OtherEric

In today, thanks to a heads up from @Darwination.  I think the digest came out before the paperback, but not quite 100% certain.  It's the only John D. MacDonald in an Avon that I'm aware of off the top of my head.

Glass dome to glass tube

Heinlein to Heinlein

The Thrilling Adventure Stories aren't new, but the rest are fresh in today.  I figured I might as well go for the group:

In today;

Eerie #41 thoughts:

Cover: I think this is generally regarded as one of the all-time classic Warren covers, and who am I to argue?  Although it's so directly based on a panel from the Dax story I would personally give Maroto co-credit for it with Sanjulian.  Beautiful work in any case.

Monster Gallery:  Gorgeous work by Barr here, mostly true to the actual lore surrounding Sawney Bean, with one or two details (such as the time frame) being taken from stories that get conflated with the story.  If I had been running the show I would have used this as the back cover lore page in the Creepy last week, and the Id page as the gallery page here, but it's a bit of a better fit as a gallery page than some.  And, as I've repeatedly observed, we as fans care vastly more about the distinction than Warren ever actually did.

Warped:  An interesting and weird concept by Pagan, undermined by what I think is actually an inferior art job by Grandenetti, rather than one I just don't personally like.

West Coast Turnaround:  Nice Sutton art.  The story itself has aged slightly better than most anti-drug stories of the era, but that's miles from having actually aged well.

Heir Pollution:  The story reminds me of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, honestly.  Which suggests to me the story was actually pretty good when it came out, even if it suffers in the comparison.

The Caterpillars: A bit too absurd for my tastes, and as the third story in a row dealing with a social issue to greater or lesser degree (biological warfare in this case), it feels like this issue is pushing a bit too far in the relevance direction.  Not saying I object to relevance in comics... Green Lantern/ Green Arrow remains one of my all-time favorites... but I feel like Warren should probably stick to one story an issue, or the book starts feeling like it's sold it's heritage for a pot of message.

Derelict:  John Thraxis has two stories at Warren and no other credits I can find.  Paul Neary does around 40 stories for Warren, which is a lot more than I would have guessed going in.  He has something around 3500 credits at the GCD.  This actually appears to be Neary's comic debut, full stop, rather than just his American debut.  (He seems to have had a comic story in The Monster Times at very close to the same time this issue hit the newsstand, although that isn't primarily a comic magazine.)  With all that said, the story isn't very good, honestly... it's essentially a haunted house in space story, and Neary is drawing it far more Science Fiction than Horror style, which doesn't fit the tone.  Never mind that his art at this point is probably best described as "amateur with potential" rather than the pro he rapidly became.

The Safest Way:  Nice art by Gual, but we've got another social issue story by Skeates here.  It may just be me, but in addition to the obvious context of the story it looks like General Simmons is being drawn to resemble Spiro Agnew.  That aside, it's a pretty solid story on its own terms, the problem is I'm sick of message stories in this issue at this point, even if this one is the one that does the best job of being a story as well as a message.

Dax: Chess:  We get a little background on Dax, finally, as well as an interesting story where Dax is forced out of his comfort zone.  The story, while still stand-alone like the other Dax stories, is reaching the point where we know the character and can appreciate the variations.  Plus gorgeous art by Maroto, making this a very strong note for the issue to go out on.

Back issue ad:  This appears to be the point where they ran out of copies of #17, which means it's where that issue started getting its reputation for scarcity.

This is another issue where the total was less than the sum of its parts.  I think all the social issue stories were pretty good for the genre other than "The Caterpillars", and even there the problem wasn't its handling of its issue as such.  I would even say all of them have aged somewhat better than usual as these things go.  But a series of stories going "This is a bad thing and I want you to know I know it's a bad thing" gets very annoying very quickly, even if any one of them works well enough.  So the issue starts on a high note with the cover and gallery, and ends on a high note with Dax, but the middle is a bit one note, and the two stories that weren't both suffer from the artists (Grandenetti and Neary) doing work far below their best.  (Admittedly, that's somewhat unfair to Neary at this point in his career, but hindsight gets in the way.)