Super Naturals #1

31 Oct 1987 - 13 Nov 1987; Cover price 40p.
32 pages. Colour & B&W.
Fleetway Publications.

Cover by Sandy James.

Free cardboard [Lionheart] Double Skull Mask.

Contents:

.2 Are you brave enough for... Super Naturals (quarter page) Introduction.

.2 The Legend of the Supernaturals w: UNKNOWN; a: John Gillatt (uncredited).

.7 Ghostlings! UNTITLED [Rock-Aid] w: UNKNOWN; a: Anthony Williams (uncredited).

11 The Doll UNTITLED [Meet the Marshals] w: UNKNOWN; a: Francesc Masip (uncredited).

16 The Tomb of Doom poster; illustrated by UNKNOWN.

18 The Scary Cat Challenge The Hunchback of Hinkley Rest w: UNKNOWN; a: Jim Watson (uncredited).

24 From the Depths of Ghostworld character biographies.

26 111 Stamps Free (half page) advertisement. / Free Stamp Collector Starter Kit (quarter page) advertisement. / Your Free Gift in This Issue! (quarter page).

27 Mount of Athos UNTITLED [The Sacred Coffer] w: UNKNOWN; a: Alan Langford (uncredited).

32 Win a Free Super Naturals Ghost Finder and Bat-Bopper competition.

The eighties saw a resurgence of horror properties, bolstered in no small part by successful properties like Ghostbusters, so Super Naturals rode that wave for all it was worth. Based on a short-lived line of Tonka toys, prominently-advertised in the comic, whose back-story is formulaic "hero figures versus villain figures, as seen in Action Force, Transformers and Masters of the Universe, though with a few quirks which sets the characters apart from their contemporaries - first and foremost being holograms, which are remarkably impressive even after all these years.

Not many figures were made for Super Naturals, and most are relatively easy to acquire. The Tomb of Doom playset compared well with Dungeons & Dragons' Fortress of Fangs, or Masters of the Universe's Castle Grayskull, and had a gimmicky magic trick as part of its appeal. That the line died such a quick death is a shame, as there were many opportunities for both setting and characters to develop in interesting ways.

It is the comic which contains these intriguing elements, and The Legend of the Supernaturals is where their story is laid out:

Throughout the centuries, men have found The Tomb of Doom! By entering its doors they have made the journey into Ghostworld, where they would be trapped until the force called Specter decided to release them... Release them with new powers.

Each becomes subject to the all-powerful, unseen power that governs Ghostworld. The presence known as Specter, for which neither good nor evil matters, save that both must be total.

Lionheart and Skull are introduced to their back-up, the Ghostlings, who seem happy to serve them. Specter also forbids conflict within Ghostworld, requiring the two groups to return to Earth in order to do battle. Windows, gates, and doors serve to return characters to our domain, though with no certainty as to when they would appear - the past, present, and future being their battlefield. On October the 31st, 1987, their battle begins in New Orleans...

Ghostlings contains our first glimpse of Specter: a towering column of smoke with a face. He intervenes when Ghostlings come into conflict, suggesting that they take their squabble to Earth. Weird Wolf slips away and finds himself at a Rock-Aid charity concert where The Ravers, The Green Morons, and Deke Diamond are playing. He considers this an opportunity to lift himself from a Ghostling to a full-scale Supernatural. Others follow Weird Wolf, but when heroic Ghostlings attempt to do so, they find themselves in the presence of Henry VIII.

12-year-old David Wickham and his 13-year-old brother Simon arrive at their new foster home at the beginning of The Doll. Frank Marshal and his wife Louise already have a son, Clive, who has been looking forward to meeting them. The Wickham brothers' mother died when they were young, and their father has suffered back injuries in a fall, hence their need for a suitable residence in the interim. When looking through a closet in their bedroom, David discovers a ventriloquist's dummy. You can almost hear the dramatic violin music.

Simon decides to ask if he can keep the doll, but the reaction of Frank and Louise upon seeing it is of shock. Frank grabs it from Simon's hands in a rage, and Louise explains that it belonged to Alan, a boy fostered previously. She states that the sight of it brought back painful memories, as Alan had an "accident." Frank places it in a bin outside, making sure that it is gone for good, but that night the doll pushes the lid off the bin, and pulls itself up.

