'THE BOY WHO SAW BIGFOOT' - BOOKING MY REDISCOVERY AT LONG LAST OF A CRYPTOZOOLOGY NOVEL LONG LOST!

 

The very evocative front cover of my Weekly Readers Books hardback edition of The Boy Who Saw Bigfoot, a novel written by Marian T. Place and first published in 1979 by Dodd, Mead & Company (© Marian T. Place/Dodd, Mead & Company/Weekly Readers Books – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Friends and colleagues, including loyal ShukerNature readers, will be very familiar with my succession of searches in recent times for various unusual books, magazines, records, and artefacts that I once fleetingly encountered many years previously but inexplicably failed to purchase and which have eluded all of my attempts since then to identify and very belatedly buy them. Happily, however, quite a few of these recent searches by me have finally ended in success, and the cryptozoologically-relevant example documented here is one of them.

It was during the evening of 7 April 2021 when I scored this particular "identified at last after all these years" successes. On that occasion, my search had been the latest one in a lengthy succession spanning a quartet of decades, seeking a very specific bigfoot-themed novel that for so long had seemed no less elusive than its cryptid subject! Here is the back-story to my quest for it.

One Bank Holiday Tuesday during the early 1980s, my family and I visited the Welsh seaside city of Newport for the day, where, while walking around the shops in its central area (by my early 20s, I'd long since lost interest in sitting on a beach!), Mom and I came across a big second-hand bookshop. Needless to say, I swiftly entered it and began a perusal of its wares, especially as this shop was totally new to me.

While doing so, I chanced upon a slender hardback book with a very attractive drawn illustration that wrapped around its entire front cover, spine, and back cover, and which was mainly brown with some green, featuring a bigfoot on the front. I opened it, but when I discovered that it was a children's novel rather than a work of non-fiction, I placed it back on the shelf, and eventually left the bookshop without buying anything – a rare event indeed for me!

 

A typical shopping street in Newport city centre, Wales (© Paula Rogers/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0licence)

Once back home, however, as so often happens with me, I began to wish that I'd bought the book after all, even if only as a novelty or souvenir, as it wasn't expensive and I'd never seen it before. Unfortunately, Newport was a very considerable distance away from where we lived, so there was no question of travelling all the way back there to buy it. I've only visited Newport once since then, several years later, and although the shop was still there, the bigfoot book had gone.

Regrettably, I hadn't taken notice of either its title or its author while looking at this book's cover, my attention having been focused upon its very striking wraparound illustration instead. Nevertheless, the memory of it has occasionally popped into my head during the subsequent four decades, as it did again on 7 April. However, after having failed on several previous occasions, this time I was determined to track down this long-vanished volume and identify it. And after scouring through untold lists of bigfoot-entitled books that night on ebay, Abebooks, Amazon, etc, I did indeed finally find it!

I did so by entering "bigfoot children's novel 1970s" in Google's Image Search (because I'd seen the book during the early 1980s, I guessed that it had probably been published in the 1970s – any earlier would have been most unlikely because bigfoot wasn't a well-known cryptid prior to the 1968 Patterson-Gimlin film). Sure enough, up popped a picture of the entire cover of a book, front and back, featuring a wraparound illustration that immediately clicked in my memory – that was it, that was the very same cover whose striking image had stayed with me all these years!

The book turned out to be The Boy Who Saw Bigfoot, a 96-page hardback novel aimed at young people, written by American children's authoress and bigfoot seeker Marian T. Place, who has also written various other bigfoot-themed novels for youngsters (as well as one non-fiction book), which was first published in 1979 by New York-based publisher Dodd, Mead & Company. I soon found for sale online a reasonably-priced good-condition copy of the Weekly Readers Books hardback edition featuring that same iconic cover illustration and published that same year, which I purchased straight away. It arrived safely from the States about a fortnight later. So after more than 40 years, I finally own this hitherto nebulous novel, and I now look forward to reading it at last. Finally: here is that very memorable wraparound cover that finally solved for me the longstanding mystery of the missing bigfoot book:

 

The very eyecatching full wraparound cover from my Weekly Readers Books hardback edition of The Boy Who Saw Bigfoot (© Marian T. Place/Dodd, Mead & Company/Weekly Readers Books – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

THE MONSTER OF DREAD END - REDISCOVERING A CHILLING CHILDHOOD PRECURSOR TO MY CAREER IN CRYPTOZOOLOGY

 

