Description

Kolchak: The Night Strangler {Complete Cover Collection}                     One-shot Comic w/ Variants
Featuring an adaptation of the Classic 1973 Night Strangler movie.  Awesome!!
Writer: Richard Matheson
Artists: Amin Amat & Stefano Martino
Colorist: Daniel Vozzo
Letterer: Bernie Lee
Editor: Joe Gentle
Cover #1A by: E.M. Geist
Variant Cover #1B by: Timothy Lantz
Variant Cover #1C by: E.M. Geist

Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. Kolchak: The Night Stalker was created by Jeff Rice. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter—Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin—who investigated mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those that law enforcement authorities would not follow up. These often involved the supernatural or science fiction, including fantastic creatures. The series was preceded by two television movies, The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). Although the series lasted only a single season, it garnered a world-wide fan following and is considered a cult classic in horror television. Subsequent novels and comic books later followed. And it later influenced the creation of the X-Files, which is in the same vein as Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Legendary author Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come) has been called “One of the most important writers of the 20th Century” by Ray Bradbury and been the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Hugo Award, and many others. In the 1970s, Matheson wrote the second Kolchak movie about the underground city that actually exists beneath present day Seattle, and that chilling story comes to comics.

Story/Spoilers (featuring the full Night Strangler 1973 Movie Synopsis for nostalgic remembrance)
In 1973, reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin), now in Seattle, Washington (having been run out of Las Vegas at the end of the last film), is hired by his former editor, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) to cover a series of killings in which the victims, all exotic dancers, are strangled, have their necks crushed and are then drained of a few ounces of blood. A coroner’s report also reveals that the victims all had traces of rotting flesh on their necks.

Researcher Titus Berry (Wally Cox) discovers that there was a similar rash of killings in 1952, setting Kolchak on the trail of another unbelievable story. Kolchak is stonewalled by the police, who want to have certain details of the murders kept secret. Out of “burning curiosity,” Berry researches further back, and learns of another series of murders in 1931. Berry and Kolchak discover that similar murders have been occurring every 21 years since 1889, with each series of murders taking place over a period of 18 days. Kolchak determines that the killer needs the blood for a kind of elixir of life which keeps him alive for 21 years at a time. Of course, no one believes Kolchak, and the powers that be want to silence him.

Berry uncovers further clues in an old interview with Mark Twain leading to a Dr. Richard Malcolm, a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War, who was one of the original staff at Seattle’s Westside Mercy Hospital. Though the hospital is long gone, Kolchak goes to the clinic standing on the site, in the hope that it might still have the hospital’s old records, but he finds something far more important just inside the front door: a painting of the clinic’s founder, a Dr. Malcolm Richards, who is the spitting image of Richard Malcolm.

Kolchak calls Berry to meet him there and proceeds to alter the painting to make the similarity more obvious. Berry is amazed, but the police are less than impressed, and Kolchak is arrested.

Finally, Kolchak and Berry convince the police (and their boss) of the facts: that the killer really is practically immortal, and that he will kill again. But the story is once again suppressed.

Kolchak, working with helpful exotic dancer Louise (Jo Ann Pflug), enters into a race against time to stop the killer before he is able to complete the creation of his elixir and disappear for another 21 years. In the Seattle Underground under the old clinic, Kolchak has a face-to-face confrontation with Dr. Malcolm/Richards (Richard Anderson); the night strangler admits having first tried the elixir in 1868 and that he had hoped to spread the knowledge of immortality until he started aging in 1889 and his family also died (their mummified remains are kept near the doctor’s laboratory). He intends to continue each 21-year cycle until he can make the process permanent. Before the night strangler can drink his sixth dose of elixir, Kolchak smashes the beaker. The night strangler tries to kill Kolchak but fails due to rapid aging; as the police burst into the room the aging killer commits suicide by throwing himself outside a high window. The film concludes with a once-again unemployed Kolchak bickering with Vincenzo and Louise as Carl drives the three of them to New York City.

Comic & Variants are bagged & triple boarded and will be carefully / securely packaged then shipped via USPS Priority Mail to ensure that it arrives to you perfectly and quickly.

All First Printings
Publisher: Moonstone Books
Publication Date: 2010
Format: FC, 56 pages, Comic, 10.20″ x 6.65″
UPC: 891847002445

Collectible Entertainment note: One-shot Comic & Variants are in Very Good to Very Fine condition. (cover A has a significant corner crease >> back cover bottom left… so Very Good {see 3rd scan} covers B & C are Very Fine) Overall… Nice Lot!  Please See Scans!!  A must have for any serious Kolchak collector and/or enthusiast.  A fun & entertaining read.  Very Highly Recommended.

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