Scream #3: The Australian Skywald

There’s some conjecture as to whether there were Australian editions of the Skywald horror magazines published in the 1970’s.

I'm no expert on the Skywald magazines.

I’m very familiar with the Gredown Pty. Limited magazines which reprint plenty of pre-Code (and post-Code!) horror comics from a variety of publishers (and also happen to be a good source of Ditko reprints).

I’m also very familiar with the K.G. Murray horror titles such as Doomsday and Haunted Tales which also carry pre-Code horror comics in their first dozen or so issues.

These are the Australian horror reprint titles which personally interest me the most, and I plan on writing up some entries on them in future. (A comprehensive index of the contents of the various Gredown titles, including identification of original sources is sorely needed!)

I’m not as intimately familiar with the horror output of Page Publications, or Yaffa/Page as they are also known. I recognise them mostly for publishing Marvel superhero comics after the Newtons, but I do know they also published many Marvel horror titles, which I believe are complete facsimiles (or near to) of Marvel horror magazines such as Tales of the Zombie and The Haunt of Horror, and comics such as Vault of Evil, Chamber of Chills and Creatures on the Loose. They also published local versions of horror titles from other publishers such as Stanley Publications’ Shock and Chilling Tales of Horror, which I find more interesting.

I can also confirm they published local versions of Skywald titles such as Psycho and Scream. I have a copy of Scream #3, so to satisfy my curiosity I’ve indexed it and compared it to the US version.

Scream #3, $0.50 cover price, Page Publications, no cover date.

Index

The Oblong Box of Horrors
Edgar Allan Poe (credited)/Al Hewetson (adaptation)/Maro Nava

Lady Satan Chapter 3: Satan Wants A Child
Alan Hewetson (as Howie Anderson)/Ricardo Villamonte

Edgar Allan Poe in the Movies
(Article)

The Skull of the Ghoul Part One: ...She Came Upon A Midnight Clear...
Alan Hewetson/Ferran Sostres

The Legend of the Cannibal Were-Wolf
Ed Fedory/Ricardo Villamonte

The Lunatic Mummy
Alan Hewetson (as Howie Anderson)/Cesar Lopez

The Tales of Nosferatu Chapter Four: When The Dusk Falls... So Does Death...
Alan Hewetson/Zesar Lopez

The Skull of the Ghoul Part Two:…She Died Upon a Decrepit Dawn…
Alan Hewetson/Ferran Sostres

Based on the GCD the Australian Scream #3 is virtually a complete reprint of Skywald’s Scream #4, February 1974. The only differences appear to be:
The order of the stories (and allowing for some variance in interpreting the correct titles of each story, not helped by the fact that the titles in the index on page 2 of the Australian edition differ slightly from those within the magazine!);
A 2-page Ed Fedory Profile and letters pages/column is omitted from the Australian edition;
The wraparound cover on the US edition is a single front cover on the local edition.

Also, the GCD lists Skywald’s Scream #4 as 68 pages; Page’s Scream #3 is 60 pages including the covers - given the inner rear cover carries the last page of the last story, I think that’s pretty close to a complete copy of the Skywald edition.

I’m sure there are other Australian editions of the Skywald magazines. If anyone is interested I’ll check my copies of Psycho and compare them to the US editions too.