Haunted #10 (Charlton Comics)
Various (w) & (a)
Horror and mystery anthologies were once very much a mainstay of the comics world and all the publishers had several titles on-going at any one time. Marvel had it's "big panty monsters" (as my local comic shop describes them), DC it's Houses of Mystery and Secrets and even Gold Key published one's featuring Boris Karloff as the host. Charlton comics were no exception and had been continually publishing mystery titles since the fifties.
One of these was Haunted, launched in 1971 the comic featured three or so short stories of varying quality but for the fans of Steve Ditko was certainly one to keep an eye on. Ditko did a lot of excellent work for Charlton, who despite having a reputation for miserly rates of pay did up the dollar to keep him on board.
Having picked this issue up at random I'm sad to say there is none by the man, but it's an average issue much of which readers may have seen in the UK republished by Alan Class who had the licence for Charton's material.
However the first issue sported a real Ditko classic and is reproduced below along with a gallery of other issues from Charlton.
Up until #20 the comic was simply known as Haunted but from #21 gained a "host" whose name became part of the title. Hence Baron Weirwolf's Haunted was born. For some reason the last issue (#75) reverted to the original title. Charlton folded shortly after.
Like all of Charlton's material production standards (including paper quality) were low but they did leave their staff to get on with the job without too much interference.
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