Again, not sure I will have 5 due to time constraints, but this was the second of those I had decided to include on my list....

The Call of Cthulhu
adapted by Estaban Maroto with Roy Thomas
collected in H.P. Lovecraft the Return of Cthulhu (indicia title) or The Call of Cthulhu (cover title)
Cross Plains Comics, July 2000



(cover by Frank Brunner)

This prestige format one shot collects three adaptations of Lovecraft Tales by Estaban Maroto. I believe they were published in Spain in Spanish first, and Ashford got Maroto to agree to an English version for Cross Plains Comics, and Roy Thomas was brought in to do the script for the English versions. I could have picked any of the three stories here for the event (by since Shax wanted us to limit it to 1 entry per character I considered the Cthulhu mythos a single character and chose only one. THe Call is the longest adaptation, and hence my choice, because it is one of my favorite Lovecraft Tales as well. The other two adaptations are The Festival, and the nameless city.

Maroto's art is gorgeous as always, but in back and white here it is also very evocative and captures the mood and tone of Lovecraft exceptionally well. What caught my eye the most was the design of the Great Cthulhu himself, it is decidedly different from the traditional design we see everywhere in mythos art and even in plushy toys. Creepier, more alien, which is good in cosmic horror.

What I love about the Call as a story though, is the way it portrays the slippery slope of curiosity. It is like amorality tale written specifically for me. I am insatiably curious about things, and once an idea or line of research gets ahold of me I cannot let it go until I have satiated the curiosity. There are lines of research I have been pursuing isnce my grad school days that I can't, or won't let go of, as I haven't been satisfied by what I have learned yet, though I keep hitting dead ends or finding things I wish I didn't know. So in many ways I identify with the narrator of the Call, and it's story of the consequences of knowing too much of what you shouldn't know sends shivers down my spine every time I read it. It is also so expansive, we go from voodoo rituals in New Orleans to Eskimo tribes in Greenland to insane asylums and the south Pacific, but nowhere can the pervasive horror that is be escaped. It is everywhere and nowhere at once, and just when you think you have a handle on it, it rears up somewhere else or in some other manner leaving you no peace, no refuge. The horror of it is unrelenting as well as pervasive, and it is the kind of thing that doesn't just terrify you, it seeps into your mind and changes the way you look at the world.


Here is a sample of Maroto's art from the story, but this is from the Spanish edition...all i could find online sorry..



and another sample page from the Spanish version...



-M

That was the one I was thinking of! I couldn't remember where it appeared and it was killing me. I'm going to have to see if this book survived the flood, because I seriously need to read it again.

Damn, why have I never picked up ROM before? I was aware of the property and I think I even had a hand me down action figure of him from one of my cousins but I never really looked into what it was about thinking it was just a shlocky Saturday morning kind of cash in but this sounds amazing. This just made my "to buy" list

bronzeagebrian's #4: Son of Satan #8



Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artist: Russ Heath
Publisher: Marvel
Date: February 1977

Explanation:

I was raised Catholic, so as a child Satan was a very frightening concept. I was around six or seven when I was at a friend's house for the day and we were hanging out in his older brother's room. He had a stack of comics and one of them was Son of Satan #8. I remember feeling immediately intimidated because it had the word "Satan" on it, but I thought the monsters on the cover were cool and could not resist checking it out. My friend's older brother enthusiastically explained the story to me as a Black Sabbath record spun loudly in the background...

The story begins as a witch woman in robes accuses Daimon Hellstrom of the sin of aspiring to humanity and forgetting what he really is. She reveals herself in the image of Daimon's mother and he faints in shock and falls down into Hell. There are all kinds of creepy monsters feasting on dead bodies, stuffing disgusting limbs into their mouths. That image probably shocked me the most, as I know I suffered more than a few nightmares after witnessing it. But that was just the beginning.



The woman guides Daimon through Hell as a bunch of horrific, trippy images splatter across the panels. She explains that Satan is sleeping because it is Christmas Eve, then introduces Daimon to the other demons in command under Satan, including Morgan Le Fay.



