Cool Ass Comics: Zombies, Leatherface and Things From Another World

This is a new column that focuses on various comic books. I figured I'd start this one off by sharing some cool horror comic covers I found while going through a bunch of comics I have in my collection. There'll be other horror comics featured here in addition to Marvel and DC comics from the 60's (my uncle gave me a huge lot of classics from the Silver Age of comics) up to the mid 90's when I ceased collecting. There were so many I never even read. I just bought them and bagged and boarded them.


This is the excellent Dark Horse Comics two part sequel to the Carpenter film. It has surreal artwork by John Higgins. It picks up right where the film ends wherein both Macready and Childs end up aboard a submarine where The Thing continues to wreck havoc leading up to something of a downbeat ending. I also got two or three of the 'Climate of Fear' series from Dark Horse based on THE THING. The cover to issue #2 is below.



This is DEADWORLD number 1 from Caliber Press. It's the first issue of volume 2 since the previous series from Arrow ceased. It's a B/W comic with color cover front and back. Those that like zombies will dig this series. The artwork is really quite nice.


This is Northstar Comics loose version of LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3. I only ever got issues #2 and #3. The artists were working from David Schow's original script for this four issue series. These comics are in color and contain spectacularly gory artwork that far outweighs anything seen in the movies.

These two LEATHERFACE comics were my first experience with comic books with such gruesome artwork in color. I used to draw a lot myself, and a lot of the pictures I drew were often kind of morbid not unlike some of the images seen in these books.


Here's FantaCo's first issue of a graphic comic of George A. Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The stark and brooding B/W art is the work of Carlos Kastro. Unfortunately, I never got around to picking up the remaining three parts to this series.


This is FantaCo's first two issues of the cult comic, GORE SHRIEK. I first seen them in a lot of my Fangoria magazines, but bought these two at an Acme Comics in Greensboro. The artwork is all B/W.

The cover art on this issue reminds me a bit of the space creature featured in the cult gore classic, THE DEADLY SPAWN (1983).

UNTIL NEXT TIME...