Midnight Tales #12: "The Medallion"

Download Midnight Tales #12

Download a sample of Nicola Cuti's Spanner's Galaxy





Here, There Be Dragons Dept. Midnight Tales #12 is of more beloved nostalgic value to me than my issues of Hulk #180 and #181 combined, both of which contain Wolverine's first appearances. I think that this was the very first Charlton comic book that I ever bought and, once again, it was the cover that caught my eye. I mean, isn't that one of the baddest-ass drawn dragons you've ever seen? I do know that it's the first cover that I tried to copy by hand with pencil and paper, but no Wayne Howard am I.

I recall being disappointed by much of the interior artwork as I'm not a Steve Ditko fan, but I thought that having a comic book with three vignettes that tied things up nicely on the last page was one of the cleverest story telling devices that I ever ran across. Wayne Howard was never formulaic and Nicola Cuti always told the best rip-snortin' stories around. I went on to purchase Spanner's Galaxy on the strength of Nick Cuti's name alone. I even became obsessed with tracking down all of the back issues and was genuinely disappointed when it was canceled after issue #18 was published . Over the years, I managed to pick up most of the back issues and I noticed in the mail columns that there were some lucky stiffs who caught on to the cleverness of this magazine since issue #1, like Ken Meyer Jr. from Hill AFB, ha ha! I wonder whatever became of Ken Meyer, the letter writer who claimed to be the biggest fan of Professor Coffin and his pretty niece Arachne? If you're out there, Ken, drop me a line! We can debate who really was the midnight philosopher's biggest fan.

Midnight Tales #12 isn't by any means the best issue out of the entire 18 issue run as that honor goes to issue #14's "The Time Machine," but there's just something about that beautiful Wayne Howard cover that seems almost magical to me. I'll stop jabbering here for now, but I plan to come back and edit this post and add more as there's more to tell. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the entire line of Charlton Comics to this day and Midnight Tales was my personal favorite for years. The download link for the .cbr file is just below the cover, but if you'd like to see more of this very unique comic book then please let me know.