The dramatic, climactic panel from the legendary comic-strip horror story 'The Monster of Dread End' written by John Stanley and illustrated by Ed Robbins that first appeared in Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© John Stanley/Ed Robbins/Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As today has been yet another Bank Holiday Monday of the traditional wet'n'windy, stay-at-home type here in the UK, by way of light(?) relief I'll share with you tonight on ShukerNature a notable cryptozoology-relevant rediscovery made by me during the early hours of this morning. True, its subject certainly may not be notable to everyone, nor may it be what everyone would instantly or at least initially deem to be of cryptozoological relevance. However, my finding of it today almost by chance after having purposefully and diligently searched so many times before yet always in vain swiftly reminded me of how, in spite of its overtly bizarre nature, this very specific, never-forgotten item may well have played a subtle role in cultivating my curiosity about monsters and mystery beasts as a child, inputting only too memorably into the formative mind of a fledgling cryptozoologist the excitement as well as even sometimes the terror associated with such creatures. And the name of this unconventional yet indelibly imprinted source of proto-cryptozoological intrigue? The Monster of Dread End. But to begin at the beginning…

Sometime during the late 1960s or early 1970s, I was bought a very unusual hardback comic book. In outward appearance, it greatly resembled the familiar comic annuals that used to be produced for sale just before Christmas each year by all of the major British children's comics, a fair selection of which I would buy or have bought for me at one time or another down through my younger years. These included such fondly-remembered but long-since vanished titles as The Beezer, The Dandy, The Topper, The Beano (sole survivor today), Sparky, Buster, Cor!, Whizzer & Chips, The Eagle, Valiant, Lion, Tiger, and Jag. However, the contents of the annual-type comic book under consideration here were very different from the innocuous cartoon humour and 'boys-own' adventure serials present in those above-named titles. Indeed, to the impressionable, highly imaginative youngster that I was back then, they were for the most part quite nightmarish, even horrific, and I freely confess that unbidden thoughts about them gave me a fair few sleepless nights as time went on. This no doubt explains why I eventually discarded the book, about 2-3 years after having received it, but even today I can still vividly recall a fair amount of its contents, although I can neither remember its title nor its front-cover illustration.

About 64 pages long and A4-sized, this annual-lookalike comic book contained a series of self-contained stories (somewhere around 10-12, if I remember correctly), each one presented in the traditional panel-type illustration format of comic strips. Some were in full colour, others in monochrome, although red/white was favoured over b/w, as far as I can recall. However, their one common attribute was that the theme of their stories was the supernatural and the unknown, presenting a diversity of fictitious but terrifying tales featuring the likes of malevolent phantoms and other malign presences, fatal premonitions, and monsters – including the afore-mentioned denizen of Dread End, which irresistibly captured in its hideous clawed grasp the near-mesmerized attention and tenacious, abiding remembrance of this youngster just as surely and unrelentingly as it did physically to the numerous children who were its doomed victims in the story.

(Incidentally, I should note here that until this morning's rediscovery I'd completely forgotten that this story's title was 'The Monster of Dread End', having readily remembered its plot and pictures down through the decades but not what it was actually called, which is why I'd experienced such problems in the past when seeking it out. Consequently, I'd concentrated my efforts instead upon trying to recall the title of the book containing it, entering all manner of word combinations into Google's search engine and image search in the hope of assembling a phrase close enough to the book's title for details to appear concerning it and/or a picture of its cover that might elicit some recollections, but nothing ever did. This morning, however, I tried a different tactic, but one that worked immediately. I simply entered 'giant hand sewers comic book' into Google Image's search engine, and up popped several panels from that still very familiar story, together with its hitherto-forgotten title and plenty of other details too, which will be revealed later.) Anyway, back to the story.

 

The very atmospheric opening panel from the legendary comic-strip horror story 'The Monster of Dread End' written by John Stanley and illustrated by Ed Robbins that first appeared in Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© John Stanley/Ed Robbins/Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Set in an unnamed American town or city suburb, 'The Monster of Dread End' begins with the above-reproduced panel depicting and describing the dismal, derelict tenement blocks of Dread End, long since deserted and cordoned off with an official Keep Out sign attached to the chains encircling this accursed street and its immediate environs. The next few panels provide harrowing flashbacks that reveal how the horrors now inextricably associated with it began. Back then, Dread End was a bustling, happy street called Hawthorn Place – until that fateful early morning when a dead "balled-up thing" was found there, lying on the pavement "like an empty wrapper thrown carelessly aside but somehow still recognizable as having once been human". (Mercifully, no actual image of this object was presented, only the above-quoted description of it, so exactly what it looked like was left to the reader's imagination.) At the same time that horrified observers were gathering around it to stare in shock and revulsion, a panic-stricken young boy came running out of his family's apartment, yelling to everyone that his kid sister had gone missing, her bed empty…

