Warren Magazine Reading Club! 7 7

[Axe Elf]

Edited the above to add that the Monkees TV Show ran from September 12, 1966, to March 25, 1968.

We're in a magazine with a cover date of April, 1967, presumably released a month or so before that, presumably scripted/drawn a few weeks before that--and the Monkees were already a thing?  I guess they took America by storm that fall!

And did you know that Michael Nesmith's mother invented White-Out?

[Axe Elf]

EERIE #9 - May 1967

According to the Warren Magazine Index...

9. cover: Dan Adkins (May 1967)

1) Eerie’s Monster Gallery No. 8: The Cyclopses! [Archie Goodwin/Roy G. Krenkel] 1p [frontis]

2) Fair Exchange [Archie Goodwin/Neal Adams] 8p

3) Rub The Lamp! [Allan Jadro/Jerry Grandenetti] 8p

4) Terror In The Tomb! [Archie Goodwin/Rocco Mastroserio] 7p

5) The Wanderer! [Archie Goodwin/Dan Adkins] 8p

6) Isle Of The Beast! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 6p

7) An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge! [Archie Goodwin/Bob Jenney] 6p   from the story by Ambrose Bierce

8) Experiment In Fear! [Archie Goodwin/Gene Colan] 8p

Notes: Beneath a tame Adkins cover was some pretty good work.  Adams’ debut in Eerie had him experimenting with a different panel layout for every page.  Ditko presented a very good werewolf tale and Gene Colan’s tale of a Nazi concentration camp doctor’s terrifying end was nerve-wracking.  Some letter writers apparently had never heard of Ambrose Bierce and accused Goodwin of ripping off a Twilight Zone episode that had also adapted Bierce’s story.  Krenkel’s work on the Monster Gallery one-pager was particularly nice work.

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As we enter into the week of our first Halloween here in the Warren Magazine Reading Club, I find myself becoming as giddy as I felt when I was first buying them off the shelf as I look forward to each new issue.  And this one holds a lot of promise for our Halloween week...

MORE Neal Adams!  MORE Steve Ditko!  And I didn't realize this was a Dan Adkins cover until now, but it makes perfect sense.  It looks like they're giving him another shot at a post-apocalyptic landscape kind of a thing again--so that should be fun.

And then Colan and Grandenetti and Mastroserio filling in their own supporting roles--it's just all good at this point!

I'm actually familiar with the Ambrose Bierce story too; I read it in high school English.

[OtherEric]

I’m on vacation, away from my Warrens.  So no post from me until later in the week.

[Axe Elf]

On 10/30/2022 at 12:05 AM, OtherEric said:

So no post from me until later in the week.

Well, that's not exactly true now, is it...   ;)

Enjoy yourself!

[The Lions Den]

On 10/30/2022 at 1:05 AM, OtherEric said:

I’m on vacation, away from my Warrens.  So no post from me until later in the week.

[The Lions Den]

On 10/27/2022 at 9:50 PM, Axe Elf said:

We're in a magazine with a cover date of April, 1967, presumably released a month or so before that, presumably scripted/drawn a few weeks before that--and the Monkees were already a thing?  I guess they took America by storm that fall!

Hard to believe, but they did...

[Axe Elf]

I was hoping to get this done so that I could post in on Halloween, but that turned out to be too much of a trick, so the treat will have to be just beating @OtherEric to the review this week!

That was quite a detailed Monster Gallery piece by Krenkel!  I don't know if this is to scale, but I never imagined the Cyclopses to be THAT big.  Unfortunately all the detailing in the rocky shore and the sea seems to be causing some kind of a "hatching" interference pattern with the scan in my digital copy, so I'm not sure I'm experiencing it in all its intended glory.

I realize I'm kind of weird to engage with the Letters Page the way I do, but this month's was kind of disappointing--mainly because this issue went to print before they received any feedback on EERIE #8, so they just printed more letters commenting on EERIE #7--you know, the ones that weren't good enough to print the first time.  And it's obvious they were reaching to fill the space--a single one of the letters takes up a good third of the whole page itself!

