Month four of the relaunch,December 1985, and the releases have dwindled just slightly to six titles this month.
A few new stories and covers grace the pages this time, but for the most part it's the same ol same ol reprint dance again.
CHARLTON ACTION FEATURING STATIC #12, with all Ditko art, has a new cover wrapping a revised Static story that originally apperead in Eclipse Monthly #2 September 1983. Also in this is a reprint of a Cosage tale from Quester #1, 1978, also with revions. And a new story, "The 2 Dimensional Crime".
THE IRON CORPORAL #24 features a cover reprint from Army War Heroes #25 by Rocco Mastroserio, with reprints from that same issue.
PROFESSOR COFFIN #20 reprints Midnight Tales #2, along with a 1-pager by Wayne Howard from Ghostly Haunts #48.
PUNCHY AND THE BLACK CROW #11 digs deep into the well with a cover reprint of Zoo Funnies (1953 series) #5 and story reprints from various early-mid 50's funny animals titles.
TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER #15 sports a beautiful new cover by Alex Nino and a brand new Ditko 8-pager titled "Deadly Shadow". Ditko himself also colored this story according to Robin Snyder. The rest of the issue is culled from issues of the original run of Mysterious Traveler and This Magazine Is Haunted.
The final offering this month is THANE OF BAGARTH #25, with a new cover by Rudy Nebres and reprinting the back-ups from Hercules #3 and 4, plus a Robin Hood story from Robin Hood and His Merry Men #32, 1957.
These issues close out 1985, and Charlton was riding on very high hopes for new and revitalized future. As we will see, this was not to be. Up next, the writing is on wall.
It's generally known that Pat Boyette brought painted covers to Charlton, through a contact in Texas that had refined a way to better reproduce original painted art for comic books.
It's hard to Imagine Charlton in the 70's without these painted covers, as it became a signature of sorts for them. Certainly the "major" companies weren't on this level of intense artistic boundary pushing with their covers.
From December 1972 to November 1976 Boyette turned in no less than 41 stunning pieces of brilliant masterworks. Here they are, in chronological order.
TWO MORE ORIGINAL COVERS I JUST FOUND:
