A MADCAP TALE OF FOG AND PHANTOMS.
Are Scholastic Books still a thing in schools? When I was 8 years old, I ordered this book from the Scholastic Books catalog which our teachers would provide us in school. Besides Dynamite Magazine, I would always order spooky books: THE ARROW BOOK OF GHOST STORIES, Ruth Chew's WHAT THE WITCH LEFT, Vic Crume's THE GHOST THAT CAME ALIVE, Alan Ormsby's MOVIE MONSTERS . . . and Sid Fleischmann's THE GHOST ON SATURDAY NIGHT was another one. "See the Ghost of Crookneck John! That's what Professor Pepper's sign promises, and Opie can hardly wait to see such a sight. But the unseen specter escapes from his coffin during the show, and if that weren't bad enough, the town bank is robbed too! Is Crookneck John a bandit from beyond the grave--or is more than the fog being pulled over the townsfolk's' eyes?"
That terrific cover and interior artwork by Eric Von Schmidt has stayed with me forever! And that's what Fleischmann intended as, in his own words, he's said: "The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever -- they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work."
Great cover! The monster man is quite Karloff-ian!
ReplyDeleteI remember the Scholastic Book Service! I still have one of the books I got from them - "Pioneer Astronomers" by Navin Sullivan. I, too, remember Dynamite Magazine with Count Morbida...didn't keep any of the issues...
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky enough to still have all the books I got from the Scholastic Book Service as well as a handful of Dynamite magazines. And yes, I LOVED Count Morbida. I even have the Evatone soundsheet record of Count Morbida's Chamber of Horrors that was inside the Halloween issue of Dynamite magazine as well as two Scholastic Count Morbida books. I wouldn't part with them for the (nether)world!
ReplyDeleteJoe,
ReplyDeleteYeah, he was always to me a cross between Boris Karloff and Fred Gwynne with the little fellow to his left very much like Peter Lorre.