The creepy music from Creature Features (actually Henry Mancini's theme from Experiment in Terror), the shadows cast on my bedroom wall by the nightlight, the costumes on Halloween...all managed, at one point or another, to reduce me to tears.
But one of the most vivid memories from my misspent youth is the sheer terror I felt trying not to look at the cover of Marvel Comics' Tomb of Dracula #1.
The cover artwork was by Neal Adams--much better known for his work on Batman over at DC Comics (Marvel's "distinguished competition")--but the interior art was by Gene Colan, best known for his long run on Daredevil (and shorter stints on Captain America, Iron Man and Howard the Duck, amongst many others). Colan would go on to pencil every issue of Tomb of Dracula--a rarity, then and now, especially considering that the comic ran for 70 issues.
But it was Adams' art that first made me afraid to sleep at night. I'd lie awake in the bunkbed I shared with my brother, hoping that...what? The image on the comic wouldn't come alive and get me? Please don't ask me, all these years later, to explain the fears of an 8-year-old. I have no reasonable answer.
Except...that Marvel obviously hoped that the cover would frighten little children enough to want to buy it.
And they were right.
(NOTE: The image above is not of the actual comic, but of a trade paperback collecting the first few issues of Tomb of Dracula, recently purchased at a local comic book shop.)
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