Last October, I took a look at Roger Elwood’s Horror Tales from 1974. This is its predecessor, Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things (1973). As with that previous volume, not a single author is familiar to me, aside of Robert Bloch, who pens the introduction. I’m here primarily for the gloopy, sploopy art of Franz Altschuler, which is pretty forbidding for a book aimed at kids (then again, the back cover copy clearly hypes Psycho so what do I know about what’s appropriate for kids?). I dimly recall this book from the Kearny Public Library, specifically that extremely creepy illustration for “Wendigo’s Child” with the bone creature.

Learned some stuff about Roger Elwood since last year that maybe explains some things. He was a prolific anthologist and seems to have been a quantity over quality guy. A lot of folks seem to have thought his collections were dull. I’ve also seen some stuff about his hiring of unknown writers and paying low fees (in theory, to keep more of the budget for himself, I guess?). Some critics claim his low-quality collections drove away the audience for anthologies and contributed to destroying a fairly lucrative market. But then, there are still a lot of anthologies getting published, so who knows, really?