Here is one of my favorite Charlton pages, a lush Don Newton page featuring the assembled Charlton Ghost Hosts (the cordial Dr. Graves, the leering Mr.Dedd, the bodacious Winnie the Witch, the grinning Mr.Bones, the eager Professor Coffin, and the lovely Arachne) welcoming then new kid on the block, Baron Weirwulf to the fold.
Here is a real Bronze Age treasure. This is the original artwork for the one and only issue of Atlas-Seaboard's Demon Hunter. Rich Buckler, fresh from his success at Marvel with Deathlok, arrived at Atlas-Seaboard in the second wave of talent and took on a number of books that others left after promises of great remuneration were not kept. Typical of his approach, he was a workhorse for the company and was even given the shot to develop one of his creations with the help of David Anthony Kraft's scripting. So was born Gideon Cross a man who hunts demons.
The book was gone after this single issue, and the company was gone soon thereafter. But Gideon Cross survived, showing up at Marvel as Devil-Slayer, appeared as a guest-star with Deathlok and with The Defenders where the "Xenogenesis" storyline begun at Atlas-Seaboard was finished,sort of though minus Buckler but with the scripts of Kraft.
Another version of the character appeared in Buckler's magazine Galaxia under the name of Bloodwing, both written and drawn by Buckler himself.
Here's a link to the published version of the Demon Hunter story.
Whether called Bloodwing, Devil-Slayer, or Demon Hunter, the character has proven to be a potent one indeed.
Lynd Ward's woodcuts can be breathtaking. His illustrations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein punch through the veneers of many who approach illustrating the text, and offer up an inner view of the struggle both within Frankenstein and the Creature.
My own interpretation of the novel suggests to me that the Creature is not real, as the evidence for his existence is only from the raving stories of his creator and presumably the eyewitness testimony of the Captain who ultimately tells the tell. But I maintain that the Captain, a man similar in mindset and unhealthy motivation to Frankenstein has been equally deluded, and so his testimony is tainted.
The task Mary Shelley (or her husband depending on who you believe really authored the text) was the create a ghost story, and I think it is a masterful one, so good that uncounted millions have seen the apparition over the many many years.
Ward gets at that sense of interior madness with his contorted images. For more of his work see this magnificent link.
And while I'm on the subject of Frankenstein, here's Edgar Winter's magnificent song of that name. Put that music behind Ward's images and you have something remarkable.
For a more prosaic rendition of the classic gothic horror, here's a link to the Classics Illustrated version of the story. Below is the magnificent Norman Saunders cover for one edition of that comic.
And here's the dramatic splash page by Robert Webb.
