Now this one is a bit of a strange aberration, one that I wasn’t even aware of when it first saw print. SCARY TALES had been released intermittently by publisher Charlton filled with weird mystery stories of the sort that DC and other publishers were issuing–that is to say, stories that had twist endings or that had the patina of being frightening without violating any of the tenets of the Comics Code, which was still being adhered to. There were often a mix of new tales and reprints, but none of them were especially noteworthy stories despite often having some very nice artwork. But for this issue and this issue only, SCARY TALES got a super-heroic lead feature.
Dragon Force was both written and illustrated by Johan Roux, about whom I could turn up little (apart from the fact that he’s no relation to the South African Rugby player of the same name.) Looking at the strip and the time at which it was released, I would guess that it might have been originally intended as a submission for CHARLTON BULLSEYE, the company’s newly-launched tryout title that would run fan submissions but wouldn’t pay anything for them–exposure and the pleasure of seeing your work in print is all that you got. If it was intended for BULLSEYE, then it remains a mystery why editor George Wildman chose to feature it in this issue of SCARY TALES.
While like most CHARLTON BYLLSEYE features it was rough around the edges and crude in spots, Dragon Force had some underlying appeal to it. It concerned a trio of criminal acrobatics (talk about a weird phrase to have to write!) who are given possession of super-powered armor and an experimental dragon flying craft in order to battle organized crime. And, yes, that plot really doesn’t make a whole lot of cohesive sense. But the straight ahead verve of the story barrels right through lapses of logic and reason. And really, during this time period, even the established professionals would often use logic in their stories that was just as spurious.
In any event, there was never a second Dragon Force story published. By the following issue, released two months later, SCARY TALES was back to running random one-off supernatural suspense stories. So the whole thing is an interesting anomaly.
Mindfire, Battleclaw, Speedwing–Johan Roux was ahead of his time when it came to naming his super heroes. These names would have fit in perfectly in any early 1990s comic book.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Wow. That’s terrible. And not even 40-cakes terrible.
I agree that it was probably intended for BULLSEYE — the fact that Roux put a copyright notice on the splash seems like solid evidence for that. My first thought was maybe that they didn’t have whatever was supposed to be in that issue ready to go, which is possible, but given that SCARY TALES was a reprint series at the time, not terribly likely.
Maybe Wildman wanted to experiment with the series, to see if something different would sell. Or maybe he just liked the material or promised Roux he’d run it, and since BULLSEYE had been cancelled, this was a way to get it into print.
kdb
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It was definitely meant for Charlton Bullseye, as is chronicled in The Charlton Companion by Jon B Cooke. Other stories meant for CB made their way into Scary Tales 38 as well as Americomics 3 from AC Comics.
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Johan Roux was a friend and colleague of mine back in the early eighties. He and I worked at an adverting agency in South Africa called Lindsay Smithers. I was an art director and Johan was a copy writer, we worked together in one of the creative teams.
I have a signed copy of the comic he gave to me just after it was published.
I moved to New Zealand later in the eighties and lost contact with him.
So glad to see that others have collected this one.
Regards Norm
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