Within a relatively short space of time, several other children from families living in Hawthorn Place also went missing from their beds. On each occasion, their absence was soon followed that same morning by the discovery close by of another of those horrific dead objects, lying on the street in silent, abject testimony to the fully-formed, living, loving child that had formerly existed in its stead. Even when frightened parents boarded up the windows in their children's bedrooms, the anomalous abductions continued, the boards being discovered broken and torn aside, the children gone, and the "balled-up things" found on the pavement nearby. Consequently, it was not long before the street's residents had all moved out, even those with nowhere else to go, content to live on the streets elsewhere if need be rather than remain in their homes and face the unexplained horror of Hawthorn Place. For despite all of their efforts, not only the local police but also the best criminological brains in the business called in from elsewhere were completely unable to discover who – or what – was responsible for this trail of terror and death.

Years went by, and Hawthorn Place, now redubbed Dread End due to its infamy, became encircled by other empty streets, yielding a veritable domain of the damned, a no-man's land of the lost, because no-one wanted to live even close to, let alone within, this sinister street. Nor did anyone ever set foot near it – until one particular night. That was when teenager Jimmy White ventured alone into the grim, dark shadows of Dread End in search of an answer to its foul mystery, seeking the cryptic Monster of Dread End itself, whatever or whoever it may be – because seven years earlier, he had been that panic-stricken young boy who had run outside shouting that his kid sister was missing, her bed empty. She had been the Monster's first victim, her remains being the first of those horrific "balled-up things". Jimmy had vowed vengeance ever since, and now he was here to take that vengeance, although, armed with nothing more than a police whistle with which he hoped to alert any cops who may be patrolling other streets in the vicinity if he should actually encounter his quarry, he was by no means clear about how to do so. Nevertheless, he intended to try, somehow, for his sister.

Hours later, however, with nothing seen or heard, Jimmy conceded to himself that he was probably years too late, that the culprit had no doubt moved on long ago. Yawning and stretching in the first light of dawn, he was just about to do the same, when suddenly, causing him to freeze in mid-stretch, a nearby manhole cover began to rise, then slipped to one side – as a huge five-fingered long-clawed hand covered in livid-green reptilian skin slowly emerged, followed by an unimaginably lengthy, similarly-scaly arm. Were it not for it terminating in that grotesque taloned hand instead of a head, the arm would have resembled an anaconda-like snake, as more and more of its immensely flexible, serpentine form continued to emerge. While an unbelieving Jimmy watched in absolute horror, standing stock-still for fear of alerting this obscene, repellent entity to his presence, the hand and arm rose up against the wall of a building close by, stretching ever upwards, feeling, searching, blind but evidently sentient, and quite obviously seeking prey.

 

Seeking prey – a panel from the legendary comic-strip horror story 'The Monster of Dread End' written by John Stanley and illustrated by Ed Robbins that first appeared in Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© John Stanley/Ed Robbins/Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Jimmy had no idea what it was or where it had originated, but in that moment he knew with absolute certainty that he had solved the mystery of all of those missing children's gruesome fates, including that of his sister. They had been seized in their beds by this vile abomination, which had been lurking in the sewers of Dread End, and was still living there today, emerging at daybreak in the hope of abducting further victims to sustain its foul existence.

In his shock at what he had just seen, Jimmy lost his grip on his whistle, which fell to the ground, clattering on the pavement. Instantly, the hand and arm shot back down inside the manhole with lightning speed. So although it couldn’t see, this eerie entity could certainly sense the vibration of Jimmy's whistle hitting the floor. That must have been how it had traced its young victims, sensing the subtle vibrations that they had made while lying asleep in their beds all those years ago.

Alone once more amid the foreboding, unnatural silence of Dread End, Jimmy started debating with himself whether he'd be able to escape if he fled, or whether the monster would re-emerge  and grab him straight away if it sensed his movements. Yet even before he had chance to come to a decision, that terrible clawed hand and snake-like arm did indeed emerge – and this time it was moving directly towards him! Again, Jimmy froze, not moving a muscle as the hand groped ever closer, ever nearer to his shadow-concealed form squatting in a dead-end alley. But then it paused, and moved instead towards an open, lidless dustbin (or garbage can to my US readers), lying on the ground right next to Jimmy. Its taloned fingers reached inside, but found nothing there, so as if in impotent rage the hand grasped the bin, and closed its fingers around it, crushing it as if it were made of tissue.