The beautiful woman continues to make her pitch to Daimon to rejoin them in Hell, and as she embraces him in a passionate kiss he opens his eyes and sees her true nature...a disgusting, undead hag! Daimon pushes the hag away and her head comes off, rolling away and screaming things like "I almost had you, Devil's suckling!". Then a bunch of evil monsters dogpile onto Daimon as he screams in horror. Eventually it is revealed that this is all just a dream...Satan's dream.





Yeah...this comic affected me big time. I was scared to death of it, and my friend's older brother knew it. He got me good. I never saw a Son of Satan comic again until I was in my 30's, so it became a kind of enigma to me growing up. It wasn't until a few years ago that I bought the whole run of Son of Satan, as I love Bronze Age stuff and the series is a lot of fun as an adult. But I'll never forget that initial impression of my first little glimpse of Hell.

This comic was initially rejected by the Comics Code Authority. Archie Goodwin and John Romita had to step in and add a splash page to replace a page portraying Daimon getting crucified on a cross. But the page they made instead shows Satan exploding out of the hellfires in glorious fashion, which was much more scarier to my six-year old self!

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.

                                                                                                                                   

                                                                

                                                              
From Wikipedia :<br><br>"Set in the suburbs of Seattle during the mid-1970s, the comics follow a group of mostly middle class teenagers who, over the summer, contract a mysterious sexually transmitted disease known as 'the Bug' or 'the teen plague,' which causes them to develop bizarre unique physical mutations, turning them into social outcasts.

The story generally focuses on four central characters—Chris, Rob, Keith and Eliza—switching back and forth between their stories as they come in contact with and contract the disease. Apart from some introduction into the setting, the story starts off with Chris contracting the disease from Rob, a popular kid in school. Because of a failed attempt to warn her of his condition, Chris is not aware that Rob is infected until they are already having sex. Chris immediately feels she has been deceived and stops speaking to Rob for some time. Around the same time Keith contracts it from Eliza, a woman he meets while trying to buy cannabis at a friend's house. Although it is not made explicitly clear, Keith seems unaware that Eliza's mutation (a tail) is actually a disease that he can contract from her, although he never outwardly discusses the disease with Eliza, even after it has manifested within him.

Meanwhile, many other teens in the town have contracted the disease, and several of them seek seclusion from society due to the severity of their mutations and build an encampment in the woods outside of town. Chris and Rob eventually renew their friendship, which culminates with Chris running away from home to the encampment in the woods. Rob, however, continues to live with his parents and attends school, visiting Chris daily at the encampment. At the same time, Keith and Eliza seem to drift apart for a while. There is a central campfire at the encampment known as "the pit", and Chris avoids this location. Later, Rob disappears and Chris starts going to the pit, where she encounters Keith, who visits daily, bringing supplies to the other teens. Keith takes a liking to Chris and offers to let her stay at a tract house that he is watching while its owners are on vacation. Chris eventually invites some of the other teens that frequent the pit to stay at the tract house, which they proceed to destroy to Keith's detriment. Eventually Keith and Eliza rekindle their relationship and Chris discovers Rob's fate. This culminates in the remaining central characters leaving the tract house and the town itself.

Burns has said that the mutations can be read as a metaphor for adolescence, sexual awakening and the transition into adulthood."

                                                  



                                   

No demons, ghouls, zombies or vampires, but all the same, this is really creepy weird, maybe more so now in our current Ebola panic. High school kids, sex, drugs, and weird things, really weird, happening at 3 a.m. that you don't know or can't control, and are freaking out.

Maybe if it wasn't by Charles Burns, it wouldn't convey the same, but his simple kind of Johnny Craig-style makes it all the more creepy.

I don't think you'll regret it, especially since the whole run can be had dirt cheap.

One thing I will say is that for me, the series doesn't fully hit its stride until the X-Men guest appearance in #17-18, which also introduces Hybrid. That's not to say that the first 16 issues of the series are bad, but they are fairly dense both in terms of art and writing. Starting with #17, the pacing seems better to me, and the series really takes off.

The whole series is one big story, with a beginning, middle and end. For me, #1-16 are the beginning, with #17-50 (aka Rom Team-Up) as the middle, #51-66 the end, and #67-75 the epilogue. All of which is to say that if the first few issues don't immediately grab you - and they might - keep with it.