Well, I discovered in my search that Archie Comics Group had indeed published just the type of comics I was wanting...they just published them before I was old enough to read. In the late summer/early fall of 1972 (I would have been about one-and-a-half years old), ACG published two issues of Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina...
...and then stopped production of that comic, until a year later, when ACG changed the title, adopting a more serious tone by dropping "as Told by Sabrina" and featuring much more sinister cover art and more realistic (less Archie-like) interior art, all by editor/writer/artist
artist Gray Morrow, who not only created the artwork (cover and interior) for this entire issue, but also edited the entire run, created each cover, and provided story and art for at least a story a piece in each of the nine issues this revamp ran.
Morrow's cover for this first issue* of Chilling Adventures in Sorcery departs dynamically from the prior issues: the images ( a ghost, a demon, a witch, a ghoul, Frankenstein's monster, a spider, a snake, a skull, and even Death itself) are much scarier, made all the more frightening by Morrow's famed detailed anatomical linework. The colors and text features denote a more serious approach to horror, as does the masthead change from Archie Series to Red Circle Comics Group. One wonders if these were all Morrow's ideas, if perhaps he agreed to write/draw/edit for ACG if the company allowed him to create his own line. Any ideas, anyone?
The issue itself contains four separate stories, all variations on the fate/revenge/ironic twist story format made famous by EC Comics (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, etc...) and perpetuated by nearly every horror comics anthology series since. What elevates the stories in this comic from the pedestrian is Morrow's sense of style and design. Morrow was renowned among comic book artists for his "realistic" line work, and that's present here, of course, but Morrow also excels in his color work and his panel structure. He used a multi-colore, muted pallete for most of his panels, but to emphasize certain emotions, or to highlight the climax of a story, he would shade a panel entirely in hues of red, or of green, or orange, all to heighten the horror. Morrow would also use his paneling to heighten his stories. A page of a typical six-paneled structure will often be followed by a page of three vertical panels, or page with no true panel borders. Morrow didn't seem, though, to haphazardly vary his panels; he used his panels as a storytelling device much as a poet uses beats and breaks in verse and stanza to convey meaning. All this may seem commonplace today, but for the early '70s, and for the company paying Morrow, this type of panel variation proved to be innovative.
Unfortunately, the Chilling Adventures in Sorcery comic would be short-lived. After only two more issues, the series changed its title (again) to Red Circle Sorcery, and it would run only six issues, commencing at #11 in late '75/early '74. The series continued to feature work from outstanding artists such as Pay Boyette, Howard Chaykin, Alex Toth, and Morrow himself. As for Morrow, after this series concluded, he contributed to occasional comics from both DC and Marvel as well as helping illustrate the occasional comic strip. In '83, he began illustrating the Tarzan comic strip, and he continued doing so until 2001. Gray Morrow died that year from (purportedly) a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was sixty-six.
*Notes - Most likely, ACG continued the numbering--rather than start a new issue at #1--because renumbering would have cost them more money (go ask the USPS).
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