OtherEric

Creepy #11 thoughts (other than the cover): Loathsome Lore: I think this is the first time the lore has been credited to anybody other than Goodwin, although I don't remember for sure without checking. It's a bit different in tone than most of the lore pieces so far. Hop-Frog! A very strong piece by Poe, Goodwin, and Crandall. I'm not familiar with the original, though. Sore Spot: One of the better Orlando stories in a while, he's a great artist but his Warren work isn't as good as a lot of his other stuff, unlike a lot of the other artists. One thing that threw me was the bit with a car in a story that involved somebody being guillotined, which seemed like a self-evident anachronism. But when I looked it up, it wasn't... The last execution by guillotine in France was in 1977, eleven years after this story was published. The Doorway: I believe this is Adkins first solo story for Warren, although he did a couple of filler pages and worked with Wally Wood before this. He's at his most Wood-like here, to the point where I wonder if Wood contributed a bit as well. It's definitely a product of the Wood studio at this point even if Adkins gets the credit, he grew into his own quite a bit later but always had a lot of Wood in his art. The story itself is pretty good, both in art and --script. The Black Death: I've enjoyed some of Manny Stallman's work elsewhere, but here his drawing style is very much not the right choice for the story it's illustrating. Beast Man: At this point I'm completely in the tank for the Goodwin/ Ditko stories. The Devil to Pay: I'm really liking Norman Nodel's art here, the first two pages almost look like woodcuts. It elevates a decent but not spectacular --script by Goodwin. Skeleton Crew: Excellent art by Torres and a twist just weird enough to land more strongly than it should ends the issue on a high note. Overall, not as good an issue as the #10 in my opinion. But an incredible cover even by Frazetta standards and several quite good if not spectacular stories make this another excellent issue overall.

So, you're getting my thoughts on the issue in two posts today, one on just the cover. Then I'll type up my thoughts on the issue, I re-read it a few days ago but didn't make my notes right away like I usually do so it will take me a few minutes to pull that together. Creepy #11 Cover: So, this is one of the all-time classic Frazetta covers. He reused part of it as art for the King Kong remake of the 70's, in fact. I personally think the original Warren version is better than the follow-up, but my copy of the 70's movie tie in paperback is very low grade and I badly need an upgrade. One detail I love on the paperback is that the art is printed without trade dress on the back. Sorry for the low quality on the book:

118. Not a terribly difficult issue, but sellers seem to keep wanting 25%-50% more than other typical issues around there. Maybe misplaced optimism based on the 117 being broken out, but I don't really know why. So I haven't been willing to pull the trigger when there have been other issues to target in the #100-up range. Now that it's the only one I'll almost certainly break down and pay the extra few dollars sometime later this month.

If you're just going to toss it instead!

You remind me, however unintentionally, of the worst cartoon Chuck Jones ever worked on, and I make you suffer as well...

I wonder if the Angel name was inspired by the Angel Puss cartoon Warners had put out in 1944, or if there was a common source they both drew from, or if they just independently came up with a similar name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Puss

So, to pull out my standard unpopular GA opinion: I would much rather have a Suspense 8 over a Suspense 3. The 3 is the most overrated cover of the whole golden age. If nothing else, explain to me where the hero’s legs are supposed to be.

Two more today, starting to take the Looney Tunes Four Colors project seriously... Although the Bugs and Porky issues aren't part of the project yet:

In today. A significant upgrade on my old copy... and you know with my collection, if I felt an upgrade was needed it must have been pretty beat up. This is the two Corben story version, same as my other copy. One annoyance on this issue is that, while there are probably more copies of the book available at any given point than any of the other Comix International issues, none of the sellers seems to list which variant they have. I would like a copy of the three Corben story version but I'm not going to drive myself crazy looking given that I have both of the stories in their original issues.

A couple books today. Also thought I had a LTMM on the way, but when it arrived it was wrong interiors. It was cheap enough I'll keep it for parts but I'm still at 14 to go there.

