Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery is a comic book review published by Gold Key Comics from 1962 to 1980. Boris Karloff only appears as a presenter of the stories offered, but not always, and also occasionally offers a conclusion. The name of the actor, synonymous with chills, is therefore only a marketing tool.
Beginnings
When Western Publishing breaks its distribution contract with Dell Comics , the Gold Key company is immediately formed to continue this booming business. Remember that in the early 1960s, Dell Comics was the most powerful American comic book publisher 1 . A certain number of series, Bonanza , Twilight Zone or Tarzan for example, switched to the new publisher, but not all of them, but Dell published a comic magazine which had some success, Ghost Stories . Gold Key replicates by creating inoctober 1962 Boris Karloff Thriller , a second issue of which comes out inJanuary 1963. Compared to the usual 36-page format, it is a large book (84 pages) but the price is commensurate, at 25 cents 2 .
The test is considered conclusive; it is therefore decided to continue the series, with some minor modifications however (see below) .
Tales of Mystery
The pagination is reduced to 36 pages and the price reduced to 12 cents. So we go to three stories on average per issue instead of seven during the tests.
The formula is already largely marked out thanks to the experience of the Twilight Zone magazine : no stories to follow but stories that are about ten pages, hardly more and in which no monsters appear. Unlike Marvel, which at the same time stuffed its horror magazines with repulsive monsters, there are hardly any in Tales of Mystery . A cohort of dangerous animals, ghosts galore, but no real monsters.
Gold Key, like Dell Comics before it, was one of the few houses not to seek Comics Code Authority approval (along with Classics Illustrated and, but the case is technically different, EC Comics ). His implicit promise to parents was therefore never to offend young readers, on the understanding that scary stories are an integral part of Anglo-Saxon culture - Charles Dickens' famous Christmas Carol is just that . 'an example.
The success was such that Ripley's Believe It or Not magazine , which Gold Key had also published since 1966, devoted itself only to horror stories from its number 6, alternating between True Ghost Stories and True Demons and Monsters
No comments:
Post a Comment