Axe Elf

Looks like this is one of the rare issues where the android/chicken cover had nothing to do with any of the stories inside. And as I mentioned before, I'm ok with "Loathsome Lore" being factually incorrect about burning witches at Salem; it is "lore" after all. Lore isn't necessarily factual. "Dear Uncle Creepy" looks a little different this issue, now being titled simply "Mail" and adding little headlines to each letter (possibly to help fill extra space now that the feature has expanded to a page and a half). Love the guy who thought Ditko was among the artists ruining the CREEPY reputation--and a letter from "Peter Brady" himself! (Yes, the Brady Bunch was still airing on ABC at this time.) And then we kick off the issue proper with a little 4-pager called "In the Face of Death" that left me wondering wtf? I'm glad @OtherEric didn't understand it either, so I don't feel so alone. It's like they drew in a sketch of where the figure would be in the last panel, and then forgot to finish the illustration--so it looks like a thumb, rather than an elderly and withered face as the text would suggest it might--and leaves us all wondering what just happened. "Telephoto Troll" at least appeared to be executed properly, even if the idea of a developing photo manifesting whatever is pictured into reality is kind of a dumb one. Like why was just a whiff of ozone gas manifested when they took a picture of the whole planet--why wasn't the planet itself manifested in their lab? It's kind of sad when the reprint--with a screaming typo in its title--is the best story of the issue, but that may in fact be the case here with "A Night's Loding" [sic]. I had a hard time following "Snowmen" as well--just trying to keep all the characters straight--but I kind of pieced it together once I got to the end and could go back to see how all the pieces fit. But weren't there only two kids that went missing--and three "snowmen"? The "Fan Club" entry was basically a single story and illustration about going to hell; not as bad as some of the fan contributions have been. "A Wooden Stake for Your Heart" might be the best of the new stories, but yeah, the artist did seem to go out of his way to make the main character as stereotypically "vampire" as he could--some of them do almost seem like movie stills. I did think the real vampire would be in the locked room, but I didn't expect it to be a whole monster zoo in there! And then I'm back to being stumped by "Death of a Stranger." It seems to be kind of a drawn out psychedelic "Jacob's Ladder" trip of one man's descent into death. The art's kinda trippy, but I just don't get the point. The idea of microscopic aliens infecting the Earth's water supply, as in "Laughing Liquid," is an intriguing one, but the execution here seems inappropriately cartoonish (I know, I know, it's a comic book) when it could have had a real "War of the Worlds" feel to it. @OtherEric said he was grumpy when he read this issue, and I was grumpy after I had read the issue. Despite his gripes, @OtherEric seems to have enjoyed the issue more than I did--I was really put off by the dumb and sometimes unfathomable writing. I guess I'm really starting to miss Archie Goodwin. As dumb as his twists could be sometimes, at least you knew what he was trying to say. I'm starting to think we should paraphrase another popular saying from the 70s--"Don't trust any CREEPY issue over 30." So far #30 and #31 have been disappointing.

Been a minute since I upgraded anything, but I got a couple in this past week: So from what was once "The Po'Boy EERIE Collection," I now have only 2 issues I still have graded under 4.0, and only 8 issues I have graded under 5.0. It's becoming "The Entirely Acceptable EERIE Collection."

I appreciate the feedback. I had been waffling over whether or not it was worth $25 to upgrade my 4.5ish EERIE #3 to a 6.5ish copy, but if 9.0s are worth over $300 without batting an eye, then I feel like it was probably worth it--so I made the upgrade.

Trying to fact-check these Lores is probably not a good idea! Not sure how accurate any of the rest of them are!