It is easy to see why The Doll lingers in the memory of so many, with the creepiest opening imaginable. Elements of Magic and (not yet released) Child's Play converge in a sumptuously-drawn celebration of childhood nightmares, assured to have readers looking cautiously at their toys. It is very strange that so dark a story is chosen for reader feedback, with £5 on offer for those who send in ideas for future installments. Here's a suggestion: a tin of lighter fluid and a match. Just in case...

Whenever a comic strip states that the location is a sleepy little village, as Hinkley is, you know something is going to happen. The Hunchback of Hinkley Rest begins with three boys sitting in a park, talking. Boys being boys, Ian challenges his friends to come up with a dare for him, and he gets dared to spend the night in Hinkley Rest, the name given to the local graveyard. After some consideration, for it is said to be haunted, he accepts the dare. He is told that using torches is cheating, when discovered with one, so has to spend the night in darkness.

Finding a place to sit atop a tomb - having, apparently, never seen a horror film - he encounters Cornelius Grudge, a hunchback. Terrified that Ian is in actual danger, his friends rush off from their vantage point nearby and fetch police officers. As officers approach them, Cornelius vanishes into the night, and Ian makes his way out of the graveyard. Then he notices a familiar name on one of the stones...

With such a hokey tale to begin the done-in-one horror tales, there's a sense that this isn't being taken entirely seriously, though after the first part of The Doll I'm sure many a young reader were thankful. The art throughout is beautifully drawn, with evocative rendering of trees and gravestones raising this from being merely filler. This is, however, a story desperately in need of either danger or bittersweet realization to elevate it.

A battle between Skull and Lionheart, at Athos in Greece, ends with Lionheart falling from a cliff, certain death avoided by dint of hitting olive trees on his way down. Sanctus, Abbot of the Mount Athos monastery insists to his brothers that the sacred coffer, containing the remains of Saint Severius, must be preserved, but the intrusion of Burnheart and Snakebite terrifies the monks. The Abbot flees with his treasure as Thunderbolt and Eagle Eye arrive to take arms against their counterparts.

Some of the most accomplished artwork of the issue is within Mount of Athos, which presents a credible threat to characters, has a clear sense of priorities for Skull, and ramps up tension with Lionheart's injuries.

Unanswered Questions & Ruminations

Being bound to the will of a greater power raises prospects for Super Naturals future. What would happen if members of both parties decided they wished to free themselves of this force? It would have created four factions rather than the standard two, extending the life of the franchise significantly - bringing objectors into conflict with their associates. Specter's demand that alignment must be to one of the extremes also poses the question of what would happen if a villain had a crisis of conscience, or a hero became tempted by evil.

We aren't informed whether there are other Ghostlings (able to act on their own agency), nor why they are obligated to servitude. We are only shown the primary protagonists and antagonists, but there could be entire communities existing within Ghostworld who are neither heroic nor villainous enough to be permitted focus. What do they do all day? Are there previous exemplars of good and evil lurking around? And given that the Ghostlings can become fully-fledged Supernaturals should they perform an act of worthiness is a tantalizing prospect for where several characters might have ended up.

We aren't explicitly informed that Ghostworld is the only otherworldly realm, which is where an explanation for the formation of two diametrically opposed groups starts to make sense. If this is a desperate ploy to create defences against others of Specter's kind, then there must be multiple realms, with their own heroic and villainous factions, subject to the all-powerful, unseen powers governing those realms...

While there are no repercussions from the aggravation between the Ghostlings, we are informed that there will be should violence occur within Ghostworld. While powers are nullified, there is nothing to stop one of the Ghostlings picking up a rock and injuring or killing another in that manner. I'm not sure that Ghosts can die in this universe, but surely being a Ghostling is as low as it gets on the Super Naturals food scale. What worse fate lies in store for those who refuse to play by the rules.

Rarely do toy tie-ins open with this much opportunity. An uneven, though hugely entertaining, start, with untapped goodness running down to the core.