"Fair Exchange" was a great entry point into this issue's main attractions (the stories), with the second feature drawn for Warren by Neal Adams.  It's just such a treat watching him subtly play with the panel layouts--and while some artists don't take on the task of drawing Uncle Creepy or Cousin Eerie for the intros and outros, Adams incorporated a half-page rendering of our favorite Cousin as the background for the opening splash page!  Brilliant!  And Goodwin also delivered a top-shelf -script that twisted into a vampire story that I didn't see coming.

Grandenetti, on the other hand, had his usual anatomical difficulties in rendering his version of Cousin Eerie to introduce "Rub the Lamp":

Ugh.  He's just one notch above Manny Stallman when it comes to faces.

Kind of a giggle at the main character shutting down the auction with his audacious bid of ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS!  I mean I know things were less expensive then, but it doesn't seem like a hundred bucks would be a shutdown bid for Aladdin's lamp even in the economy of the late 60s.  And then he just throws his hundred dollar lamp into the garbage in the alley when it doesn't work?  How come he kept a whole room at home full of lamps that didn't work, but then throws out the one he just paid $100 for??  And this one failed lamp is the final straw that makes him think he's been a fool all this time???  But then he gets his wish, and so he goes back to search through the alleys until he finds the lamp, and his next wish isn't granted in the first ten seconds (even though the first wish wasn't either) and he's ready to trash it again????  And then he's killed and the very next evening he's waking up as a vampire in a coffin in a mausoleum in a graveyard?????  And he didn't think that asking to be with his wife again meant that he would die??????

I'm kind of glad this wasn't a Goodwin -script; it's awfully strained even for fantasy.  Pretty stark contrast between this and the Adams/Goodwin piece that opened the issue.  So, can we have a story that DOESN'T involve vampires for a change?  Maybe a mummy or something?

I guess that wishing lamp really does work!

Again a sharp contrast in styles, as Mastroserio's precisely detailed work for "Terror in the Tomb" looks so much more realistic than Grandenetti's.

The proofreader in me has to smh at Goodwin getting big words like "archaeologists" and "hieroglyphics" right, and then misspelling "flourish" ("florish").

It happened again in "The Wanderer," when the main character realized he was not alone in his "wondering."  Maybe it should be "The Wonderer"--especially with how confusing the end was--there was a creature in the hospital hallway?  Or the doctor dreamed it because next he was regaining consciousness?  And the skeleton in the bed was the man who came back?  Or the creature the doc saw in the hallway replaced the returned guy with the skeleton of the guy he had replaced?  Wondering, indeed...

I was disappointed in my hope for another nice expansive post-apocalyptic landscape from Adkins in his land of the dead, but the minimalistic black and white landscape was kind of cool too.

But Goodwin isn't done for this issue.  He comes through with "personel problems" in "Isle of the Beast," although the story itself is a pretty good one.  I saw the ending coming once the "victim" said there was only one way it could end--and the "beast" mentioning the full moon that night.  And so we got a werewolf to complete the monster hat trick for this issue--vampires, mummies and werewolves.  As for the art, well, it's Ditko, but I didn't think this story particularly played to Ditko's strengths.  They can't all be masterpieces.  With the next story being an adaptation of an outside classic, it was interesting to see another outside classic, "The Most Dangerous Game," referenced in this one.

I first read Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" as a short story in a Scholastic Books compilation of eerie tales (it wasn't called that, but it's EERIE now) shortly before it was required reading in my high school English class--so it was particularly cringy to find proofreading errors like "take their weight of (off) this plank" and "I'll drowned (drown) down here" peppered throughout a literary classic.  I don't remember seeing any of Bob Jenney's artwork before, so if the story wasn't fresh for me, at least the artwork was.

"Experiment in Fear" was not immune to the typographical errors ("enquiring mind"), but it did a decent job of harnessing the historical real-life horror of the German concentration camps.

