The Midnight Philosopher

Midnight Tales
Midnight Tales #1 (Dec. 1972). Art by Wayne Howard.
Publication information
Publisher	Charlton Comics
Schedule	Bimonthly
Format	anthology
Genre	Horror
Publication date(s)	Dec. 1972-May 1976
No. of issues	18
Main character(s)	The Midnight Philosopher and Arachne Coffin
Creative team
Written by	Nicola Cuti
Artist(s)	Wayne Howard
Editor(s)	George Wildman

Midnight Tales was an American horror-suspense anthology comic book series created by Wayne Howard and published by Charlton Comics from 1972 to 1976. The book was "hosted" by Professor Coffin (a.k.a. The Midnight Philosopher) and his niece Arachne. (The book followed a standard formula where each issue's first story was a framing sequence divided up among the other stories.) The setting, Xanadu University, was a tie-in with the Charlton series E-Man.

Charlton took the unusual step of giving Howard a "created by" credit on each issue's cover, providing a precedent for such credits eventually becoming common years later beginning with DC's Vertigo imprint. Charlton writer/editor Nick Cuti described Howard's credit being granted because the book, "... was his idea, his concept, his everything." In addition, each issue shared a theme: "One time it would be blob monsters, and I wrote three stories about blob monsters, and another time it was vampires ... and that sort of thing". Howard penciled and inked every cover and virtually every story, and occasionally scripted stories as well.

According to critic Mark Andrew:

Old dude and his sexy niece traipse across the countryside, bumping into oddball characters who invariably have a story to tell.... Sadly, since Charlton didn't want to do anything that'd offend your average nine-year-old, you can feel this book fighting against the uber-restrictive comics code. Kinda sad, really. What is good, however, are the artists in this book, easily the equal of anyone workin' at Marvel or DC at the time. You got Wayne Howard ... probably the most deft practitioner of the Wally Wood school ever.

Midnight Tales was part of a wave of new horror and suspense comics published by Charlton during this period. Its sister titles were the Charlton anthologies The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves (with host Dr. M.T. Graves), Ghostly Tales (with I.M. Dedd), Ghost Manor (with host Mr. Bones), Ghostly Haunts (with Winnie the Witch), Haunted (with Impy and then Baron Weirwulf), and Scary Tales (with Countess R.H. Von Bludd).