CREEPY #31 - February 1970 According to the Warren Magazine Index... 31. cover: Vaughn Bode & Larry Todd (Feb. 1970) 1) Creepy’s Loathsome Lore: Torture! [Bill Parente/Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico] 1p [frontis] 2) In The Face Of Death [Al Hewetson/Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico] 4p 3) Telephoto Troll! [R. Michael Rosen/Roger Brand] 6p 4) A Night’s Lodging! [Rhea Dunne/Maurice Whitman] 7p reprinted from Creepy #17 (Oct. 1967) 5) Snowmen! [Tom Sutton] 8p 6) The Creepy Fan Page: The Master [Marc Rendleman] 1p [text story] 7) A Wooden Stake For Your Heart! [Don Glut/Bill Black] 6p 8) Death Of A Stranger [T. Casey Brennan/Ernie Colon] 6p 9) Laughing Liquid [Kevin Pagan/William Barry] 8p Notes: Underground artists Vaughn Bode & Larry Todd would do a number of covers for Warren over the next couple of years. This one depicts an odd chicken-like alien, who’s apparently just ripped in half a very human looking robot. The original version of this cover was too bloody, with too many entails {making one suspect the gentleman torn in half was originally intended to be an actual human}, so before publication the original painting was amended by the Warren production department. Reprints begin to be eased out, probably in response to the advent of Web Of Horror, a rival B&W magazine from Major Publications which featured all original stories. Major Publications were also the publishers of the humor magazine Cracked at the time. Both Eerie Publications and Stanley Publications had copied Warren’s lead in publishing B&W magazines in the mid 1960s but Warren, quite rightly, never considered them a threat as those magazines were mostly composed of pretty lousy retouched 1950s horror reprints. Web Of Horror wouldn’t last long {only three issues} but clearly their use of former Warren writers (Otto Binder & Clark Dimond) and artists {Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico {with a new penname}, Jeff Jones, Donald Norman, Roger Brand and more}, along with the brightest young turks from the fanzines {Berni Wrightson, Michael Kaluta, Bruce Jones, Ralph Reese, Frank Brunner, etc.} had an effect on Warren. In fact, a letter by one-time Warren editor J. R. Cocharan, that appeared in Canar #21-22 (May-June 1974), stated clearly that Warren’s infamous “war letter” to writers & artists which basically declared that one could either work for the B&W competition or one could work for Warren but you couldn’t work for both, was a direct result of the existence of Web Of Horror. Along with a story in the Jan. issue of Vampirella, this was future Skywald editor Al Hewetson’s professional writing debut. ‘Snowmen!’ by Tom Sutton was quite good and would win the first Warren award for best story. After several appearances on the fan pages, Bill Black made his professional art debut on ‘A Wooden Stake For Your Heart!’ Kevin Pagan also made his professional writing debut. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Index is mostly silent for the last month or so, and now it gives us all this to chew on! It seems like it's been ages since we read that last crappy CREEPY; here's hoping this will be an improvement. Looks like Bode & Todd (and especially Bode) are going to be with us for the covers of the next couple of EERIEs and the next VAMPIRELLA, too. It won't be long until they are challenging Prezio and Frazetta for cover dominance! I never would have thought to call the creature on the cover a "chicken," though. It looks more like a dinosaur with some feathers or something (and this was back before the dinosaur-bird ancestry had been fully traced out). After the description of the original cover being too gruesome to publish (assuming that "too many entails" is supposed to be "too many entrails"), of course now I'm curious to see it. Does anyone have any intel on where to find the original cover art? It's kind of cool to see Berni Wrightson called a "bright young turk from the fanzines" here, after seeing his print debut as a letter-writer back in CREEPY #5. Also cool to see Sutton illustrating more and more of his own scripts--pretty talented guy to be able to draw AND write--and it must be an advantage to illustrate something that was first visualized inside of your own head! And finally, REALLY cool to see only ONE reprint in this issue, and I believe the next issues of both CREEPY and EERIE are once again completely reprint-free! So hopefully all-new material from now until the 1971 Annuals!

Man, these just keep going higher and higher...

Love the ads for HELP! and Famous Westerns of Filmland on the back cover!