And so there were ups and downs in this issue--but more downs than ups.  I was obviously distracted by what seemed like an endless string of editorial/proofreading errors, a few of the plots were pretty weak, and I was possibly just anticipating too much from Ditko and Adkins, but they left me a little cold too.  The opening Adams piece was a highlight for me; the issue just seemed to go downhill quickly from there.  But the plays on literary classics like "The Most Dangerous Game" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" rescued the second half of the issue to some degree.

[Axe Elf]

On 10/27/2022 at 6:19 PM, Axe Elf said:

The first letter to "Dear Uncle Creepy" was fun; a nostalgic look back to the author's purchase of CREEPY #1 way back in 1964, and how he had followed every issue since then.  But the best part was listing his favorite magazines as CREEPY, EERIE, and Playboy, in that order. 

I don't usually like to talk about previous weeks' issues in the current issue's week, but it just occurred to me that James Warren was probably pretty pleased to have his magazines mentioned in the same breath as--but before--Playboy by this fan letter, given that his first publication, "After Hours," was kind of intended to a Playboy clone/competitor in the first place.

[OtherEric]

Eerie #9 thoughts:

Cover:  I'm trying to figure out why the cover doesn't work better than it does, given how most of the elements seem pretty good in isolation.  I've narrowed it down to two things.  1)  The logo cuts off the top of the mountain, so it's unclear if there's supposed to be something at the top of it.  There doesn't have to be, but it feels like either way we're missing something. 2)  That sweater, full stop.  Seriously?

Monster Gallery:  Krenkel is SO GOOD and I wish he had done more for Warren.

Fair Exchange:  A good story with good art, but I feel Adams is experimenting for experimentation's sake a fair bit here.  Interesting layouts, but I'm not sure they really serve the story that well in most cases.  Some, yes... as @Axe Elfpointed out, the splash is magnificent.  But overall this feels like Adams figuring out the tricks he will later use to great effect, but not yet using them particularly well.  In that sense, it's a early story that gives a fascinating glimpse into his development as an artist.  But it brings it down looking at the story on its own merits.

Rub the Lamp:  I've made my views on Grandenetti clear already, so let's see what I can find on Allan Jadro... Nothing.  I've got nothing on him.  They apparently wrote only this one story, and all references to them in a google search point back to this one issue.  I wonder if it's a pseudonym?

Terror in the Tomb:  We're back on track with this story by Mastroserio and Goodwin.  I've always been a sucker for Egypt and mummies ever since the King Tut treasures came around when I was a little boy, so this one is a delight.

The Wanderer:  The sweater works better in the story itself, I suppose.  But you could have taken artistic license on the cover, Dan...

Isle of the Beast:  I agree the story doesn't play so much to Ditko's obvious strengths. But I think Ditko was relishing the challenge and just drew the heck out of it anyway.  Great stuff.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge:  One of the all time classic stories, drawn quite well by Jenney. I wonder if he deliberately based the look of Peyton Farquhar on Ambrose Bierce?

Experiment in Fear:  Nicely done in terms of craft, but I'm not sure it clears the bar of being good enough to get away with referencing the Holocaust in comic form.  It's perfectly possible to do so and do so well... "Master Race" and "Maus" are, in very different ways, both on the short list of stories you could call the best comic story ever.  But I think you have to hit a spectacular level to make it work, and I'm not sure this one manages it.  What do others think?

Overall, I found this a relatively weak issue... but as I've said repeatedly, so much of this part of the run is so good that there's still a lot to like here.

 

[Axe Elf]

On 11/4/2022 at 12:50 AM, OtherEric said:

Overall, I found this a relatively weak issue... but as I've said repeatedly, so much of this part of the run is so good that there's still a lot to like here.

Glad you said that.  I feel kind of bad being so critical of some things sometimes, but it's all in context--there's nothing that makes me want to throw down the book and proclaim that it's garbage and I never want to read another issue.  It's just that when it's good, it's so damm good that I just wish it could ALL be that good, and even when there are flaws, there's still a lot to like.

