How Comic Books Kept Kolchak Alive
Get the Award-Winning Kolchak 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel
By James Chambers
Gail Foster: Carl...if you keep going on like this...you're gonna get fired again.
Carl Kolchak: Let's see: Uuhhh...twice in Washington, three times in New York, twice in Chicago, and once...or was it twice?...in Boston. I'm becoming extinct in my own lifetime.
Carl Kolchak excels in two things: investigating the macabre and supernatural—and getting fired. Throughout the two television movies and one season of the television series, only the mercy and intervention of Carl’s intrepid editor, Tony Vincenzo, kept Carl gainfully employed. Tony threw him a lifeline more than once before the pair sank together from prestigious, big-city newspapers to working for the newswire, the Independent New Service (INS). With Kolchak’s memorable, but short-lived, stint as a 1970s television phenomenon, it seemed perhaps in 1974, when the last episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker aired, that Carl might be permanently relegated to the ranks of the unemployed.
Fortunately for Kolchak fans everywhere, Carl and his adventures seem more popular today than ever. Many things have kept Kolchak alive for more than 50 years. His iconic appearance and personality, his inspiration for other pop culture phenomena, such as The X-Files, and his appearances in comic books. Moonstone Books, publisher of the Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary graphic novel, first brought Carl to the comic book page in an adaptation of the original TV movie in 2002, launching a series of still ongoing books and comics—but this didn’t mark Carl’s first comic book appearance, official or otherwise. Here are a few of his notable comic book cameos that preceded the Moonstone series.
“The Night Gawker,” ARRGH! No. 4, Marvel Comics, July 1975
Kolchak’s first appearance in a comic book? Perhaps, but in the guise of Karl Coalshaft, The Night Gawker, Marvel Comics’ parody of The Night Stalker. Writer Jack Younger, artist Jerry Grandenetti, and editor Roy Thomas likely conceived of this fun take on Kolchak while the television series still aired. Coalshaft works for the Nitely Wire Service for editor, Tony Vinaigretto, who, in one panel, says about the latest in a series of vampire murders, “So you think a mere 50 killings constitutes a pattern? Hah! Wait’ll you’ve been in this racket as long as me then you won’t jump to conclusions!” In the course of the story, Coalshaft tracks down and stakes a vampire, has his camera smashed by an angry police detective, kills a werewolf with a silver bullet, gets another camera smashed, and decides to give up chasing monsters only to accidentally—and unknowingly—stake one more secret vampire: Tony Vinaigretto, himself! It features a remarkable likeness of Kolchak on page two, suggesting Grandenetti, at least, brought some love of the source material to the parody.
“TV Class Reunion of 1985” Cracked Magazine, Cracked Collectors Edition TV Screen, Major Magazines, February 1981
Six years later, long-running humor magazine Cracked gave a nod to cancelled and forgotten televisions shows in a two-page spread, drawn by Sururi Gumen. Depicting a who’s who of old TV series, it includes Kolchak cozied up to Vampira as he explains he was canceled “for not producing.” Combined with a reference to his stories repeatedly getting killed, the short jab pokes fun at Kolchak the character while meta-satirizing Darren McGavin’s producing duties on the series. They reportedly grew greater and greater as McGavin labored to keep the show’s quality high but without any additional compensation for the work, one of the reasons for the show’s cancellation when he grew tired of the extra effort.
Get the Award-Winning Kolchak 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel
“The Night Slayer,” The Renegade, No. 1, Magnecom, December 1993
Billed as “Acknowledging Carl Kolchak’s ‘Night Stalking’ 21st Anniversary,” Kolchak guest-starred, alongside his creator, Jeff Rice, in this comic book written and drawn by Sterling Clark. The Renegade, the costumed vigilante identity of comic book artist Kurt Villareal, receives a phone call from his old friend, Jeff, to cover a conference about a series of macabre murders. He then finds himself on the trail of the original Jack the Ripper, who became a vampire after his historic ripper slayings. During the investigation, he meets Kolchak in a sewer, then again after destroying the vampire, and the pair seem about to strike up a friendship. The issue features mentions of Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, John Llewellyn Moxey, Dan Curtis, and Richard Matheson as well as Kolchak expert Mark Dawidziak. Jeff Rice appears in one panel and pens an afterword for the comic (which also includes an introduction by Todd McFarlane), and the comic teases a forthcoming Kolchak the Night Stalker comic book series from Topps Comics. The series from Topps never happened—but The Renegade #1 marked Kolchak’s first official comic book appearance, with input from Jeff Rice. While Kolchak is very much in character here, the likeness of Darren McGavin is not. On an odd note, one panel depicts Kolchak smoking a cigarette, something he never did on TV.
“Official Denial,” Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals, V. 1, No. 10., Tekno*Comix, Early December 1995
In the mid-’90s, there were only two ways to see Kolchak: The Night Stalker episodes. Catch them in haphazard reruns or collect bootleg VHS tapes. For the former, the Sci-Fi Channel and other networks specializing in reruns filled the gap, but never for long, given the limited number of episodes from the show’s first and only season. The latter was both expensive, usually about $20 per VHS cassette for two episodes; low quality, copied from a copy of someone’s VHS recording of a Night Stalker rerun with or without the commercials intact; and of dubious legality, given how bootlegs circumvent copyright laws. Still, Kolchak held a place in the pop culture consciousness. At the time, I was editing the Tekno*Comix comic book series Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals, written by Christopher Mills. For fun, Christopher wrote Kolchak, unnamed, into a few panels of issue 10 with a name-check to Vincenzo. Artist Scot Eaton, another Kolchak fan, picked right up on the easter egg and delivered a fun cameo for those in the know. It didn’t end well for Carl, though. In typical Kolchak tradition, federal agents stepped in to block him from reporting on extraterrestrial activity.
Kolchak, The Night Stalker, Moonstone Books, 2002
Kolchak’s second official comic book appearance marked two firsts: the first comic book adaptation of the original television movie, The Night Stalker, and the first of Moonstone Book’s ongoing series of comics and books starring Carl Kolchak. Written by Jeff Rice and drawn by Gordon Purcell, the series established Kolchak as a comic book character capable of standing on his own and ushered in more than 20 years of publications that have helped keep Kolchak alive and contributed to his current rise in popularity.
“All the creators involved understood what was unique about Kolchak. They got him. They love him. They brought him back to life in a way I’d not thought possible.” – Corrina Lawson, LitStack Review
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Chambers received the Bram Stoker Award® for the graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe and is a four-time Bram Stoker Award nominee. He is the author of the short story collections On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road, which received a starred review from Booklist, which called it “…satisfyingly unsettling”; and the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice. He has written the novellas, Three Chords of Chaos, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God, and many others. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications in multiple genres. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and co-edited A New York State of Fright and Even in the Grave, an anthology of ghost stories. He has also been a comic book critic, editor, publisher, and writer for more than 25 years, including editing/writing Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals; editing Gene Roddenberry’s Lost Universe, Isaac Asimov’s I*BOTS, and the graphic novel adaptation of From Dusk Till Dawn; and co-creating, co-publishing, and co-writing Shadow House. Most recently he wrote the closing comic story for Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary graphic anthology. His website is: www.jameschambersonline.com