Nevertheless, the bin had apparently distracted the monster's attention from Jimmy, because instead of turning back towards him, the hand and arm, still emerging in seemingly limitless length from the manhole, moved off, groping blindly along a street leading away from the petrified teenager. What to do now? Jimmy stayed squatting in the dead-end alley, figuring that the more of this monster that emerged and moved on down the street, the further away from him its deadly hand would be – until a sixth-sense survival instinct suddenly kicked in. Jimmy looked behind him – and looming directly above him was the hand! Unbeknownst to Jimmy, it had entered a window in a tenement block further down the street, and by a series of sinuous, silent loops of its immensely lengthy, flexible arm in and out of other windows the hand had cunningly doubled back towards Jimmy and had finally emerged from a window overlooking the very alley in which he was crouching!

 

It's behind you! A panel from the legendary comic-strip horror story 'The Monster of Dread End' written by John Stanley and illustrated by Ed Robbins that first appeared in Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© John Stanley/Ed Robbins/Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The hand lunged down at Jimmy, but the youth was able to dodge its terrible clawed fingers, yet found himself trapped inside the alley, pressed against its dead-end wall. The hand lunged again, and again, Jimmy desperately striving to avoid its lethal grasp, but then, tiring and flustered, he stumbled, losing his balance. And as the terrified teenager crouched, knowing all too well that he could not escape, the hand triumphantly hovered over him, in an almost exultant stance, like a hooded venomous cobra of death about to wield its fatal strike at last (see the panel opening the present ShukerNature article that illustrates this dramatic, climactic scene).

Then, without warning, a deafening hail of bullets shattered the stillness of the street, round after round after round, from all manner of firearms, and all aimed directly at different portions of the monster's gigantic serpentine length. Its murderous fingers stiffened, and then its entire hand collapsed near to where Jimmy was slumped, prone with fear. Whatever it had been, the Monster of Dread End was no more. Its hand lay palm-upwards on the ground inside the alley, and crimson rivers of blood gushed forth from its arm, which had been blown apart, broken up into several discrete portions by the intensity of the barrage of artillery brought to bear against it.

A number of figures now stepped out of the shadows and deserted buildings where they had previously been in hiding, including uniformed policemen, bazooka-toting soldiers, and plainclothes officials. One went over to the hand and began examining its palm, noting that it contained pores through which the creature had evidently absorbed the blood and other body fluids obtained from its victims after its hand had crushed them.

The police apologized to Jimmy for not having appeared on the scene earlier, explaining that they had always been here and knew all about the monster, hoping that somehow, some day, they would destroy it, but needing to wait until enough of the arm had emerged to ensure their success in killing it when firing upon it, as opposed to merely wounding it. However, it had always retreated back inside the manhole cover at the slightest indication of danger. So when they spotted it pursuing Jimmy, they had poised themselves in readiness, and once a considerable length of its arm had emerged, they saw and took their best-ever chance of ending for all time the monster's reign of terror, and which now, at last, was indeed over.

 

The victorious concluding panel from the legendary comic-strip horror story 'The Monster of Dread End' written by John Stanley and illustrated by Ed Robbins that first appeared in Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© John Stanley/Ed Robbins/Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Although I hope that you've enjoyed my verbal retelling of 'The Monster of Dread End', nothing can compare to the original illustrated, scripted comic-strip version. So please click here to view (and also, if you so choose, download) this entire 10-page, 44-panel comic-strip story.

As I noted when introducing the present ShukerNature blog article, this comic-strip story may well have helped to incite my cryptozoological curiosity, because even though its own monster was so outrageously bizarre and grotesque, it probably played its part alongside a host of other influencing factors in encouraging my mind to consider whether remarkable creatures still unknown to science might actually exist. True, they were highly unlikely to be anything even remotely as incongruous as this macabre entity, but with Nessie frequently hitting the news headlines at that time, not to mention the Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film and yeti reports, I was becoming increasingly aware that mystery animals may indeed exist. As a result, and despite knowing full well that it was entirely fictitious, even as a youngster I enjoyed hypothesizing how such a creature as the Monster of Dread End could arise.

