Because I´m sick : more recycled covers

As I spent most of the day in bed with stomach cramps I can´t do a long post ( yeah, like that ever worked before ) so I thought to mix things up a little I could do another post with recycled GESPENSTER KRIMI covers.

This time around I have picked some of the covers that were reused most often. The one above is from JOHN SINCLAIR, not GSPENSTER KRIMI but it was also used for the 20th issue of the spanish horror magazine RUFUS.

For issue 323 of SILBER GRUSEL KRIMI from the Zauberkreis Verlag the cover was changed quite a bit and instead of a hand rising through the earth we have a man sitting at a campfire waiting for Hell´s Emissary.

In a previous issue they used just the devil but they gave him a beard and changed him from a devil to a flying demon terrorizing hapless women.

And on the cover of GEISTER THRILLER 16 even the woman is gone.

Next up is a cover of GESPENSTER KRIMI that is a mash up from two different sources. Here we have issue 314 by Ivar Jorgensen titled Gefangener im Totenreich ( Prisoner in the Realm of the Dead ).

The same cover appears on TONY BALLARD issue 106, The Ghoul Empire.

As well as on an issue of spanish horror magazine DELTA.

Now I´m not sure where the winged creature comes from but it is also on another cover of GESPENSTER KRIMI and in quite better looking company. 

The vampire on the other hand was copied from a Dracula movie poster.

This Dracula also appears on The Literature of Terror, volume one.

As well as on a whole slew of audio dramas from EUROPA.

And the last one - because I already get the feeling I have outstayed my welcome - is what I like to call the wandering skeleton because it´s like this relative you find in all the family pictures. Here we have him on the cover of GESPENSTER KRIMI issue 74, The Island Of The Skeletons.

The same picture can be found on the cover of spanish mag HORROR.

We find the same skull in different surroundings on the mag PANICO.

Here it is on DR. TERROR`S HOUSE OF HORRORS by John Burke.

Which is a movie starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Donald Sutherland. Here is the poster, the skeleton man appears in the movie.

Here we have the skeleton with a full body on Duel With The Satan.

Adult mag SOS, relatos de mysterio, fantasia, suspense y terror.

The third time on a cover for GESPENSTER KRIMI this time with a scythe.

A cover of SPOKENJAGER JOHN SINCLAIR from the Netherlands.

They also used Dr. Terror for the story The Vampire Of Manhattan.

Here we have both on JOHN SINCLAIR 1122, The Prophet Of The Devil.

And that´s all for Today. Tomorrow we will continue with Neal Adams´ Marvel post but until then I have to catch up on my sleep and it looks like our pal skeleton man has some reading to do. Good night and good fright.

Before we start with the entertainment block I have to give a special thanks to CLAUDIUS BRACK , HOERSPIEL and EUROPA - VINYL for providing the audio drama covers and GRUSELROMANE for the covers with Dr. Terror. You can also find reviews of Dr. Terror´s House Of Horror on the websites PARLOR OF HORROR and TRAILERS FROM HELL .

Our first celebrity birthday is Robert Rodriguez who turns 48 and I think I have already mentioned enough times that Jessica Alba should have been naked ( she IS playing a stripper ) and that Robert should get a move on with the next Sin City movie as even Rosario Dawson is getting restless and has already said that her twins won´t stay firm and bouncy forever.

If my mother was telling me that Nicole Kidman has her 49th anniversary she would be no doubt be inclined to tell me for the 100th time that she did not make many films during the time she was married to Tom Cruise. Which according to my Mom was because he didn´t want an independent woman and wanted her to be the mother and housewife instead. I´m not sure if that´s true or if there just was no financial necessity for it. Unlike what many people believe it is still work. In any case she has done a lot of excellent movies since and she was the only good part in Batman Forever.

And I´m not trying to make any kind of statement here but I had this video already bookmarked and I´m already working too long on this post.



Which is also the reason I do not give you the complete litany of John Goodman´s tv roles and movies in lieu of his 64th birthday. You can already guess my favorite movie with him is The Flinstones with sex goddess Halle Berry ( yes, I tried to make one GIF with the complete scene but apparently the strain was too big for the GIF maker ) OMG !

