Search Results

Britain's premier horror author, interviewed in Liverpool, discusses his discovery of EC Comics through late-1960s Ballantine paperbacks rather than as a contemporary reader, and his admiration for Bernie Wrightson (particularly Frankenstein and the early Swamp Thing), Bruce Jones's Twisted Tales, and the EC tradition's blend of humor and horror. He praises the quality of current horror comics while cautioning against escalating gratuitousness. A substantial portion of the interview addresses the British "video nasties" censorship crisis of the mid-1980s, in which films like The Evil Dead, The Burning, and Wolfen were being seized and declared obscene under new Parliamentary pressure, which Campbell condemns as dangerous paternalism. He also discusses his own fiction — including The Face That Must Die (drawn from his schizophrenic mother's experience) and his forthcoming novel For the Rest of Their Lives — and his view that comics, far from being something readers should outgrow, deserve a permanent place alongside prose literature.

Features letters debating a previous She-Hulk controversy between readers Darrel Boatz and Barry Dutter; a sharp rebuttal from David M. Singer of Deluxe Comics responding to allegations made by letter-writer Bob Sodaro in issue #25; a letter from horror novelist Ramsey Campbell thanking CI for his issue #22 interview and recommending Alan Moore's Swamp Thing; and a note from Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs promoting their forthcoming book The Comic Book Heroes, with a response from DAK.