Help what was this Comic ?

[ninelivecat]

I got this American comic book in Ireland around 1979 to 1981.It was a small thin standard sized comicbook.It could have been DC or Marvel I'm not sure but It had the usual adverts in the middle for X-Ray Specs, Hostess Twinkie Cake Bar and Sea Monkeys etc etc.Now this comic book had a couple of different stories in it but I can't remember the title or the main story in the comic but I do remember that one of the stories was an EC style short horror vampire story spread over a few pages in full colour.It was set in modern times could have been in the USA.The story was set in a car on a road a young woman picks up a young guy hitchhiking or a young guy picks up a young woman Hitchhiking One of them was a vampire and I think that was the twist Don't think it was a continuing story.
I know thats not much to go on but maybe that might ring some bells Where Horror stories in comics common place early 80's outside of Warren Comics
Vampirella Creepy and Eerie ?

[T GUy]

I got this American comic book in Ireland around 1979 to 1981.It was a small thin standard sized comicbook.It could have been DC or Marvel I'm not sure but It had the usual adverts in the middle for X-Ray Specs, Hostess Twinkie Cake Bar and Sea Monkeys etc etc.Now this comic book had a couple of different stories ... one of the stories was an EC style short horror vampire story spread over a few pages in full colour.It was set in modern times could have been in the USA... Where Horror stories in comics common place early 80's outside of Warren Comics
Vampirella Creepy and Eerie ?

Sounds like one of the Charlton or DC mystery anthologies - House of Mystery, Ghosts or The Unexpected if it's DC. Which it sounds like from the ads - I don't recall Hostess Twinkies ever cropping up in Charltons.

[ninelivecat]

Sounds like one of the Charlton or DC mystery anthologies - House of Mystery, Ghosts or The Unexpected if it's DC. Which it sounds like from the ads - I don't recall Hostess Twinkies ever cropping up in Charltons.

Thanks for that info I will check those out I should have pointed out in the originaI post that I was only looking for a direction to start looking in rather than finding the actual comic which would be like looking for a needle in a haystack Just a couple of follow on questions

Could a short horror story like this also have popped up inside a superhero comic ?

Are the DC anthology comics you have mentioned nice to collect and are 70's horror comics generally nice to collect ?

How come when Ghosts gets up to issue 100 in 1980 then jumps to 102 in 1981
did it come out less frequently near the end of its run Where horror comics generally dying out at this stage ?

[dan bailey]

Could a short horror story like this also have popped up inside a superhero comic

Not impossible, I guess, but I think very unlikely

Are the DC anthology comics you have mentioned nice to collect and are 70's horror comics generally nice to collect ?

I think so, & so do quite a few others here. Charlton's '70s anthology titles have quite a following as well. For the most part, after the very early '70s Marvel's horror efforts were focused on characters (Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf By Night, etc) rather than anthologies, but again those tended to be very solid comics.

How come when Ghosts gets up to issue 100 in 1980 then jumps to 102 in 1981
did it come out less frequently near the end of its run Where horror comics generally dying out at this stage ?

By then I'd gotten out of comics, but if anything they'd begun dying out about 1975.

[InfoBroker]

How come when Ghosts gets up to issue 100 in 1980 then jumps to 102 in 1981? Did it come out less frequently near the end of its run Where horror comics generally dying out at this stage ?

According to comics.org cover gallery, it looks like Ghosts was a monthly from mid 1977 or so onwards and until its final issue (#112 - May 1982). Prior to that it had periods of 8 times a year, and bimonthly publishing frequencies. Not sure what you mean by jumps though. Issue 100 has a May of 1981 cover-date and issue 101's is June.

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/1979/200/1979_2_101.jpg

I'm curious though as to why GCD thinks there was no issue #1?

- jb the "was the indentia different in the initial issue?" ib -

[dan bailey]

I'm curious though as to why GCD thinks there was no issue #1?