Needless to say, I swiftly dismissed any conjecture that the hand and arm may constitute just one limb of a truly colossal sewer-dwelling mega-monster sporting other limbs as well as a head, neck, torso, and possibly even a tail too, because such a veritable mountain of living flesh existing inside the region's sewers would readily block them for miles around in every direction, rapidly causing floods, road upheavals, and all manner of other dramatic indications of its subterranean presence. In addition, unless it had countless arms with body fluid-absorbing hands emerging from manholes the length and breadth of the region concealing this underground horror (a phenomenon that in itself couldn’t help but be noticed pretty darn quickly, let alone the huge body count of victims soon arising from such widespread predation), it assuredly could not sustain such a vast bulk if it relied entirely upon just one single hand to obtain all of its necessary nutrients.

Therefore, I reasoned, the ultra-flexible arm must itself be the monster's body, an immensely long one, but a body nevertheless – not so much a sewer alligator, therefore, as a sewer super-snake or snake-like reptilian entity. But what about the hand? Either  the creature kept its head hidden deep in the bowels of the sewers and hunted by means of a highly-modified tail whose terminal portion had evolved into a grasping, absorbing analogue of a pentadactyl hand, which seemed totally ludicrous; or, admittedly only slightly less so, the hand was actually the creature's highly-modified head instead, again having evolved into a grasping, absorbing analogue of a pentadactyl hand.

Speculative evolution is an engrossing subject in its own right. So even though it would struggle, I feel, to tender a plausible scenario for the morphological development of anything recalling Dread End's dreadful devourer, once again this latter comic-strip creation assisted in directing my attention and cogitations towards that field of analysis too. In short, 'The Monster of Dread End' story was influential in nurturing my early interests in both cryptozoology and speculative evolution.

 

Front cover of Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But what is the story of this story? That is to say, who created it, where did it originate, and what else, if anything, is known about it? This is what I was investigating early this morning, and I succeeded in uncovering some fascinating facts. It turns out that 'The Monster of Dread End' was the brainchild of a famous American comic book writer and cartoonist named John Stanley (1914-1993), whose foremost claim to fame was that he scripted (and also drew many of) the much-loved, exceedingly popular Little Lulu children's comic books from 1945 to 1959. However, in 1962 (not 1968, as sometimes incorrectly claimed), Stanley's creativity was channeled down a very different, much darker direction when he wrote all four comic-strip stories in the very first issue (September/October 1962) of a brand-new comic book published by Dell Comics and entitled Ghost Stories (which ran for 37 issues, folding in 1973). As this comic book's specific genre was horror/suspense, Stanley's quartet of stories were aimed at a much more mature readership than his previous work, their subjects all directly linked to the supernatural or unexplained mysteries, and one of these stories was none other than 'The Monster of Dread End', which was vibrantly illustrated by Ed Robbins. The other three were 'The Black Stallion' (no relation whatsoever to the same-named series of children's novels by Walter Farley; click here to view it), 'The Werewolf Wasp' (click here  to view it), and 'The Door' (click here to view it).

Prior to this morning, I had always assumed that 'The Monster of Dread End' was merely some obscure, historically unimportant comic-strip story that had been created specifically for some equally insignificant late 1960s/early 1970s annual-type comic book (i.e. the one that I had owned a copy of as a child). Hence I was very startled to discover when researching this selfsame story today not only that it had actually first appeared in the Sept/Oct 1962 debut issue of of Ghost Stories, but also that almost 60 years after its original publication, this latter issue is still popularly claimed (and has even been voted) by comic book devotees to be the scariest single comic-book issue ever published, and 'The Monster of Dread End' the scariest single comic-strip story ever published (little wonder why I found it so unnerving, albeit fascinating, as a child!).

Indeed, both this issue and this particular story within it have attained legendary status in such circles, to the extent that there is even a Spanish stop-motion mini-movie based upon the Dread End monster (which I'd love to see but haven't been able to locate anywhere online so far – suggestions?), as well as Horror Show Mickey's expanded, 15.5-minute retelling of its story currently on YouTube (click here to view this, which features much of the original comic-strip visuals, although some of its panels have been re-ordered in order to fit the story's reworking by HSM). In 2017, a Kickstarter project was launched by Emmy-award-winning visual effects artist and publisher Ernest Farino whose aim was to fund the production of a professional trailer that could then be utilised in pitching for the production of a stop-motion feature-length movie based upon this iconic story, but sadly it did not reach its targeted goal (click here for further information). Given the sensational CGI capabilities now available to film producers, however, perhaps this latter technology may offer a more viable alternative way forward in creating what could be a truly spectacular full-length Monster of Dread End movie. Additionally, in February 2004, artist Peter Von Sholly created an updated, photo-montage version of the classic original Stanley/Robbins comic-strip story. Simply entitled 'Dread End', it contains several notable changes made by Sholly – for instance, Jimmy is now named Stanley (in homage to John Stanley), the "balled-up things" are depicted (not for the squeamish!), and Jimmy's/Stanley's police whistle has been replaced by a mobile phone (click here and here for more details concerning Sholly's adaptation).

