The Maggots covers above are featured here at Steve Thompson's excellent blog "Shades of Gray". Those covers are part of the Hamiltor horror line, an offshoot company from the folks who also produced the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comics as well as Gladstone comics which was the source for classic Disney characters for many years.
The Hamilton horror books were magazine-sized b&w books which attempted to recreate the classic EC horror style, but actually evoked for me the somewhat more sedate and fun Charlton ghost line from the late 70's.
Gray Morrow, Pat Boyette and Joe Staton were the artistic linchpins of the line, but newer talents like Steve Stiles, Batton Lash and John Heebink also worked steadily for the line. L.B. Cole did the cover for the first issue of Dread of Night, and a very excellent horror image it is too. Joe Staton's classic ghost host Gravedigger is featured on two covers for Grave Tales.
The books had an army of ghost hosts, with two or three showing up in an issue. My favorite might Echo, a wan woman who only repeated the stories she heard. Nice gimmick. You can see her rendered by Staton on Graves Tales #3. The last Madraven comic above with a Morrow cover, the Summer Solstice special shows her facing off against Count Robsepiere, the main host of Dread of Night.
There's a fun text story titled "Salina" by Nick Cuti which runs through three of the titles across a few months. I just recently got hold of missing Maggots issues so I could finish that tale.
These were fun comic books, but alas didn't find enough market to survive. Later Hamilton put out the two Madraven Stark books, regular-sized comic books in color. But after these two final efforts the line disappeared into the comic book mists.
Here's a link with a bit more on these books.
Good stuff.
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