I agree that the cover of VAMPIRELLA #3 was probably modeled after "Blast Off to a Nightmare," rather than the other way around. It's a pretty unrelated image to have inspired this whole story around it, if it wasn't. Appropriately enough for its cover-worthiness (and despite the lack of love from the Warren Magazine Index), I feel like this was one of the better-scripted stories of the issue. I enjoyed the art quite a bit too, although it probably wasn't the issue's best--but Sparling did give us a magnificent full pager loaded with scantily-clad women and tentacles. My only quibble with the plot was that the "overlords" appeared to be interested in nothing but slaughtering the earthlings--and if that was the case, why not just slaughter them on Earth (or make the spaceship blow up on ignition); why go to all the trouble and expense to send them all the way to another planet just to kill them? If they were going to farm the earthlings, or use them for slaves or something, that would be more realistic, but to send them across the galaxy just to massacre them? That doesn't make much sense. The black print on the red background used for "Vampi's Feary Tales" didn't scan very well, and I had a hard time reading the text on my digital copy. It didn't seem to be a very compelling story, though; so I can't imagine that the movie upon which it is based would be much better. So "Vampi's Scarlet Letters" debuted this issue after all (again, despite no indication from the Warren Magazine Index)! Most notable was the public apology for miscrediting "Montezuma's Monster" in VAMPIRELLA #2 to Don Glut instead of Robert Rosen--who wrote in to complain! Lots of reviews for VAMPIRELLA #1 though, and as a collector, I found this letter kind of amusing. An "outrageous" $2.50! Blazing Combat "unattainable"!! Buying two issues of VAMPIRELLA #1 and hoping to make back the full dollar in a year!!! LOL! I found the Evily story "Wicked Is Who Wicked Does" to be hard to follow, --script-wise, but the Tom Sutton art is over the top--some of his best-ever in my opinion. I could post two or three magnificently-drawn panels, but the little "creature" touches in otherwise forgotten areas of the page really delighted me. I appreciate the background info from @OtherEric regarding "Eleven Steps to Lucy Fuhr." It makes a lot more sense as a parody of "Seven Footprints to Satan," what with the "Merritt" character being Satan himself in this version, and the thinly veiled "Lucy Fuhr" (Lucifer) reference. I don't think it was the best story in the issue--although it was about as close as we have come to actual illustrated nudity in a Warren mag--but it was better than the stories that came after it... Don't get me wrong, the Billy Graham art in both "I Wake Up... Screaming" and "Didn't I See You On Television" was incredibly striking and a worthy follow-up effort to last issue's "Rhapsody in Red"--but the stories were kind of hard to read and not particularly coherent. In the former, a vampire (?) falls to Earth from a spaceship? In the latter, a vampire is trapped in a network studio camera by a witch? Just not very strong stories. But the art... I didn't know what "The Caliegia" was before reading this--and I don't know afterwards, either. I tried looking it up (like "Vrykolakas"), but apparently it's not an actual word. I guess it's just the "guardian(s) of the forest"? Or it's the centaur-like creatures that the Caliegia and our hero became? I dunno; just another lightweight fantasy tale. "A Slimy Situation" was probably the best offering of the second half of the issue, but that's not saying much. It at least has a coherent plot, even if it's not a particularly thought-provoking one. I wasn't really counting the typos in this issue, as @OtherEric suggested, as I've kind of come to terms with the fact that they are just going to be there and there's no point in obsessing over them--but there was one pretty blatant copy error in this last story. In one panel, the man says, "Besides, I'm interested in money," and in the next panel, the woman says, "Well I AM!" so it's pretty clear that he was supposed to say, "I'm NOT interested in money," which is kind of a big change in meaning. So yeah, for the most part, I didn't really enjoy this issue that much, other than the Graham and Sutton art (which the Warren Magazine Index did get right as the highlights of the issue's illustrators). It's nice that there are still no reprints in VAMPIRELLA, but I'd almost rather see a good Ditko or Crandall reprint than a crappy new story. At least most of the art continues to be at a pretty high level. And this is the first time I remember seeing a subscription ad for all four pillars of the Warren Empire together at once (though admittedly I wasn't really looking for them in the first two Vampi issues). That's kind of a landmark to me.

In another Warren Magazine Reading Club coincidence, not necessarily related to this week's issue, but to the last CREEPY we read (CREEPY #30), the debut of CBS' Big Brother Season 25 tonight featured a Sikh houseguest for the first time ever--Jag Bains. (Parenthetically, he pronounced it "seek" as well; must be a regional difference or something.)

I was close; the poster in CREEPY #55 is double-sided, with the Sanjulians from CREEPY #46 and EERIE #40 (not #41). So @OtherEric, what's the one in EERIE #51?