On 11/4/2022 at 12:50 AM, OtherEric said:

let's see what I can find on Allan Jadro... Nothing.

Is there an "Alejandro" or something like that?  No clue other than that's what "Allan Jadro" sounds like to me.

[Axe Elf]

CREEPY #15 - June 1967

According to the Warren Magazine Index...

15. cover: Frank Frazetta (June 1967)

1) Thane: City Of Doom! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 8p

2) Adam Link, Champion Athlete! [Otto Binder/Joe Orlando] 7p   from the story by Binder

3) The Adventure Of The German Student! [Archie Goodwin/Jerry Grandenetti] 8p   from the story by Washington Irving

4) The River! [Johnny Craig] 6p

5) The Creepy Fan Club: Sink And Fade Swiftly [Archie Goodwin & Mike DeLong/Richard Morgan, Roger Hill, John Hall & Ron Lukas] 2p   [text article/story]

6) Creepy’s Loathsome Lore: Monsters Of Mythology! [Archie Goodwin/Gil Kane] 1p

7) The Terror Beyond Time! [Archie Goodwin/Neal Adams] 16p

Notes: Frazetta returned with one of his best covers, painted on plywood {actually, it looks like particle board} in six hours!  The price went up to 40 cents per issue.  Thane was a very irregular series about a Conan-like swordsman.  The character appeared only four times between 1967-1979 and was unique in that he never had the same artist twice, although Archie Goodwin was generally the writer.  Thane’s physical appearance was also quite different from story to story. The Adams/Goodwin story was the longest tale that Warren had published to date.  The best art & story, however, is the Goodwin/Grandenetti adaptation.  Some of Grandenetti’s best work.  Adam Link appeared for the last time, his series apparently a victim of the upcoming money crunch that would deal a near fatal blow to the Warren comics line.

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Only five stories this time?  Well, ok, if one of them is an adaptation from a classic author and another is a double-length Goodwin/Adams epic!

(Although the pedant in me must point out that the saga of Adam Link is probably the longest tale that Warren had published to date--but "The Terror Beyond Time" is the longest tale that Warren had published in a single issue to date.)

(Sorry.)

This is the Index's first allusion to the upcoming "Dark Age" of Warren, but @OtherEric has to be thrilled that Adam Link is its first casualty.  (The series was becoming a little tedious to me as well.)

I always wondered why people liked this cover so much--it seems so monotone and static compared to the richly-colored action sequences that comprise most of my Frazetta favorites--but in the context of the method and the six hour time frame, I can see why it deserves the respect it gets.

And we're one-tenth of the way through the CREEPY run (counting the Annuals)...

[OtherEric]

Creepy #15 thoughts:

Cover:  This was six hours work?  That's crazy.  Frazetta is known for having reworked and reworked many of his paintings, but as often as not I prefer the earliest version.  He was never satisfied and I think that worked against him in many cases.  Not his best Warren cover but definitely a classic nonetheless.

City of Doom:  Goodwin is definitely channeling Howard & Lovecraft in this one.  Ditko's art is excellent, as always, but not particularly standout among his Warren work.  I know I've read some of the other Thane stories but I don't remember them at the moment.  Still worthy of note as the first original non-host Warren continuing character, I believe.  It's worth noting that this predates Marvel's Conan by years... it's definitely riffing on the original Howard stories, but it's not borrowing from Marvel at all.

Adam Link, Champion Athlete: I suppose it's worth noting that Orlando does just fine art on the serial, and Binder is too skilled a professional to turn in something that's actually bad.  But I just can't bring myself to care.  At least this is the last appearance, although I seem to recall a later letter column claiming that it was going to continue.

The Adventure of the German Student: Goodwin turns in a good adaptation and Grandenetti draws the heck out of it.  I can absolutely see Grandentti's skill here... he's a extremely skilled artist doing things that I can absolutely appreciate on a craft level.  But I just don't like it personally.   As I've said before, the problem here is with me, not Grandenetti... I certainly won't argue with anybody (such as Richard Arndt) calling this the best story in the issue.