Today's books. Only one book to go for 100-up complete!

From what I've seen magazine collectors haven't really jumped onto the "minor variant" bandwagon very much yet. Probably because a lot of the general collectors haven't jumped onto the magazine bandwagon yet. The two Vampirella 4 variants seem to be in the same ballpark as far as numbers go, so I doubt we'll see one wind up valued above the other. Although the issue probably has quite a bit of room to grow as an early issue of Vampirella in general.

Is there anything in that lot that isn’t still occasionally a dollar bin book? Admittedly the X-men / TT isn’t as common in the cheap bins as the rest, but it’s not unknown in my experience.

The listing says it's from 1996 and the Harris book came out in 1993. Thank you for showing me what book you were talking about. Edit: and jdandns pointed out the dates as I was checking and typing.

No idea what this book would be, would love to see it if anybody recognizes it.

Very nice. The Planet Stories and 3-D Zone 16 are the two I still need to track down.

Eerie #5 thoughts: Cover: An amazing piece, brought slightly down by the "curtain" effect. I'm sure this looked more impressive when new, now it looks like water damage or ripples until you look closely... at which point it looks like a mediocre Photoshop filter. It's a great cover once you figure out how to look at it, but at least initially it's distracting, in ways I'm not sure that were an issue originally. Eerie's Monster Gallery: A nice enough piece, although more Adkins than Wood to my eye. See the cover of Eerie #12 for the next panel. The Mummy Stalks: Great art by Crandall, but the twist to the story just felt weird to me, and not in a good weird horror sort of way. The Jungle: Goodwin's story is just a framework for amazing Williamson artwork. That's not a dig at the story, Goodwin was good at doing fairly minor stories that allowed for art showcases like this. But it's still an art showcase. Black Magic: Ditko magicians. Another good example of Goodwin getting out of the way of the artwork. A Matter of Routine: This almost feels like something that could have been written as a Ditko artwork showcase, but of course it's Colan doing the art instead. It makes for another very solid story. Dr. Griswold's File: Carl Wessler joins the Warren crew as writer with this one. He worked for Atlas and EC in the 50's, giving us an EC writer to join the EC artists that have been driving the early Warren era. He is never a terribly prolific writer for Warren, doing around 20 stories as nearly as I can tell at a quick look, but he's with the company on and off for a long time. For his debut with Warren he provides an extremely good -script for Mastroserio to draw. The Swamp God: Torres tries some interesting things with shading that don't always quite work, but it's still a very nicely drawn story with probably Goodwin's best -script of the issue. Vampire Slayer: A solid double twist at the end from Goodwin, although I'm not overly enamored of the art on this one. It looks like Orlando either tried doing more pencils or was heavier with the inks than he usually was on the Grandetti ghosted stories, and I don't feel the art holds together as a whole on this one. Overall, a quite decent issue, but it does feel like they put the better stuff in Creepy #10 this time and the lesser material here. But it's still a strong issue from the peak of the "Warren as an EC revival in spirit" era.

OSPG is what I’ve always seen used.

Pretty sure that's the one you mean, rather than this one: . Although they both somewhat qualify as leaning over a pillar, somewhat.

Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize!

I'll be a day or two late posting my thoughts on this issue, but I'll get to them as soon as I can.

Digital Comic Museum is, as always, your friend for things like this: https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=231

I honestly don't know if Marvel ever did that story. DC certainly did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gambi

So, was just thinking about EC's, as I'm prone to do. One of the traditional bits of comic book trivia in fandom is Blackstone the Magician Detective Fights Crime is the longest comic title ever, or at least of the golden and silver ages. Yet... Blackstone the Magician Detective Fights Crime Three Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror Picture Stories from the Bible Complete New Testament Edition It's in third place even among EC titles! (This is what happens when I have insomnia and am up late looking at my EC's...)

The plan has been to drop that in the thread at some point this week ever since I realized the story was coming up. You just gave me the perfect excuse to do so.