It does, as it took ME two tries to get a CREEPY #55 with the poster intact (the first try turned out to be detached, despite the specific claim of the seller to the contrary--but he offered a full refund and let me keep the book, so no harm, no foul). I'm pretty sure they are not the same, but I don't remember for sure what they are. I kind of want to say they are the Sanjulians from the covers of CREEPY #46 and EERIE #41, but I wouldn't swear to it. EDIT: Starting to think maybe one or both of them was 2-sided ("posterS inside"), so maybe they ARE both the same, and both of them have CREEPY #46 on one side and EERIE #41 on the other? Now I'll probly have to break them out at some point... but not tonight.

The "green" side of that one looks about the same, but the "blue" side looks like a deeper blue. @Jayman's is REALLY blue!

Is it an anomaly, or are they all like that? Are there any with a uniform green background? I just assumed it was printed that way, with the gradation intended. Quick image search found this none-too-high-res pic of a CGC 9.8 which also appears to have the color gradation--so I would assume it's normal?

Lots of great backstory and information--thanks!

VAMPIRELLA #3 - January 1970 (This is one I get out to show people how nice-looking a 50+ year old magazine can be... It's sooo WHITE!) According to the Warren Magazine Index... 3. cover: Vaughn Bode & Larry Todd (Jan. 1970) 1) Vampi’s Feary Tales: Queen Of Outer Space! [Forrest J. Ackerman/MR. Piscopo] 1p [frontis] 2) Evily: Wicked Is Who Wicked Does! [Bill Parente/Tom Sutton] 7p 3) Blast Off To A Nightmare! [Al Hewetson/Jack Sparling] 10p 4) Eleven Footsteps To Lucy Fuhr [Terri Abrahms & Nick Beal/Ed Robbins] 7p 5) I Wake Up… Screaming! [Billy Graham] 8p 6) The Caliegia! [Nicola Cuti/MR. Piscopo] 7p 7) Didn’t I See You On Television? [Billy Graham] 4p 8) A Slimy Situation! [R. Michael Rosen/Jack Sparling] 6p Notes: Although it’s not that hard to find, this issue unaccountably is very expensive to acquire! Future comic writer Doug Moench sent in a letter. Billy Graham’s ‘I Wake Up…Screaming!’ featured characters with the likenesses of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, James Dean, David Niven, Kirk Douglas, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, Robert Vaughn, David McCallum & David Janssen. For all that hoop-de-do, the best story here was ‘Eleven Steps To Lucy Fuhr’. With the exceptions of Sutton & Graham the artwork is still substandard. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would imagine that this is the last of the really "clean" issues for a while--no reprints, no letters column, no fan page--just seven new stories and a "Gorry Hackerman" Feary Tale. Pure Warrenness. I'm really looking forward to new Billy Graham art; hopefully it will be just as good as his "Rhapsody in Red" in the previous issue. I'm wondering if maybe the Index got the Billly Graham stories mixed up, though; doesn't it seem like all the celebrity likenesses would be in "Didn't I See You On Television?" rather than "I Wake Up... Screaming!"? And I didn't realize there was another Evily installment this soon, so that should be a highlight for me as well.

Well, as an owner, I'm all for the market value appreciating, but I've never seen asking prices THIS high on an EERIE #3. I can understand it easier for the CGC 9.0 copy (although a CGC 9.0 sold on May 27 for $100 less--$224--and a CGC 8.5 sold the next day for $150)--but $300 for the raw copy that looks maybe 7.0ish? There was also a CGC 9.4 that sold June 24 for $400, and a 9.8 that sold May 12 for $1500... so, yay EERIE #3 owners, I guess...

Sounds reasonable.