I have also ascertained that the still-unidentified annual-type comic book that I owned as a child in which 'The Monster of Dread End' appeared was evidently a compilation of comic-strip stories from a number of different issues of Ghost Stories, because when I checked down lists, titles, plot details, and images from those original issues I found other stories that I can remember from that annual. These latter include 'Blood, Sweat and Fear' and 'When Would Death Come For Daniel DuPrey?' (both of which originally appeared in Ghost Stories #3), written by Carl Memling and illustrated by Gerald McCann.

All that I need to do now, therefore, is discover the identity of this elusive volume. And so until/if ever I do, I shall continue to search for it online and anywhere else that I can, as and when the mood takes me. Call it a work in progress. Obviously, however, if anyone reading this article can offer me any suggestions, information, or assistance relating to my ongoing quest, I would be truly grateful. Who knows – if I do find out what it is, I might even then seek out a copy to purchase and reacquaint myself with its spine-chilling contents. Then again, in view of how they haunted my nights, albeit so very long ago now, might it be best to let sleeping dogs, and absent annuals, lie?

 

Revealed at last! A panel from the legendary comic-strip horror story 'The Monster of Dread End' written by John Stanley and illustrated by Ed Robbins that first appeared in Ghost Stories, #1, September/October 1962, published by Dell Comics (© John Stanley/Ed Robbins/Ghost Stories/Dell Comics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

UPDATE #1: 4 May 2021

It looks as though I've finally identified the mysterious annual-type comic book that I owned as a child and which included among its creepy, chilling comic-strip stories 'The Monster of Dread End'. From what I've been able to uncover, it was a one-off publication entitled Ghost Stories: Television Picture Story Book, which was published in (or around) 1970 by World Distributors, a leading publisher of annuals in the UK. Not only does its main title directly tie in with that of the original Ghost Stories comic book issues, which were still being published at that time, but in addition its front cover illustration is actually identical to that of Ghost Stories #3. Moreover, its 1970-ish date of publication matches the time when I owned the book. Obviously I need to examine a copy of this publication directly, or at least see a complete listing of its contents, in order to be absolutely certain, but I think it very likely that this is indeed the book that I've been searching for.

 

Ghost Stories: Television Picture Story Book (© Ghost Stories/Dell Comics/World Distributors – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

UPDATES #2 & #3: 5 & 6 May 2021

My recent success at identifying the above annual-type comic book as the book that I'd once owned as a child around 50 years ago, containing John Stanley's seminal 'The Monster of Dread End' cryptozoology-themed comic-strip story, has in turn inspired me to make renewed attempts (the latest of many) at seeking out two other longstandingly elusive comic-strip stories that I remember so well reading as a child but have never been able to identify or trace since then. So during these past two days this is precisely what I have done, and, amazingly, both searches have again been successful, at long last. Consequently, although neither of these latter two comic-strip story's subject is of cryptozoological relevance, it feels fitting to include details of them here, as their own reappearances in my life are due directly to my having been inspired to uncover them by having rediscovered 'The Monster of Dread End'. So here they are:

 

THE 10,000 DISASTERS OF DORT

Another success duly chalked up in my ongoing "All My Yesterdays" rediscovered memories. This one concerned a comic-strip story that I'd read in some UK boys' comic back in the early 1970s. It was all about the planned invasion of Earth by an advanced alien civilisation due to the impending death of their own planet or sun. But first they had to clear Earth of humanity, so chose to do this by inflicting a massive number of calamities upon us, and which looked as if they were going to succeed until, unexpectedly, the aliens discovered that they had a fatal weakness – our planet's microbes proved lethal to them (H.G. Wells's classic novel The War of the Worlds comes readily to mind here!). I knew that this comic-strip story's title referred to the number of calamities, and that the number was high, but that's all that I could remember re that aspect. As for the comic in which this story appeared: I had in mind Thunder, which I used to have each week, but which finally merged with another boys' comic. Yet when I checked online, I could not find any indication of this story within any of Thunder's issues. Ditto when I tried various other comics that I used to have at that time, including Lion, the boys' comic that Thunder had merged with.

