The Pocket Chiller Library was a series of small-format comic book shockers – similar in format to the likes of Commando and other digest war comics that were once staggeringly popular – which was published between 1971 and 1977 by Top Sellers, the publishing company that also brought us House of Hammer, Monster Mag and assorted girly magazines. It was part of a series that included Pocket War Library, Pocket Western Library and Pocket Detective Library. At the time – and, in fact, today – horror comics were technically illegal in the UK, but no one seemed willing to test an outdated and kneejerk law over these titles.
Each issue of Pocket Chiller Library told a single uncredited tale of terror – not always supernatural horror (Doctor Satan is based on the true story of WW2 criminal Dr Petiot, while Billy the Kid is surely stretching ‘horror’ to breaking point!) but sold on sensationalism and pitched at an adult audience – these were the closest that Britain came to the sex and violence-filled horror comics of mainland Europe (and in fact, some strips were direct imports from those titles), though they were considerable less graphic in nature. In keeping with the British comic book tradition of the time, neither the writer nor the artist were credited.
The audience for these small comic books was surprisingly large, though the biggest sellers were war and romance stories, with Starblazer later cashing in on the late 1970s sci-fi boom. Pocket Chiller Library ran for 137 issues, but the collection is almost forgotten now – don’t hold your breath for hardcover compilations of these strips – but well worth picking up if you ever come across copies.
Our gallery is, of course, incomplete – we’ll gratefully receive scans of any missing covers (or, indeed, the complete comics).
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Fairly certain the artist in the two pages reproduced above is Ian Gibson (1946-2023), best-known for the 2000AD strips The Ballad of Halo Jones and Robo-Hunter.