The River:  Craig turns in a magnificent story here.  The layout on the second page is brilliant, and while I can't call the twist a huge surprise it doesn't really matter... this is all about mood and it delivers.

Fan Club:  Roger Hill is a noted comic historian, I'm pretty sure this is the same one.  Does anybody know for sure?

Loathsome Lore:  Gil Kane!  It's a shame he only did a couple pages for Warren.  Another one of my all time favorite artists.

The Terror Beyond Time:  Adams cuts down on the tricks compared to his last story, and the ones he does use serve the story much better.  Lots of room to play and lots of fun images, with Goodwin providing a solid story to allow them.  Although the last page felt almost more out of time than the dinosaurs... who gives a cigarette to a man lying down and just now regaining consciousness?

Overall, a first rate issue from cover to cover... even the bits I ranked lower were quite well done, even if I didn't care as much for them.

[Axe Elf]

On 11/6/2022 at 12:05 AM, OtherEric said:

who gives a cigarette to a man lying down and just now regaining consciousness?

[Jayman]

On 11/6/2022 at 1:00 AM, Axe Elf said:

I always wondered why people liked this cover so much--it seems so monotone and static compared to the richly-colored action sequences that comprise most of my Frazetta favorites--but in the context of the method and the six hour time frame, I can see why it deserves the respect it gets.

I love this cover. When I visited the Frazetta museum back in the 80’s, Frank and Ellie were still alive. Ellie was giving the tour and as we got up to this cover, I asked what colors did Frank choose for that background? She proceeded to reminisce how Frank had multiple projects going on at the time and had to get this cover done for Warren that night. He had no more illustration board so he went down in their basement and ripped a sheet of Masonite off of the ceiling to paint on! The color and texture of the Masonite is what you see as the background of this piece. It’s a case of “where less is more” for me with this cover. The skill and beautiful detail done with one color on a makeshift canvas is breathtaking to me.

[FoggyNelson]

Thanks guys for a good read on Creepy number 15 issue👍‼️

[Axe Elf]

On 11/6/2022 at 7:27 AM, Jayman said:

I love this cover. When I visited the Frazetta museum back in the 80’s, Frank and Ellie were still alive. Ellie was giving the tour and as we got up to this cover, I asked what colors did Frank choose for that background? She proceeded to reminisce how Frank had multiple projects going on at the time and had to get this cover done for Warren that night. He had no more illustration board so he went down in their basement and ripped a sheet of Masonite off of the ceiling to paint on! The color and texture of the Masonite is what you see as the background of this piece. It’s a case of “where less is more” for me with this cover. The skill and beautiful detail done with one color on a makeshift canvas is breathtaking to me.

Great story!  Yeah, knowing more about the painting does make me appreciate it more.

So it sounds like even Frazetta shared my skill in procrastination...

[The Lions Den]

On 11/6/2022 at 12:12 PM, Axe Elf said:

Great story!  Yeah, knowing more about the painting does make me appreciate it more.

So it sounds like even Frazetta shared my skill in procrastination...

I like the way he always described his procrastination as "goofing off." And for me, this is a great cover because it's such a great story...  

[Jayman]

On 11/6/2022 at 7:39 PM, Mrs. Tux said:

Was this the one he dried in the oven or was that Creepy #32?

I was also lucky enough to visit the Frazetta Museum when both of them were alive 

The oils are so thin on the 15 so I don’t think so, but who knows? Never heard that before. 
Yeah, Ellie was sweet. When she heard we were art students, she proceeded to pull out some of Frank’s watercolors from drawers that were not on display to show us!

[Axe Elf]

Learning the backstory of the Cover of CREEPY #15 was already a highlight for me before I even started reading the issue.  I always thought it was kind of bland--but knowing the reasons for that made me appreciate it so much more.