But tonight, 5 May 2021, I finally achieved success, when I discovered that in May 1974, what was then Lion and Thunder merged with yet another UK boys' comic, Valiant, to become Valiant and Lion - and it was in the last few issues of Lion and Thunder before merging with Valiant that the sought-after comic-strip story had appeared. And its title? 'The 10,000 Disasters of Dort' (Dort being the aliens' home planet). It was written by Mike Butterworth and illustrated by Studio Bermejo. I've now found a few sample pages featuring panels from that story, and even an issue of Lion and Thunder in which it appears in full colour on the front page. Moreover, I've learnt that this story had actually appeared previously, in Lion, this original run spanning 18 May to 23 November 1968, in which it had a different ending. However, the Wellsian one had replaced it when reprinted in Lion and Thunder, from 22 December 1973 to 4 May 1974, in order to bring the story to an end in time for the comic's merger with Valiant. It would be interesting to know what its original ending had been.

 

Select pages from instalments of 'The 10,000 Disasters of Dort' in Lion and Thunder, including (far right) the concluding panels depicting its Wellsian ending there (© Lion and Thunder/IPC/Freeway Publications – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

PROPHET OF DOOM

I'm on a roll with my "All My Yesterdays" project - yet another longstanding mystery comic-strip story duly rediscovered. During the late 1960s/early 1970s, I read a comic-strip story in some UK comic annual about a villainous man from the distant future who arrives in our time with a plan to take over the world as its absolute ruler by holding over each major power the threat of destruction via his superior technological knowledge unless a huge sum is paid. But when he jauntily arrives at the office of some major international governmental figure to present his demands, he is shocked to discover that this figure is also from the distant future, and is in fact one of many from there who are here specifically to trap future villains like him. The one odd thing about it that I can particularly remember is that the two future men both had antennae! I also remember another comic-strip story from the same comic annual, all about a space villain named Disastro.

This unusual name provided me me a distinctive clue that I was able to use in tracing the mystery annual, which, as I discovered today, 6 May 2021, turned out to be the 1969 annual for the UK boys' comic Fantastic, containing a comic-strip story featuring the UK super-hero Johnny Future battling the villainous Disastro. But that was not all. It also contained another comic-strip story called 'Prophet of Doom', written by the celebrated Stan Lee and illustrated by Steve Ditko, which had been reprinted from issue #40 of the Marvel comic book Tales of Suspense, which had been published in 1963. And when I checked up the plot of that story, it was a perfect match to my memory of the antenna-sporting villain from the future and his similarly-sporting and originating nemesis. The final clincher was a series of illustrations from this story, which I'm presenting here. So I must have owned Fantastic Annual 1969 at some point (I know that I owned its annual from the following year, because I still do), yet its front cover picture rings no bells in my memory. Never mind, at least I've solved yet another riddle from my comic-reading childhood.

 

Front cover of Fantastic Annual 1969 and a selection of panels depicting the villainous future man from 'Prophet of Doom' (© Fantastic/Odhams Press/Stan Lee/Steve Ditko/Tales of Suspense/Marvel Comics/ – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

UPDATE #4: 8 November 2022

Rejoice! I finally obtained a long sought-after childhood memory in book form at today's home-town bric-a-brac market, but not from the market itself this time. I regularly meet up there with a longstanding friend, Tim, who shares many of my interests, such as cryptozoology and the unexplained, sci fi/fantasy movies and novels, comic-book super-heroes, etc. A couple of weeks ago, I casually mentioned to him there about my seemingly never-ending quest for a book that I'd owned as a youngster but had eventually given away and had always regretted it afterwards, especially as I'd never succeeded in purchasing another copy of it anywhere. It was of course the above-documented Ghost Stories hardback annual-type comic-strip book from 1970. To my amazement, Tim just as casually mentioned that he owned a copy of it and that along with a fair few others from his collection he was planning to list it for sale on ebay! Needless to say, I begged for first refusal on it, so he said he'd bring it along to the next market. Circumstances beyond our control arose to delay this, however, but today when we met up, Tim had indeed brought it with him and sold it to me for half of what he'd intended to list it for. I said I'd be more than happy to pay him what would have been his full listing price for it, but he wouldn't hear of it and was pleased that he'd been able to help me succeed in my quest for this elusive book.

 

So here it is, AT LAST, another long-missing piece from the time-dispersed jigsaw puzzle of my youth restored into its long-vacant place. Back home this afternoon, I read through the entire book at a single sitting, recalling how its stories had chilled my spine half a century ago, but now were merely whimsical curiosities, albeit still well-remembered ones. The highly-impressionable, exceedingly imaginative youngster I'd been when I'd originally read them is now a world-weary, hopefully (but by no means definitely) wiser oldie who realises only too well that the world contains far more terrifying realities than anything that can ever be found in any comic-book, but all the same I am very glad to have this one again. Thanks Tim!