Is it just me or does she look absolutely hot in EVERY movie she´s in ?

Anyway, I think The Flinstones was the movie when I became fully aware of Miss Berry and she became a member of my Top Five Sexbombs Of All Time. And this was still a few years before she showed her amazing stripper qualities and her incredible bubblebutt in The Last Boy Scout.

To celebrate Lionel Richie´s 67th birthday I wanted to post another video from a casting show when I came upon this. Here he is doing a concert at the Festival de Vina del Mar 2016 which I haven´t seen yet but usually the spanish music festivals are amazing. So I hope you enjoy this one.



A bit older is Danny Aiello who turns 83. He has been in a multitude of movies and tv shows too long to list but the first thing I always think about when I hear his name is that he played the father in the Madonna video Papa Don´t Preach. Ah yes, she was young and had a booming body back then. I remember staying up after midnight to see the version with her nippleslip ( sorry, there is an animated GIF for that but it´s NSFW ).

So let´s find out what Today´s kids know about 80s music.



Our oldest candidate is Martin Landau with 88 years and he has starred in a lot of western tv shows and movies like Maverick, Lawman, Tales of Wells Fargo, Rawhide,  Johnny Ringo, Wagon Train, Outlaws, Bonanza, The Rifleman, The Big Valley, the original Wild Wild West, Branded, Gunsmoke, Buffalo Bill and The Hallelujah Trail. He also appeared on The Untouchables, the original Outer Limits, both versions of Twilight Zone, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , Mission : Impossible, Get Smart, Columbo, Murder She Wrote, The Return of the Six Billion Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Ed Wood and The X - Files but to people from my generation he was best known as Commander John Koenig on the series Space : 1999. 

It must be fate that I found The Hallelujah Trail and the german version 40 Wagen Westwärts on YouTube. It´s one of my favorite westerns and one of those movies you watch every time when it´s on tv even though you have seen it a hundred times. Now even though I´m used to the german version I picked the english one because I´m not sure if the german version is uncut. To make matters worse there are different lengths given at imdb which go from 165 to 156 to 146 minutes. I´m not sure if that is because scenes were cut or because there are parts of the movie where you have a black screen with music because that were the intermissions - which movie theaters used to do in dem olden days.



Today is also the day Errol Flynn was born who was the very definition of the word swashbuckler and captivated generations of movie goers. His most famous role is probably Robin Hood which has influenced creators of other movies, tv series, books or comics. There are traces of him in every archery super hero but the most apparent in DC´s Green Arrow.

Mike Grell is one of the artists who heavily drew on the Robin Hood inspiration for Green Arrow in his brilliant Longbow Hunters and the following series. Fans of the ARROW tv show should definitely check out his work. The series is finally being released in trades and while there is no hardcover of Longbow Hunters DC would be stupid if they did not include it in the upcoming Green Arrow : A Celebration Of 75 Years.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Recycled covers : Gespenster Geschichten

While I was doing the VAULT OF HORROR post I came across all the still unused recycled covers from GESPENSTER KRIMI and since this seems like a good time to continue the series - with Halloween coming up and all that - I decided to make a post focusing on GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN.

If you have read one of my previous posts on recycled GESPENSTER KRIMI covers you know what this is all about and can skip the next paragraphs.

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO GESPENSTER KRIMI / GESCHICHTEN

For all others, GESPENSTER KRIMI was one of the longest running horror dime novel series in Germany ( from 1973 to 1985 ) by BASTEI Verlag which also published a lot of comics of which GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN was its most durable ( from 1974 to 2006 ). One of its most successful horror pulps is JOHN SINCLAIR and while the series where it started has been canceled JOHN SINCLAIR is still going strong with weekly novels,

monthly pocket books and audio dramas. The current audio dramas are the second series, there was a short lived ( because it was pure horror - and not in a good sense ) tv series, a computer game and even an unsuccessful comic series that started within GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN.

Now as you can see by the covers above since they published horror pulp novels as well as horror comics they often used the same covers on them which is not surprising since the readers of their horror novels are not necessarily the same as readers who indulge in Bastei´s horror comics.