This is one of the first times I haven't found anything that interested me among the Letters.  Seems like they're all either whining about something they didn't like, or wishing for more of something they did like, or both--but mostly just opinionated pontificating.  Meh.

Although I knew his name, the vast majority of Steve Ditko's work with which I am familiar comes from his work in these early Warren magazines.  So while "City of Doom" is definitely identifiable as Ditko's work, there's something about it that seems different this time--maybe a little greater realism?  He does get a little Escher-ish with the stairs and halls inside the living city, as he has with various cross-dimensional panels in previous stories, but the realistic action sequences kind of expand what I can expect from Ditko in the future.  Very nice work.  And the story is a solid piece of heroic fantasy that definitely recalls the Conan/Howard archetypes.

I'm probably not as happy as @OtherEric that "Adam Link, Champion Athlete" is the final installment of the series, although it was becoming a little tedious.  I'm just glad that it kinda sorta reached a stopping point at the end of this installment--with the Links being granted citizenship and acceptance from the world--rather than another cliffhanger like those that characterized most if not all of the previous chapters in the saga.  So at least it tied up the loose ends before ending.  Now if only Adam had created a robot Terry so they could all live happily ever after...

My digital copy has a really bad scan on some pages of "The Adventure of the German Student," so I had to get out the actual magazine to read this one.  Like I have noticed with other CREEPYs in this collection, it has a faint vinegary odor to it; not sure what that means, other than that it's old.

Getting past the bad scan, though, I really think this is some of Grandenetti's best work yet.  He can be kind of hit or miss for me, but this one is all hit--from the haunting spirits to the woman's hair that provides the frame for several panels, it all seemed great to me.

The ferryman device for "The River" could be seen coming a mile away, but it was still done well enough to function as kind of a pleasant little intermission between the Washington Irving classic and the epic Neal Adams vehicle that closes the issue.

The Fan Club was way more interesting than the letters in this issue.  I had never really considered that different artists might draw these pages in different original sizes.  I guess that would explain why some can seem a little more meticulously detailed than others; I'll have to try to consider that in evaluating the art going forward.  I could tell that Toth was one who did his own lettering; it wasn't as obvious with Craig.  The discussion of the various art styles was great too, though I wish I could have had examples in front of me, rather than trying to recall the stories that were referenced.

I wouldn't have recognized the name of Roger Hill as a comic historian, but I did recognize that he was from Wichita, KS--just a couple hours down I-35 from here!  I always get excited to see someone from Kansas in the letters/fan pages.

The Loathsome Lore on mythical monsters was good, though this is a topic that could probably have used more than one page.  I'd never heard of "Fafner" before.  The artist's name rings a bell, but I can't really place him--what should I know Gil Kane from?

And that brings us to the crown jewel, the 16 page epic "The Terror Beyond Time."  This may be the best story and best art of any Warren publication so far--not in small part due to the extra length giving the story much more room to breathe and develop rather than just rushing through the typical 6-7 page setup/climax/twist formula.  This tale had the space to go from one development to the next, all within a relatively consistent and logical plot (as logical as you can get with time travel and alternate dimensions, anyway).  It was more like reading a book than an article--with dinosaurs!

That "pterodactyl" looks large enough to be a pteranodon instead of a pterodactyl, but that's just quibbling.

So yeah, I think this issue is all the better for having only 5 stories this time around, with one epic tale from a soon-to-be master artist, an adaptation of a tale from an established master storyteller, and a couple of plays on traditional fantasy themes--the river Styx and the barbaric fantasy of Thane.  Even the Adam Link installment provides some satisfaction in its finality.  I won't say it's the best issue yet, but it's among the highly recommendable.

[OtherEric]

On 11/9/2022 at 4:52 PM, Axe Elf said:

 The artist's name rings a bell, but I can't really place him--what should I know Gil Kane from?

The obvious starting point is the Silver Age Green Lantern and Atom.  But that's just a starting point, he had noted (if sometimes brief) runs on tons of characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Kane