run on Fantastic Four #232-292 and Annuals #17-19. We will share with you a few of our favorites. With five years of work to pick from, it wasn’t easy choosing just a handful!
Today’s Feature: Fragments! Galactus is always a huge hit here on Mars. But what Galactus collection would be complete without the story of the day he devoured the Skrull Homeworld?! Few cosmic moments bring us as much joy as watching the Big G eat an entire planet.
And let’s face it, the Skrulls are scum. Nova made a great pick of all the possible planets out there to have for lunch. Featuring a special guest appearance by… Death!
Collector’s Guide: From Fantastic Four #257. Reprinted in the Fantastic Four by John Byrne Omnibus – Volume 1, 2011. Byrne’s run spans Fantastic Four #232-292 and Annuals #17-19.
16 Sunday Jan 2011
Posted in dinosaur
Tags
brontosaurus, Death, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, pteranodon, Romeo Tanghal, Triceratops, war, war comics, Weird War Tales
Sweet splash panel by Romeo Tanghal for a Weird War Tales story featuring dinosaurs. You never knew dinosaurs were blue, did you? Tanghal did several splashes for the first page of Weird War Tales. All of them feature the skeletal figure of Death. They provide an introduction and framework for the story. They also set up the war comic as not being pro-war but as a critique on the violence and absurd fatality of war. Many of us remember Romeo Tanghal for his work on the Teen Titans with Marv Wolfman and George Perez.
Mars Will Send No More 