Budget cuts, so the narrator/host was the first to go. Guest-starring That Yellow Bastard!

I wouldn't say I've read a ton, but I've read a fair amount of Western/Gold Key's old horror comics. Among others, they had Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery for years. They were a little hit-or-miss, ranging from legitimately clever to crude and hackneyed to just tame weaksauce. Bit of the latter today...From 1982, Shadow Play #1, featuring Leo Dorfman and several uncredited writers, and art by Jose Delbo, Adolfo Bullya, Al McWilliams, and others.

The lead story, "Monster Clock," actually was from an old Boris Karloff, albeit with the narrator removed; and the original had a better cover. (In the same vein, their last issue of Twilight Zone came out the month before, and was entirely a reprint of the first issue, just with a cover nowhere near as good as the original.) Likewise, the sci-fi number "Time for a Change" could very likely have come from the Twilight Zone, it just needed that last panel of Rod Serling expressing dismay over the unfortunate events you had just read.

There were several ghost stories in this one, that almost seem blasé about it: ghosts are real, and you're absolutely going to be haunted by them, so...meh, what're you going to do? In one, "My Granddaughter will Haunt You!" a French peasant couple force their seventeen-year-old daughter to marry a rich 56-year-old, but she dies on the altar. Her grandmother swears they will be haunted by their daughter, which they laugh off, until grandma dies and the haunting starts up: the daughter had been too nice to haunt her parents, but her grandma definitely will haunt 'em up good.

I got this from the quarter bin last week, and I suspect it was from the same collection as some lower grade Twilight Zone's I had picked up earlier. Still looking for a not-overly-expensive copy of #70, with Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's "The Tyranny of Time." They had a nice run of covers in there, though. (EDIT: Had the same scan twice! Fixed.)