- jb the "was the indentia different in the initial issue?" ib -


Yep -- the GCD synopsis page for the series says that "Numbering continues from Ghost (DC, 1971 series)." The entry for Ghost #1-&-only says that "the indicia reads just Ghost -- cover and later issues read as 'Ghosts.'"

[Rob Allen]

This could also be one of the Marvel reprint anthologies that were so common in the early 70s - Chamber of Chills, Dead of Night, Uncanny Tales, Crypt of Shadows etc.

Did it seem like a newly-published comic when you saw it, or could it have been a few years old?

[ninelivecat]

This could also be one of the Marvel reprint anthologies that were so common in the early 70s - Chamber of Chills, Dead of Night, Uncanny Tales, Crypt of Shadows etc.

Did it seem like a newly-published comic when you saw it, or could it have been a few years old?

Well it was brand new when I got it from the newsagent but it was a United Kingdom reprint so I'm not sure if that means they bastardised it from original US comics I doubt it though since all the American Adverts where intact inside
I guess I'll just have to check through all the DC/Marvel/Charlton horror comics that I can find from 1978 through to 1981 and eventually it's bound to pop up.

[ninelivecat]

Sounds like one of the Charlton or DC mystery anthologies - House of Mystery, Ghosts or The Unexpected if it's DC. Which it sounds like from the ads - I don't recall Hostess Twinkies ever cropping up in Charltons.

Just remembered that this comic may have had a Moby Dick 1956 movie advertisement in it
perhaps 16mm home projector or a book or poster or something new at the time that was based
on the old John Huston movie Ever come across anything like that ?

[T GUy]

Well it was brand new when I got it from the newsagent but it was a United Kingdom reprint so I'm not sure if that means they bastardised it from original US comics I doubt it though since all the American Adverts where intact inside


This would be a U. S. comic with a U. K. cover price printed on it for U. K. distribution, in that case. I. e., identical in every way to the copies sold in the U. S. except for the price printed on the cover.

I guess I'll just have to check through all the DC/Marvel/Charlton horror comics that I can find from 1978 through to 1981 and eventually it's bound to pop up.

There's a site called the Grand Comicbook Database (click on this link) (http://www.comics.org/index.lasso), oft referred to as the GCD around here, which is the go-to place.

You are probably best off searching for

House of Mystery
Unexpected
Ghosts

as your first three options. I think all of DC's other mystery comics had been axed by that point.

Just remembered that this comic may have had a Moby Dick 1956 movie advertisement in it
perhaps 16mm home projector or a book or poster or something new at the time that was based on the old John Huston movie Ever come across anything like that ?

No, can't recall that ad. If only it had been the 1970s King Kong remake, or Zeppelin.

[T GUy]

Yep -- the GCD synopsis page for the series says that "Numbering continues from Ghost (DC, 1971 series)." The entry for Ghost #1-&-only says that "the indicia reads just Ghost -- cover and later issues read as 'Ghosts.'"

The last time I looked at my copy of Ghosts No. 1's indicia, I decided that the title had been misprinted in the indicia as 'Ghost'. Or possibly that it hadn't and that there had been a change of title early enough to get the logo changed but the indicia had slipped through the net.

[ninelivecat]

This would be a U. S. comic with a U. K. cover price printed on it for U. K. distribution, in that case. I. e., identical in every way to the copies sold in the U. S. except for the price printed on the cover.


Does this mean that they where released at more or less the same time as in the United States that is on the correct Month ?
Now If this is the case then it should make things easier thinking more carefully I have narrowed the time period down to just 1980 possibly just Summer 1980

[MWGallaher]

DC was also publishing SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE in 1980, so you might want to look at those as well.
Just in case, here's one of the DC comics of the time that had a hitchhiking story:
http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/1979/400/1979_4_039.jpg

[T GUy]

Does this mean that they where released at more or less the same time as in the United States that is on the correct Month ?
Now If this is the case then it should make things easier thinking more carefully I have narrowed the time period down to just 1980 possibly just Summer 1980

More or less: in the U. K. we got 'em in the cover-date month or the month before (in the U. S., they were about three months before the cover-date at that time).