So I thought it was just a made-up name, but I guess "Vrykolakas" are a thing. If you need help, as I did... So they're vampires. And this is indeed the Vrykolakas issue. Vampires here, vampires there, vampires everywhere you look... "EERIE Monster Gallery": Vampires. (And yes, I agree with @OtherEric that this is awfully wordy for a "gallery.") "Isle of the Vrykolakas": Yeah, it's really "Isle of the Vampires." (Although I wasn't too weary of the bloodsuckers by this point, so I thought this was a nice twist--a vampire who passes the "stink test" because he is a leprous vampire! Although it did occur to me that having to wait a few weeks to see if decay sets in is a pretty inefficient test for vampirism. Why couldn't they just hold up a pocket mirror and see if he casts a reflection? But then, no twist...) "Mistake": Mis-STAKE, get it? It's about a mobster killed for being a vampire when he was seen arising from his faked death. "Hijack to Horror": Some vampires and werewolves hijack a plane, not to Cuba (lol at remembering "hijacked to Cuba" being a going concern when I was a kid), but to New Transylvania. "To Pay the Piper" starts out with killing... Hooboy... At this point I actually put the magazine down and came back to it the next day; I just couldn't read another vampire story. Imagine my relief when I found that once all the vampires were dead, the story was really about werewolves. I didn't even remember that this story was a reprint, until after I went back to see what the other reprint was (I recognized "House of Evil," though it mainly just made me miss Joe Orlando's art). Not surprising, I guess, since it's from way back in CREEPY #2, but good grief, if they had their choice of reprints, why did they choose a fifth straight feature with VAMPIRES?? It's the ISSUE OF THE VRYKOLAKAS, that's why! Aaaand it looks like "Southern Exposure" is going to be a vampire story too, from the ending of Part 1--but at least there will be "something even more hideous than that" to share the spotlight. The most reasonable explanation as to why there is another reprint in this issue rather than the second part of this story--especially in light of @OtherEric's observation that Sutton's art seems rushed in places--is probably simply that it wasn't done yet. But I guess we will never know for sure. There's a "chicken or the egg" quality to whether the cover of this issue was drawn to represent the story, or whether the story was crafted around the cover, but this story seems to be clearly connected to the cover, with images from the Prologue being very similar to the cover. The early Warrens seem to be pretty heavy on "monster" themes in general, which makes sense, given that the Famous Monsters of Filmland title was doing so well. And even in getting away from the hordes of vampires that crowded the first part of this issue, "The Thing in the Cave" brings us a "Creature from the Black Lagoon" monster cloned straight from the movies as well. The story was kind of fun, though; what with the giant mutant moth, and the historical perspective of the growing experimentation with psilocybin and mescaline in pursuit of Native American spirituality. There's a good story somewhere in the idea for "Hex Marks the Spot," but this isn't it. It's like everyone in the world knows about these hexes, except for this guy's shrew wife--yet he lets her make the decision to remove their protection?? But there could have been a double-twist to this one--if the only difference between the "good hex" and the "bad hex" is the direction they are pointing, how does anyone know if a hex carved in a field is pointing up or down? The westward-facing farmer might have thought it was a good hex, but an eastward-facing demon might have grounds to disagree, and executed his mission (and the farmer) anyway. "Dear Cousin EERIE" was chock-full of praise for the cover of EERIE #23 ("Frazetta sure can draw pretty girls!"), and a couple of complaints about the price hike to 50 cents per issue--but my favorite was the kid who said his friend would have to stop buying EERIE because his mom thought the cover of #23 was "trashy." I didn't particularly care for any of the material in the "EERIE Fan Fare," although the second story took me a minute to catch on to what was happening (dumb as it was). @OtherEric made an interesting point about the advance copies of VAMPIRELLA #4 being a possible explanation for the two different text color cover variants. If no one has done it by then, when we get to VAMPIRELLA #4 in a couple of weeks I will break out my copies and compare the indicia to see if there is any difference--though to my knowledge the only difference between the two is the orange/purple text on the front cover. So I guess if you like vampires, this is the EERIE for you, and I think the gothic cover goes very well with the issue in that regard, whether or not it was created for that purpose.

At least this one is a CGC 9.0, but sheesh, is there an EERIE #3 shortage going on or something? https://www.ebay.com/itm/295843126167

Seems a little optimistic... https://www.ebay.com/itm/266348858037

Coincidentally this week...

I would be thankful for my Quality Control support staff... I know they'd have my back.

Spelling errors always catch my eye, but even my eye missed that one.

I'm not going to spend the money this time on a tester copy to find out!

Your issue seems a lot "greener" than mine; I wonder if this is another example of the brown/green fading like we saw with CREEPY #20?