And there´s always the dreaded deadline so whenever you can re - use an already existing cover, sometimes with some alterations, you take it. In any case these posts were not possible without a website I found a few years ago that had all the covers that were used more than one time. Sadly I don´t remember which website that was and I also can´t find the bookmark so I can´t put up the link. If somebody knows where this website is please contact me so I can give credit where credit is due.

WELCOME BACK TO THE MAIN PART : RECYCLED GESPENSTER COVERS

Okay, I hope I didn´t keep you waiting too long so let´s start right away. The first cover from this post from GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN 1083, He wrote their names into .... The Book of The Damned and other horror stories is a variation of JOHN SINCLAIR 84 The Book of Horrible Dreams.

The chair behind the writing skeleton was erased, therefore a full moon and the guy behind it in the tunic with the urn was added. On this compilation of THE YEAR´S BEST HORROR STORIES - SERIES V the cover was again used without changes apart from the fact that it was mirrored.

And on this cover of spanish comic ESCORPION - Tales of Psychological Terror the chair disappears again and the guy in the tunic is back.

And a similar cover was on PROFESSOR ZAMORRA 91, The Books of Lucifer although this skeleton definitely keeps better company.

With GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN 969, The Wolfman of Texas and other horror stories we come to the first one of three classic horror monsters.

He also appears on GESPENSTER KRIM 37, The Wolfman

issue 58 of DOSSIER NEGRO - Graphic Tales of Terror and Suspense

and issue 4 of Skywald´s SCREAM where the werewolf is a cannibal.

With GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN 401, Under the Spell of the Living Mummy and other horror stories we come to our next classic monster.

A similar mummy appears on ALUCINE, Beyond Suspense by Bruguera.

This mummy also appears in two more versions although with both arms stretched out. There is the one that appears on GESPENSTER KRIMI 381

where the crouching woman was modeled after Catherine Deneuve.

Catherine is also on the cover of this spanish paperback called Narrations Twins of Terror : The Mansion of Death and other Tales by Jon Hanlon.

The other version of the mummy appears on issue 16 of GORDON BLACK.

As you can see there is a different woman here which can also be seen on GESPENSTER KRIMI no 272, Lucifer´s Brother written by Frederic Collins

and Murray Comics´ first issue of SWAMP MONSTER.

Our next one is like the granddaddy of the recycled covers. This particular vampire appears on GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN COMIC - SONDERBAND 43

and TONY BALLARD 30, Vampire Terror by horror master A. F. Morland.

Now I don´t know where the sleeping woman was taken from but the vampire is from the movie poster of the mexican horror film EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIRO ( The Vampire´s Coffin ) with German Robles from 1958.

Okay, the OTHER movie poster for EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIRO.

He pops up on the cover of GESPENSTER KRIMI 267, Village of the Dead

JOHN SINCLAIR issue 1227, Vampire Drama as well as on 

the pocket book Transylvanian Conspiracy, Eight Thrilling Terror Tales.

He also on spanish mag HORROR together with the Frankenstein monster

and SOS ( Stories of Terror, Intrigue, Mystery and Suspense ) 24.

And that´s all for this edition of recycled covers. But don´t fear, there are still more than 450 covers left so there will be a few more posts coming.

Since we ended this post with EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIRO here´s the US version since I thought that is the one most readers can understand. The only version I could find is from the Commander USA presents show - no idea what that is. I think I will check out the original version on YouTube to see if the high rating on ROTTEN TOMATOES is so well deserved.



Another well known movie vampire is Christopher Lee as Hammer Films´ Dracula who presents the documentary 100 YEARS OF HORROR.



Since I already posted an episode of COUNT DUCKULA here is the first episode of The Ketchup Vampires, a really ridiculous kiddie cartoon show.



One of comicdom´s most famous vampires is Vampirella which is in big part because of her costume which was basically a micro bikini before micro bikinis were invented. Here she is portrayed by the very bouncy ( you´ll se what I mean in the video ) fetish model Bianca Beauchamp.



And speaking of micro bikinis : Today I had to leave the house to get a doctor´s appointment and it was colder than the Fortress of Solitude outside. To remind us of the nice sides of summer here is a bikini contest featuring hot girls with incredible bodies in the tiniest bikinis imaginable.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best