Alan Hewetson was a Scottish-Canadian writer and editor of American horror-comics magazines, best known for his work with the 1970s publisher Skywald Publications, where he created what he termed the magazines' "Horror-Mood" sensibility.
17 Facts About Al Hewetson
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Al Hewetson went on to become a publisher of city magazines in Canada.
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Al Hewetson was born and initially raised in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of James and Elizabeth Hewetson.
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Al Hewetson became a darkroom technician and then a staff news photographer at what was then the Sudbury Daily Star of Sudbury, Ontario, followed by photographer jobs at the Ottawa Journal, The Montreal Gazette in 1967, and Ottawa's Canadian Press.
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Al Hewetson's duties included opening and answering fan mail, preparing the letters pages for most of the comics, mailing complete sets of comics to Marvel writers and artists, awarding "No Prizes", and serving as Lee's gofer.
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Lee invited him to submit story ideas, but Al Hewetson's writing style, heavily influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and other 19th-century authors, proved "highly unsuitable for Marvel superheroes", Al Hewetson said.
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Al Hewetson remained at his post from February to September 1969, and was succeeded as Lee's assistant by Allyn Brodsky, no relation to Sol Brodsky.
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Al Hewetson said The Satirists was done in 1971, and that Dirty Soks and a daily and Sunday Tales of the Macabre ran from 1972 to 1974.
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Al Hewetson was very helpful providing pictures for my feature, and we appeared to get along immediately.
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Al Hewetson never rejected anything I ever wrote for him, even though I admit some of my earlier stories were pretty flimsy.
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Al Hewetson estimates he wrote over 500 published stories for Skywald, using such pseudonyms as Joe Dentyn, Stuart Williams, Henry Bergman, Hugh Laskey, Harvey Lazarus and Howie Anderson, as well as Peter Cappiello, Edward Farthing, and Victor Buckley.
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Al Hewetson created a public persona, "Archaic Al Hewetson", that would often appear as a mascot, introducing stories.
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Al Hewetson wrote the ongoing feature "The Human Gargoyles", which he called "a Kafkaesque parody of religion, horror, society, family life and pop culture" as seen through the experiences of a family of three gargoyles come to life.
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Six to eight months after Skywald ended, and concurrent with his Quadrant screenwriting, Al Hewetson began publishing a city magazine for St Catharines, Ontario, and neighboring Niagara Falls, Ontario.
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Al Hewetson successfully expanded to city magazines in Buffalo, New York, and Windsor, Ontario, the latter called Greater Windsor.
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In 2014, Al Hewetson was inducted into The Ghastly Awards Hall of Fame for outstanding work in horror comics.
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In 2019, Al Hewetson was inducted into The Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Hall of Fame for outstanding achievement in the creation of comic books.