Skywald!: The Complete Illustrated History of the Horror-Mood

Out of New York City in the early '70s emerged a series of black and white horror comics titled Nightmare, Psycho and Scream. Lasting only several years, these comics established themselves as something wholly unique thanks to the editorship of Archaic Alan Hewetson, whose dark and perverse in-house style became known as "the Horror-Mood". With many enduring characters and stories, Skywald! continues to stand the ravages of time more than a quarter of a century later. Long overdue, this book is the first to chronicle the amazing publishing house, its influence, and its top writers and artists. Told by Archaic Al himself and other Horror-Mood bullpenners, with plenty of anecdotes and features, Skywald! also reproduces in their entirety some of the best stories.

From the Publisher

Nineteen complete comic strips from the original Skywald horror magazines, forming a "best of" Skywald The origins of classic horror characters such as The Human Gargoyles and The Heap, as well as stories like The Funeral Barge, Lunatic Picnic, Zoo For The Beasts Of The Universe, The Comics Macabre and many others All the Horror-Mood magazine covers reproduced in beautiful full-colour The first behind-the-scenes history of this influential and unusual publishing company by the core team of creators A collector’s item both for new readers and old fans, as well as being of interest to mainstream comic fans through Skywald’s strong links to Marvel Will appeal to fans of HP Lovecraft, due to Skywald’s long-running interpretations of Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos, and their "International anti-Shoggoth Crusade" to the centre of the Earh Details the long-standing rivalry with the b&w horror comics competition, Warren Includes an interview with the late Dr Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent and anti crime & horror comics crusader (after he was parodied in the pages of Skywald) New full color wraparound cover painting by top comic artist and illustrator Pablo Marcos Contains rare and unpublished art, and a complete Skywald checklist Special tribute to Skywald & full page ad for this book in the new edition of Comic Book Artist High profile on websites devoted to horror and comics Skywald comics are the prefered reading material of Otto from The Simpsons (episode #8F21)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

DAVID How did the covers for Nightmare 10 and Psycho 9 come about as a lead up to your becoming editor? ALAN I was Associate Editor. About four o clock on a Thursday afternoon Sol asked if I would do the mechanicals for these two upcoming covers and leave them on his desk for the morning. He gave me two pieces of art, nothing else. Doing production boards (making covers ready for the printer) would normally take a seasoned professional, like Sol, maybe an hour or so. However, although I knew what a cover mechanical was, I d never actually done one. I certainly wasn t going to admit that! So I dug up some old cover mechanicals out of the art drawers to use as examples, and sat down at the production art desk and stared at the two new paintings, which had no story connections at this point, and started to write down disconnected words and phrases and other ideas. I worked at this for hours, and also came up with the titles and plotlines for the two stories necessary. When I had the wording I wanted I called a letterer who lived nearby and had him work up the cover lettering,which I changed again while he was lettering. I had stats of the lettering made later in the evening so that I could complete the mechanicals and it took me all night but when Sol walked in at nine or so Friday AM the finished two covers were resting on his art desk. The Nightmare cover wasn t particularly inconsistent with anything we d ever done, except for using the expression A HORROR-MOOD LURKS HERE, but Psycho s cover was a radical, stylish change. Sol sat down and looked at the covers awhile, and nodded approval, and asked me if I was headed home to Canada, and when I said that I was, he asked me if I wouldn t mind hanging around New York until Monday, when he d have some important news for me. He didn t comment on the two covers other than nodding general approval. (The line: A SKYWALD HORROR-MOOD PUBLICATION wasn t added until later. In fact, that was the night that I conjured up the concept for The Horror-Mood.) And all that weekend, lounging and roaming around Manhattan, I worked out the skeleton for what I personally wanted to see happening with Nightmare and Psycho, becoming highly stylized, becoming very different from everybody else in the field, being consciously innovative, establishing a strong bullpen, and setting aside comic book virtues in favor of the virtues of horror, as in A HORROR-MOOD LURKS HERE Of course, I didn t have the authority to carry any of this through to fruition, but I had the pipe dream that I could talk Sol into an experiment of some kind, perhaps experiment with one new title (thus Scream was born, without a title) because although Skywald had already decided to cancel Science Fiction Odyssey we had talked of another horror title. Sol Brodsky had always asked me to come up with new ideas, everything from contents pages and movie features to layouts, and I had re-written most of his cover blurbs and ad pages, and he was consistently receptive to my ideas. Monday morning. Israel Waldman and Sol Brodsky were in conference. There was no office activity; nobody else was around. I typed up The Slither-Slime Man script I d hand-written over the weekend to give to Pablo Marcos, before heading back to Canada. Sol emerged, grinning, and bade me come into his office. "I have some news. I think you ll find it s good news for everybody. For me and for you. Marvel has made me an offer to go back and develop their overseas syndication. And I m going to do it. This is a big opportunity. I m very happy. Now, I ve recommended to the Waldmans that you take over as editor. You know what you re doing, I ve known you for several years, I trust you. I told them that you re the right guy for the job. They want to talk to you this afternoon."

About the Author

During the early 1970s, the late Alan Hewetson edited the Skywald magazines Nightmare, Psycho and Scream, and wrote extraordinarily memorable illustrated horror stories. Thirty years later, fans throughout the world continue to read and love his unique blend of humour and horror in what Hewetson called The Horror-Mood'. His stories and magazines have become prized collectors items.

Reviews

News