Sometime in the fall of 1981, my Mom dropped me off with a couple of her friends for a while as she had some things to do and would be picking me up later. It was a couple of dudes I didn't really know, sitting around drinking out of foamy Schlitz cans, cooking up sausages (not of the buttered variety, so Gary Busey can relax) in an avocado green electric fry pan, shooting the shit about politics. Not my scene.
I decided I wanted to go outside and sit on the front stoop (place had no porch, I was inches from gravel) and enjoy the oncoming dusk. Just before I headed out, one of them said, "Hey Robby, do you want this?" and tossed me a coverless comic book. I despised coverless comics of any form or fashion. It was a horror comic also, which I despised as well, much like Corey Haim's character in The Lost Boys.
However I was bored shitless and gladly and graciously accepted it.
I sat reading by the light of the falling sun, this book of stories that were eminently engaging, creepy and artful to a degree. I remembered the tales for decades. One of a demon infiltrating a family that was particularly disturbing, another of a vampire who was about to be staked, only to have the bloodsucker wake up in his coffin screaming. In a trope reversal, it was the vampire's nightmare, not the human.
Now I remembered the stories but not the book, this aided by its coverless condition. I would infrequently search for it over the years. But was never able to track it down. Until I discovered Back Issue Magazine's Facebook page.
Observe:
I have now found the comic, and that wonderful rush of familiarity and nostalgia upon reading it after all those years was very strong. So, yeah, the internet sucks, but in rare occasions, it serves a positive purpose.
the prementioned vampire story was based on a poem called Nightmare by Miriam B. Campbell with great Michael Golden artwork illustrating the story.
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