#horror hosts

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and Beer Wolf - Coors Light (1986)

[fitsofgloom]

Meet The Oddest Creatures With Unfamiliar Features! Ken Gibson as the vampire Vincent Hedges and Don Molander as the hunchback Emmit of "The Acri Creature Feature." This was a really popular late show airing on WQAD-8 in Moline, extending out into Southern Iowa and Northwest Illinois. The show was really an extended late night ad for vinyl home siding (!), but the kids who loved it recall the movies and wacky cast of characters. In some areas, it didn't air until well after midnight -- as late as 3:30 am (!!) -- providing a real challenge for viewers to stay up. "The Windmills of Your Mind" from "The Thomas Crown Affair" (!!!) served as the show's opening theme.

[dustinweaver]

Epitaphs From The Abyss #10 frontispiece (2025)

By your pal, Dustin Weaver.

[browsethestacks]

Elvira's House Of Mystery

Art by Chris Bachalo

[thehauntedrocket]

The Horror(ible) Horror Hosts Of EC Comics...

The Old Witch, The Vault-Keeper And The Crypt-Keeper

Art by Aaron Lopresti

[oldshowbiz]

1982.

The People versus Elvira.

[mask131]

Another little post about the Sandman/Flat-Earth situation. I have seen this recent post relaying the idea that Gaiman's Sandman is an entire rip-off of Lee's Flat-Earth. I spoke about this idea before - pointing out that people seem to be overblowing it a bit and trying to turn a "strongly inspired by" into a "it's a plagiarim case" thing. You know how it goes with the Internet - as soon as someone turns out to be a bad person, every new "trivia" that pops up is spreading like wildfire without people checking their sources (again, to stay on a Gaiman adjacent thing, see how people were deeply convinced Rowling had plagiarized Gaiman's Books of Magic, despite her not doing it and Gaiman himself not feeling plagiarized at all - especially since a lot of the Books of Magic series wasn't his per se, he just created the original mini-series and the rest was grown out by other artists).

Anyway I want to specifically talk about one point made in the post I linked: that Destiny of the Endless (Sandman) is supposedly a plagiarism of Flat-Earth's Destiny. I guess the character they are referring to is Kheshmet, Master of Fortune, embodiment of fate. Now, I have to be fair: I have not reached the part of the Flat-Earth series where Kheshmet appears. So far I am about to finish "Death's Master", and without this post I would have never been aware of the existence of an embodiment of fate in the Flat Earth (since the Lords of Darkness are usually talked about in terms of the trinity of Azhrarn, Uhlume and Chuz).

However I have, again, to point out that despite the feeling maybe being right... to call Destiny of the Endless a "proof" of Gaiman's plagiarism of Lee falls flat (no pun intended). Because Gaiman did not create Destiny of the Endless. Again, this is something that most Sandman fans know about - unless they are fans of the show exclusively - but the very first issues of Sandman, the first arcs, were about creating a new series part of the DC Universe (it was only later that Sandman strayed away into its own thing, and the series adaptation removed most of the DC Universe references to avoid being too obscure to newcomers).

Sandman wasn't just about creating another part of the DC Universe (well, multiverse) but it was also entirely dedicated to bringing back under the light obscure, secondary or forgotten DC characters. That was Neil Gaiman's goal, and it was because these characters were unused and forgotten that he was allowed to go crazy with them.

The Dreaming's inhabitants, when we first see it, are all old EC Comics/ DC Comics horror hosts that were forgotten. Eve, Cain and Abel, Lucien, the gargoyles... They were all part of a shared universe before, the vast network of the old DC horror-universe. Gaiman took it back and simply decided that this universe would be the Dreaming's nightmare part in its ruined state.

The Three-in-One, the Three, the Triple Goddess, however you call them... start out as Neil Gaiman not just playing on the "Wyrd Sisters" like Pratchett himself did (Norns/Macbeth witches crossover), but actually reinventing the Three Witches that were old DC horror-hosts of the "Witching Hour" series.

Hence also why Constantine appears, why Dream fights Doctor Destiny, why Batman's Scarecrow appears, why one of the first "alternate Dreams" we see is the Martian god of Manhunter, why Dream has his Ruby (it was the Materioptkon), etc etc... In fact the first arc of Sandman lost MANY present many people trying to get in the series due to how heavy it was with old DC lore.

And Destiny of the Endless... he is not exception to the rule. Destiny is in fact the ONLY Endless that Gaiman did NOT create - when he started Sandman (again, we have his manuscripts, propositions and drafts in various companion books) he only had three Endless in mind, clearly designed, Dream, Death and Destiny - and the reason Destiny appears so early on in the series is precisely because he was pre-existing in the DC Universe.

He was another DC horror host, who had "canonically" interacted with characters like Lucien or Cain & Abel. Not only that, but he also appeared as a proper character in other DC titles before Sandman was created.

What did Gaiman do with the character? Give him a family and an exact position in the DC Universe. Change his purple robes to gray. Make him blind. And of course, let's not forget giving him a domain... The Garden of Forking Ways. Which Neil Gaiman has been very open (on his very Tumblr he said it two or three different times) about being a nod to Jorge Luis Borges' own Garden of Forking Paths.

As I said in my previous post, yes Gaiman is very derivative, borrows a lot, plays a lot of homages, makes a lot of Easter eggs and nods and winks to other works, resulting in his works being these sort of cultural Frankenstein Monsters... But when you want to point out where a character comes from, get it right please.

Yes, Gaiman was inspired by Tanith Lee when creating the Endless and Sandman. The Lords of Darkness are very similar to the Endless in many ways (personifications of abstract concepts tied to humanity ; top dogs of the supernatural hierarchy who play around with people's fates for their personal amusement ; have their personal world-domains, there's a certain D- motif recurring with Death, Delirium, Delusion...). But they are also very dissimilar in many ways (the Lords of Darkness are under the Gods, who are separate and stronger entities, while the Endless are "above and beyon gods" ; the Endless are a dysfunctional family whereas the Lords of Darkness laugh out loud when humanity imagines them as "cousins" or "brothers" ; and the D- motif is not recurring since among the Masters are the Master of Night and the Master of Fortune).

It is not because Sandman was influenced by Lee's Flat-Earth that EVERYTHING in it is a Flat-Earth rip-off. You have Ovid rip-off, Shakespeare rip-off, Zelazny rip-off, Brian Froud rip-off, The Golden Ass-rip-off, Eddas rip-off, Angela Carter rip-off and much, much more.

Maybe my point of view about the origins of Destiny will change once I get to read Lee's depiction of her Master of Fortune... But for now, if you want to accuse someone of plagiarizing Lee, accuse the artist who created Destiny for hosting EC Comics.

[schlock-luster-video]

On December 16, 1957, She-Wolf of London was screened on WCAU's Shock Theatre.