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Midnight Tales

American horror-suspense anthology comic book series

Field	Value
image	MidnightTales01.jpg
caption	Midnight Tales #1 (Dec. 1972), art by Wayne Howard.
schedule	Bimonthly
ongoing	y
publisher	Charlton Comics
date	Dec. 1972-May 1976
issues	18
format	anthology
Horror	y
main_char_team	Professor Coffin the Midnight Philosopher and Arachne Coffin
writers	Nicola Cuti
artists	Wayne Howard
editors	George Wildman
subcat	Charlton Comics
sort	Midnight Tales

Midnight Tales is an American horror-suspense anthology comic book series created by Wayne Howard that was published by Charlton Comics from 1972 to 1976. The book was "hosted" by Professor Coffin (a.k.a. the Midnight Philosopher) and his niece Arachne (the book followed a standard formula where each issue's first story was a framing sequence divided up among the other stories). The setting, Xanadu University, was a tie-in with the Charlton series E-Man.

Charlton took the unusual step of giving Howard a "created by" credit on each issue's cover, providing a precedent for such credits eventually becoming common years later beginning with DC's Vertigo imprint. Charlton writer/editor Nick Cuti described Howard's credit being granted because the book, "... was his idea, his concept, his everything". In addition, each issue shared a theme: "One time it would be blob monsters, and I wrote three stories about blob monsters, and another time it was vampires ... and that sort of thing". Howard penciled and inked every cover and virtually every story, and occasionally scripted stories as well.

According to critic Mark Andrew:

Publication history

Midnight Tales was part of a wave of new horror and suspense comics published by Charlton during this period. Its sister titles were the Charlton anthologies The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves (with host Dr. M. T. Graves), Ghostly Tales (with host Mr. L. Dedd, later I. M. Dedd), Ghost Manor (with host Mr. Bones), Ghostly Haunts (with host Winnie the Witch), Haunted (with hosts Impy and then Baron Weirwulf), and Scary Tales (with host Countess R. H. Von Bludd).

Midnight Tales appeared bimonthly; altogether, it published 18 issues. In Oct. 1985, Charlton briefly revived the title as a reprint book, changing its name to Professor Coffin, and continued the numbering for three more issues before finally ceasing publication in 1986.

Besides Howard, other contributors to Midnight Tales included Nicola Cuti, Don Newton, Joe Staton, and Tom Sutton. George Wildman edited the book for its entire run.

References

[http://www.comics.org/series/2023/ ''Midnight Tales'' entry], Grand Comics Database. Accessed April 3, 2011.
Cooke, Jon B., "Lest We Forget: Celebrating Four that Got Away": ''Comic Book Artist'' #12 (March 2001), p. 112.
Nicola Cuti interview, ''[[Comic Book Artist]]'' #12 (March 2001), p. 41-42.
Andrew, Mark. [https://goodcomics.blogspot.com/2006/03/nine-things-i-read-this-week-hopefully.html "Nine Things I Read This Week. A (hopefully) weekly Column"], "Comics Should Be Good" (column), March 3, 2006. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110609003831/http://goodcomics.blogspot.com/2006/03/nine-things-i-read-this-week-hopefully.html WebCitation archive].

Info: Wikipedia Source

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