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COMIC BOOK REVIEW! CHAMBER OF CHILLS #23, JULY 1976 ISSUE (Marvel Comics  Group)

I sure as dickens used to like those seventies-era Marvel Kirby/Ditko/Ayers reprint titles as anyone who's read issue #22 of my crudzine could tell you. So it was with delight that I accepted from none other than Bill Shute this issue of CHAMBER OF CHILLS, one of the later-on titles that unlike the Monsters and Creatures on the Prowl or Roaming or whatever titles actually ran a few of the pre-code horror comics after the code was relaxed somewhat.

So no "Groon" or "Googam" here but you'll still get your thrills beginning with Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's "Where Lurks the Ghost!" from TALES TO ASTONISH #25, a mag which surprisingly came out the exact same month as the first issue of FANTASTIC FOUR. It's a strangeoid mystery tale that of course you can figure out by merely reading the first few panels but it's always great for me to espy Ditko's work which was always eye-catching in its definitely non-megalopian way whether Ditko was presenting some supernatural thriller or Mr. A. refusing to rescue some wrongdoer dangling off a precipice. 

"Bat's Tale" dates from the pre-code Atlas days and features artwork from the infamous Russ Heath of NATIONAL LAMPOON fame though you know him better for drawing "Plastic Sam" in an early issue of MAD. A tale of a roving band of vampires who look more or less like Man Bat types, these bloodsucking creatures meet their match when their most recent prey turns out to be more'n the chubboid midaged fanabla he looks like.

Longtime DAREDEVIL artist Gene Colan drew "The Men in the Morgue" which deals with some gangsters who commit murder and decide to hide out in a morgue where they take the mortician's dog as hostage! It's a good enough one even with the various holes one tends to find in tales such as this.

However the cover saga "Gorilla Man" has NADA to do with the updated artwork featured on the cover which will give Brad Kohler even more conniptions as to when these stories really originated! Just look at the cover tho because the story really ain't as hotcha as one woulda expected with a man having nightmares about a half human/half beast and his ultimate confrontation with such a flub-a-dub in the wilds of darker than usual Africa. Not that hotcha a way to end a comic title such as this but eh, I guess Marvel couldn't get away with reprinting some of the more out-there pre-code titles that many fans sure wished they coulda (though were the Atlas titles as over-the-top as the EC's they drew some of their inspiration from? Never did read a pre-code Atlas horror story that wasn't reprinted in one of these seventies mags!).

Another proud addendum to the BLOG TO COMM comic book collection which I hope Dr. Wertham would not approve of, though I'm sure that during his addled later days he woulda found it all just fine 'cept for the ARCADEs with S. Clay Wilson 'r sum'thin'.