 

  

Holding my newly-purchased copy of the long-sought-after Ghost Stories: Television Picture Story Book (© Dr Karl Shuker)

 

'THE WIND WHALES OF ISHMAEL' - A SHUKERNATURE BOOK REVIEW

 

Published in 1973, this is the Quartet Books paperback edition of The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971) (© Philip José Farmer/Quartet Books – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I have recently launched a new, occasional blog entitled Shuker's Literary Likings, in which I shall be reviewing novels and short story collections that I have particularly enjoyed reading down through the years - please click here to access it. Moreover, some of these works of fiction will include ones that have relevance to non-fiction or speculative subjects covered in ShukerNature. So to give you a direct example of this overlapping of interests, here is one of my recently posted literary reviews from my new blog:

The Wind Whales of Ishmael is a science fiction novel written by American sci fi/fantasy author Philip José Farmer (1918-2009) and originally published in 1971. Conceived as a sequel of sorts to Herman Melville's classic whaling novel Moby Dick (1851), it is set on Earth but in a far-distant future where the oceans have long since vanished and their former leviathans, the whales and the sharks, have evolved into huge aerial sky-beasts. However, these gargantuan yet exceptionally lightweight creatures are hunted not only by each other but also by a new breed of whalers who no longer set forth in maritime ships to pursue this aerial megafauna but instead in sky vessels. Here is this engrossing and highly original novel's official blurb:

With no more noise than of a ghost gliding over the ocean, the sea disappeared.

And Ishmael, lone survivor of Ahab's Pequod and now of the Rachel, falls through the empty sea-space, down through layers of membrane – into another world. Earth, but not the Earth he knows. A world where the sea has condensed through Time's evaporation; a world where whales fly and the sky is a swarm with floating animals and plants; a world of bloodsucking palsied vegetation, shaking land – and the Purple Beast of the stinging death.

But where there are whales, a whaler from another age can always find a home…

The Wind Whales of Ishmael is a startlingly imaginative tale of a weird, nightmare world from one of America's foremost science fiction writers.

There have been many editions of this novel since its original publication almost 50 years ago, but none of them boasts more spectacular front cover artwork than the edition detailed and depicted above. Its extraordinary wind whale and the tiny human whaler figure standing boldly if precariously upon its enormous bulbous head with harpoon poised are the sublime artistic creations of Bob Habberfield – a prolific front cover illustrator for sci fi and fantasy novels (particularly those of Michael Moorcock). Indeed, it was this vibrant illustration that originally attracted my attention and duly cajoled me into purchasing this edition when I spotted it in a local secondhand bookshop one afternoon during the early 1980s.

 

Yet as The Wind Whales of Ishmael is a science fiction novel, why have I devoted an entire ShukerNature post to it? In fact, it also has cryptozoological relevance, because the concept of sky beasts existing has long been aired from a real-life, non-fiction standpoint too, and by several different researchers. Moreover, it is a concept that has always fascinated me, inasmuch as Nature famously abhors a vacuum, yet the vast skies above us and the immense atmosphere surrounding our planet seem inexplicably lacking in sizeable creatures that have evolved specifically and exclusively to inhabit this rarefied upper zone, never sinking down to the ground until felled by death itself.

Over the years I have comprehensively chronicled the extremely radical, highly remote, yet tenaciously tantalizing cryptozoological possibility that perhaps such creatures do exist, remaining exceedingly elusive amid the most distant clouds and loftiest levels within Earth's atmosphere, only very rarely spied by our planet's gravity-grounded inhabitants, and that even when they are so observed, are mistakenly assumed to be alien spacecraft or suchlike, when in reality they are indeed UFOs, but living ones, not mechanical.

For more information, please click here to access on ShukerNature an extensive cryptozoology article on the subject of currently hypothetical sky beasts and cloud creatures.

I have also devoted a very detailed chapter to the history and investigation of alleged bona fide sky beasts in my book Dr Shuker's Casebook: In Pursuit of Marvels and Mysteries, whose front cover portrays me in the company of two gelatinous sky medusae (courtesy of incredibly talented artist friend Philippa Foster) – see below.

Little wonder, then, why I find this novel so enthralling as well as entertaining to read – giving me a veritable whale of a time, in fact!