Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor #1

The “Story Behind The Cover” for this issue, “Midnight In The Sunken Cathedral,” is continued from the Dream Corridor Special. The first half based on a cover by Stephen Hickman, while part two is based on this issue’s cover by Michael Whelan.

This issue features the beginning of an adaption, “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,” that resulted in a small amount of disagreement between the adaptor, John Byrne, and Ellison. Because of this, the actual text of the story is reprinted alongside the adaptation in each issue.

“John Byrne wanted to adapt ‘I Have No Mouth” and he did, but being John Byrne, instead of treating the story with… not exactly a reverence, but a certain fidelity to the material — because it’s such a well-known story — John decides to do a John. If you remember the story, it takes place inside this giant computer, and the caverns are hundreds of miles in diameter. Well, John made it look like it took place in your kitchen. What I decided to do was run the actual story, the parallel amount of story for the amount of pages in each issue. John’s done it in four parts and with each part, there’s the original story as it was published. The story appears on one side, on one page, and then there’s five or six pages of John’s art, with balloons and the whole thing … The text that text that precedes it is the section of the original story that parallels what John has done. It’s sequential art, the way he does Next Men, only you’ve got two versions of it: You’ve got my version and his version”

Harlan Ellison, Hero Illustrated, 22, April 1995, pp 24, 26

It is also the only story not to be included in the Dream Corridor Vol. 1 collection. “I Have No Mouth” also inspired the 1996 computer game of the same name which is advertised on the back cover of this issue.

logo & publication design, Cary Grazzini