Review by Win Wiacek

Marvel embracing supernatural stars in the early 1970s brought numerous benefits. Most importantly, it drew a new readership to comics: one attuned to a global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things spooky. It also gave the reprint-reliant company opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories rendered unprintable and useless since the Comic Code’s inception in 1954.

From 1973 to 1975 this moody content targeted the more mature monochrome magazine market, yet now these stories are oddly coy for a generation born before video nasties, teen-slasher movies or torture-porn.

Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas green-lit a new mature-reader anthology magazine starring a walking deadman, based on a classic 1953 Stan Lee/Bill Everett thriller. Tales of the Zombie contained a mix of new material, choice reprints and text features to thrill and chill the voodoo devotees of comics land. The undead excitement begins with ‘Altar of the Damned’ by Thomas, Steve Gerber, and John Buscema, introducing wealthy Louisiana coffee-magnate Simon Garth as he frantically breaks free of a voodoo cult determined to sacrifice him. He’s aided by priestess Layla who usually earns her daily bread as his secretary. Sadly, the attempt fails and Garth dies, only to be brought back as a mighty, mindless slave of his worst enemy.

Next comes a retouched, modified reprint of the aforementioned Everett ‘Zombie!’ yarn, adapted to depict Garth as the corpse-walker rampaging through Mardi Gras and inflicting permanent punishments.

A comprehensive policy of reprinting issues chronologically means Garth’s undead experiences are separated by assorted other horrific offerings. Notable are Tom Sutton applying a disinterred tongue to his cheek for the blackly comic story of ‘The Mastermind!’, Len Wein and Gene Colan finishing Brother Voodoo’s origin story, and Tony Isabella and Vincente Alcazar excelling with an epic of samurai-against-dragon in ‘Warrior’s Burden’.

Gerber writes most of Garth’s solo outings, but Pablo Marcos (sample art) is no replacement for Buscema. The murdered man’s daughter Donna first loses the arcane amulet controlling the zombie, then takes a ship for Haiti, determined to learn all she can about the dark arts, whilst the shambling cadaver of her father is drawn into the nefarious affairs of criminal mastermind Mr. Six. By circuitous means, mindless but instinct-driven Garth also ends up in Haiti – just as a madman turning women into giant spiders. The Zombie then lurches around Haiti, encountering a manic film director and his histrionic starlet wife who want to expose Voodoo to the judgemental celluloid eye of Hollywood.

Eventually the mystic Amulet of Damballah irresistibly draws Garth back to New Orleans at the unwitting behest of a down-and-out with a grudge, but he loses the amulet – and control of Garth – to Mr. Six with the Zombie becoming a terrifying weapon of a sinister Voodoun lord, until his new master’s arrogance leads to carnage and a kind of freedom for the Dead Man Walking.

Mambo Layla returns when the zombie interrupts a Voodoo ritual and she again tries in vain to save him before his death and revivification. Eventually the pair reach New Orleans and fall foul of bored urban swingers seeking a different kind of good time in Gerber’s final outing. Doug Moench and Alfredo Alcala provide a fill-in tale of a high society murder-mystery, and Isabella’s three chapter extravaganza closes his exploits.

This intriguing monochrome compendium is dated. What passed for explicit content in the mid-1970s, should be nothing for today’s older kids. However, with appropriate mature supervision this groovy gore-fest will delight many a brain-eating fright fan. Although labelled Vol. 1, there is no Vol. 2 as this reprints the entire series.