OtherEric

UK to UK

First off, a huge thanks to @Stevemmg for taking a turn posting the reading club info!

My thoughts on Vampirella #18:

Cover:  Steve mentions this as a classic Vampirella cover, and who am I to argue?  It's a classic that they go back to many times in various ways, be it a paperback cover, or using it as the starting point for the #100 anniversary issue.  And it's brilliant... it shows Dracula cowering when faced with Vampirella, positioning her as an extraordinarily puissant figure.  I would go so far as to argue that this is fundamentally how we should see Vampi, rather than as the victim as most of her earlier covers other than #1 showed her.  Not saying that a mix isn't good, or even necessary on a long running title.  I'm just saying that this is the more effective mode, generally.

Feary Tales:  More of a lore page than a feary tale, and it uses an unusually broad definition of nymph.  I also get what Pagan was going for on Vampi's introduction, but it starts out feeling rather off and it doesn't really recover that well... you can see what was meant but the effect falls very flat, at least for me.  I'll give the team points for effort and the use of red on the page is quite effective, and really makes some extraordinary use of two-color printing its design.  And now I've spent far more time on the page than it's really worth.

Vampirella: Dracula Still Lives:  A decent story as far as it goes, but it feels far more like a Dracula story featuring Vampirella than a Vampirella story.  Which is fine in a long running series, but it feels a little bit off to me nonetheless.  And not exactly what the series needed after the last issue already felt like a bit of a fill-in.  Very nice art by Gonzales, at least.

Tomb of the Gods: Kali:  OK, it does appear that the Tomb of the Gods series is more thematically connected stories, rather than a single continuity.  Excellent work by Maroto.

Song of a Sad-Eyed Sorceress:  Great art and excellent scripting, nodding toward contemporary issues but not having them take over the story like so many in the Eerie issue we just covered then.  I want to particularly point out how McGregor manages to balance a very formal story structure, alternating present with flashback pages, to serve the story rather than the story just being a frame to stylistically show off. 

Won't Get Fooled Again:  A solid story by Moench & Auraleon.  Although it's actually brought down by having two direct lines from The Who, one in the title and one in dialogue.  One is fine, several could become a game (although one probably ill-suited for the story in this case), but two is just distracting, at least to me.

The Dorian Grey Syndrome:  Another good story, with a nice use of a double twist- the first is rather obvious, but it does set up the second, more clever, twist nicely. 

This was an excellent issue overall, honestly.  A good balance of varied stories.

Having read Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 now, I think C+ is probably a fair grade considering it as an EC.  I would probably say B+ just as a horror anthology, but EC has higher standards.

I think the biggest problem for me is that they didn't really use a host, other than to introduce the issue as a whole.  A lot of the rhythm and humor of the EC horror came from the intro and outro to the stories,  and not having that makes them feel less EC-like.  So I'm very interested in seeing Cruel Universe, where they won't have that issue.  To be fair, the horror stories in Shock Suspenstories didn't have the hosts, either... and I generally think the horror stories there didn't work as well as the ones in the main horror titles.

For anyone who hadn’t seen it, @jimjum12 is one of the forumites of the year.  Congratulations, Jimbo, it’s well deserved!

Today's book.  This is now in the lead as the lowest print run Arkham House book I own, although I suppose it's far from impossible that some of the Arkham Samplers may actually have fewer surviving copies since they're magazines.  I don't expect to ever track down Spells & Philters or The Dark Chateau.  A beautiful book with a dozen B&W plates by Utpatel.

I did get the OTHER EC related release of the month that I'm aware of already, off amazon.  Sadly, I missed the #5 (and 1-4, for that matter).  #5 is less than a year old and I can't find a copy for sale period, I should ask my LCS if the distributor still has copies.

With any luck I'll be getting an actual EC in the mail later this week, as well.  It's getting MUCH harder to find issues I can afford these days.