turned demonologists; The World of Darkness (1977) and its sequel, The World Beyond (1978), starring Granville Van Dusen as a man who battles the supernatural following his own near death experience. The most successful effort of this period was the short-lived television series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), starring Darren McGavin; the weekly series was based on two backdoor pilots (The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler) produced by Dan Curtis and scripted by Richard Matheson, based on an unpublished work by Jeff Rice. Kolchak's adventures have been continued in books by Rice and in the comic book Kolchak Tales. Matheson's Kolchak Scripts have also been published. The Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo followed an occult detective format, though in the earlier series the apparent occult influences were all revealed as (fully natural) tricksters. In the wake of Scooby-Doo's success, several of the follow-ups from Hanna-Barbera involved varying degrees of occult and supernatural influence, including Goober and the Ghost Chasers, The Funky Phantom, and some of the 1980s entries in the Scooby-Doo franchise. To keep the plotlines suitable for Saturday morning audiences, the occult villains were kept family-friendly. More recent examples include: Angel Heart, The Believers, Blood Ties, Constantine, The Dresden Files, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, The Exorcist III, Forever Knight, Grimm, Lord of Illusions, Lucifer, The Ninth Gate, !Oka Tokat, Penny Dreadful, R.I.P.D., Special Unit 2, Split Second, Supernatural, Twin Peaks, Vidocq, The X-Files, Millennium, Angel, and The Vampire Detective. Comics, manga, and anime Doctor Occult, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was one of the earliest occult detectives in comic books with a 1935 debut. Doctor Occult was first a costumed superhero but his appearance quickly changed to a more typical detective (Fedora hat and long coat). The Phantom Stranger, created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, first appeared in an eponymous six-issue comics anthology published in 1952, first as a debunker of fake supernatural events but later incarnations showed him with mystical or supernatural abilities. Doctor Occult and the Phantom Stranger were both published by DC Comics, with Occult falling into obscurity for decades before a 1980s revival, while the Phantom Stranger appeared steadily from his debut if mostly in a supporting role. The comic book Hellblazer began in the 1980s and boosted the popularity and image of the occult detective fiction genre and shaped it to its modern form. Many modern examples of the genre