OtherEric

On 8/25/2024 at 3:25 PM, Jonathan78 said:

Don’t find these often- the last issues of Marvel Zorro. The Toth covers

Love the Toth covers, I've got all of his Zorro work in the Four Colors as well as these.

Or this classic accidental reuse of somebody else's cover... Seaboard rather than Skywald in this case:

Eerie #42 thoughts:

Let's deal with the errors in the index first:  It omits the story "The Lighthouse" from Eerie #3 between "Life Species" and "Ogre's Castle", and on every copy I've seen the back cover is a reprint of the Eerie #2 cover, not the story from the Skywald Nightmare #9.  I suspect the indexer, who says this is their first Warren purchase, is going off a beat up copy that somehow had the wrong cover taped onto the back.  I would love to be proven wrong, though, and find out there really are two versions of the issue.

Cover: It's not the classic the #41 was, but it's very nice piece by Dominguez.

Contents:  Not a lot to say, honestly.  The indexer isn't wrong when they describe it as a pretty great issue, with lots of excellent material.  But half a dozen of the stories are getting second reprintings, although admittedly some of those were in Creepy, not Eerie.

Overall, my reaction is this is similar to the Creepy last week, not a lot for those of us who have been reading the series from the start.  But the new cover and story selection does make this one more fun to flip through as a trip down memory lane than the Creepy was.

On 8/24/2024 at 2:04 PM, Raze said:

I had the chance (and still do) to buy a Crypt of terror annual 3 for $300. The grade is .5 because of the lower right corner is missing.

It has Hof 13, TftC 45, SSS 5 and VoH 27.

I own all of these books and Im on the fence about buying it just for the cover.

Any thoughts?

Depends on how much of the corner is missing.  But given the demand for the annuals in general I would probably jump on it.  Then again, the only issue I've got of the 4 is the Shock 5

In today, pretty quick delivery compared to some of the other variants.  Still waiting on the Hack variant to ship.

Chandler to Chandler

And the flip side:

I thought the second issue of Epitaphs was slightly better than #1, but not nearly as good as Cruel Universe #1.  Still love the tribute covers:

Gold Medal to Gold Medal

@Jayman: Thank you for your review of the Creepy #48.  I think we actually came to roughly the same overall review, but from opposite ends... good for newer readers, not much for long term.

And The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith.  This gives me nine of the thirteen CAS books Arkham did, and here I will stop for a while.  Out of Space and Time, while not absolutely out of my price range, is definitely at the edge of it... and if I want a copy with a dust jacket, I'm probably going for Beyond the Wall of Sleep first instead.  I should pick up the Neville Spearman reprint at some point soon as a place holder, though.  The Dark Chateau and Spells & Philters are both more than I really want to pay, and I've got a majority of that material in Selected Poems or The Black Book.  And A Rendezvous in Averoinge would be easy enough to get, but I've got almost all the material in the books I do have at this point.

Movie tie-in to movie tie-in

Lovecraft to Lovecraft's last previously unpublished story.  It's not the cover story, which is just Derleth adding a couple lines of Lovecraft to his own work, but this has the first publication of "Old Bugs" and some juvenalia. 

And the flip side

Thank you for the report, now that I can see it!

I know you didn't ask, but for a reference point:  I paid about $530 for this copy of Skull-Face and others a few months ago, which isn't nearly as nice as the one in your report:

One addition and one upgrade:  The Comics Teach is new, the Quincy is an upgrade I wouldn't have bothered with if it wasn't part of the lot with the Comics Teach but is a nice upgrade because my previous copy was kinda trashed.

343 to 344

Creepy #48 thoughts:

Cover:  Not impressed at all.  The lack of a Uncle Creepy figure, unlike the other covers, makes this one far less interesting.  I think only one of the sixteen issues has a story reprinted in the issue.  And it has not one but two of the covers that were borrowed from Famous Monsters.  Very half hearted work here.

Intro:  Meh.

Coffin of Dracula:  This is a relevant reprint given that they're following the story up in concurrent issues of Vampirella.  I'll even give them a pass on reprinting the 2nd part a third time since it's the first reprint of part 1.  Solid choice with a good reason to reprint it.

The rest of the issue:  Decent selections, but other than "The Cosmic All", they're all from the Goodwin era, and three of them (3 1/2, if you include Coffin of Dracula) are getting their second reprinting.  Which isn't necessarily a totally bad thing several years after the first printing, but I would do that more where there's a theme for the issue... and this one really doesn't have a theme.

Overall, this is probably a decent collection for anybody not particularly familiar with the series... but it has almost nothing to offer a long term reader.  The annuals will improve considerably, with reprints of either entire storylines or Artist spotlights, but for a long term fan this one is here so you don't get annoyed at a gap in the numbering between 47 and 49.

Creepy #48- October 1972

cover: montage/back cover: Jack Davis  front cover reprints 12 covers from different eras of Creepy while the back cover is reprinted from Creepy #1 (Jan. 1965)

                1) What Can You Say About An Eight-Year Old Creepy? [J. R. Cochran] 1p   [text article, frontis]

                2) The Coffin Of Dracula [Archie Goodwin/Reed Crandall] 16p   reprinted from Creepy #8 & 9  (Apr. & June 1966)   [2 pages edited out from the second part]

                3) The Castle On The Moor! [Johnny Craig] 6p   reprinted from Creepy #9 (June 1966)

                4) Moon City! [Larry Englehart/Al McWilliams] 6p   reprinted from Creepy #4 (Aug. 1965)

                5) Swamped! [Archie Goodwin/Angelo Torres] 8p   reprinted from Creepy #3 (June 1965)

                6) Thumbs Down [Anne T. Murphy/Al Williamson] 6p   reprinted from Creepy #6 (Dec. 1965)

                7) The Cosmic All [Wally Wood] 8p   reprinted from Creepy #38 (Mar. 1971)

                8) Drink Deep! [Otto Binder/John Severin] 7p   reprinted from Creepy #7 (Feb. 1966)

                9) The Adventure Of The German Student! [Archie Goodwin/Jerry Grandenetti] 8p  reprinted from Creepy #15 (June 1967)

Notes: The Creepy Annual now becomes part of the regular numbering. 

__________________________________________

So, we continue our slow end of summer as the Annuals continue.  I'm not sure why we don't have Uncle Creepy posing in front of the covers like Vampi did and Cousin Eerie will do on the Annual next year.  The similarly designed Famous Monsters with Captain Marvel is also 1973, not 1972, which is surprising... maybe they were afraid people would confuse the issues with the similar covers, but then why do it in the first place?

I recall somebody posting a version of this they had modified to add Uncle Creepy to the cover, I really wish they had done that with this issue.

Big Heat to Big Sleep.

(Take your pick of cover)