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Warren Magazine Reading Club!
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952 posts in this topic

So as I mentioned, this week I actually read my physical undercopy of EERIE #5.  As I also mentioned, it has so much bending and warping that I thought the "curtain" effect on the cover was the result of water damage at first.  There's no real water staining of any kind, though; but it does seem as though it got moist or at least humid and was kinked in several places.

Surprisingly, the "cover" of my digital copy does not seem to have that "curtain" effect, so now I don't know what to think:

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So the pages of my undercopy weren't as smooth and supple as those I enjoyed in CREEPY #10, but the thing that did occur to me in reading the physical copy was that the art seemed so much more striking.  I don't know if that's because of the digital transfers being inferior, or if the art in this issue is just really good--or even if it's only a function of being able to see the whole page at once--but there were a lot of splash pages and detailed panoramas that just made me sit back and go "Wow."

And for the most part, the scripts were above average as well, for an overall very enjoyable Warren experience (except maybe for the warped pages)!

EERIE's Monster Gallery was very cool, with the bullet coming through the mummy and all--and of course that led right in to "The Mummy Stalks."  I wasn't really expecting a WEREWOLF mummy!  Good twist!

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Not sure about the credibility of an old man beating a MummyWolf to death with a silver-tipped cane, but I'll let it slide.

"The Jungle" was fun, and reminded me of the song "Swamp Witch" by Jim Stafford.

"Black Magic" is probably my favorite Ditko piece yet, and the story is as tight as the art.

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"A Matter of Routine" seemed like it could have been made into an episode of "The Twilight Zone."  That moment when he first opens his front door and it leads to the Land of the Dead would have worked well on television.

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"Dr. Griswold's File" is another tightly woven tale with a credible twist.  Really all of the stories in this issue are hard to criticize, they're all so well told--which stands in contrast to some of the larger plot holes that Goodwin has dug himself into in the past.  (Yes, I realize Goodwin didn't write THIS one, but by this point I'm realizing how well-written all of the stories are.)

I was a dinosaur buff as a kid, so "Swamp God" is probably my favorite story in this issue.  Since dinosaurs are my thing it could have just as easily failed me miserably with a bad plot or sloppy art, but like the rest of the issue, the dinosaur story is both well written and well drawn too!

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And even the tired ol' vampire tale was given a rejuvenating twin twist in "Vampire Slayer."

So there really wasn't a weak story in the issue, for me--and that's probably a first.  Maybe my favorite issue so far!

Or maybe it was just the warm fuzzies engendered by reading the physical copy...  I have an extra EERIE #6 as well, so I'll have to give it another shot in a couple of weeks to test the theory.

Oh yeah, letters and ads...

Wasn't much of note on the letters page this issue; mostly just fan-gushing about how EERIE is the greatest magazine of the century and such.

I think this issue is the first time I remember seeing the three Warren "Famous Films" magazines advertised--Horror of Party Beach, Curse of Frankenstein/Horror of Dracula, and Mole People.  And it seems odd that they're still advertising for subscriptions to Blazing Combat even in this issue.  Coming up on a theoretical release date for #5, surely they knew by now that there wouldn't be one...?

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CREEPY #11 - October 1966

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According to the Warren Magazine Index...

11. coverFrank Frazetta (Oct. 1966)

1) Creepy’s Loathsome Lore: Rochester Rappings! [Ron Parker/John Severin] 1p   [frontis]

2) Hop-Frog [Archie Goodwin/Reed Crandall] 8p   from the story by Edgar Allan Poe

3) Sore Spot [Archie Goodwin/Joe Orlando] 7p

4) The Doorway! [Archie Goodwin/Dan Adkins] 6p

5) The Black Death! [Ron Parker/Manny Stallman] 8p

6) Beast Man! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 8p

7) The Devil To Pay! [Archie Goodwin/Donald Norman] 6p

8) Skeleton Crew! [Archie Goodwin/Angelo Torres] 7p

Notes: Nice giant ape cover by Frazetta.  The issue’s highpoint was the moody and effective ‘Hop-Frog’.  Probably the best Poe adaptation Goodwin & Crandall did.  Solid art and stories throughout the issue.

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Not much info from the Index above, but it looks like the highlight will be the Poe adaptation.  I'm not familiar with the original story, so it shouldn't bother me if Archie tacks his own "extended" ending onto it like he has done in the past.  :)

It does look like a unique range of artistic talents this time though--some familiar names and some that are less familiar to me.  We can start the outstanding art with the front cover's brilliantly colored Frazetta painting.  I'm happy to have a pretty nice copy of this issue for the cover art alone, if nothing else.

Looking forward to reading it!

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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:

 

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King Kong 1.jpg

King Kong 2.jpg

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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.

Edited by OtherEric
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On 9/11/2022 at 2:28 AM, OtherEric said:

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.

I'm not sure what became of Ron Parker, but I once purchased some EC type fanzines and original Archie Goodwin artwork from him. Archie was known for doing rough sketches for many of his stories, and his artwork reminded me a lot of Harvey Kurtzman's. Really interesting stuff, and I wish I still owned it...  :(

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On 9/12/2022 at 6:37 PM, The Lions Den said:

I'm not sure what became of Ron Parker, but I once purchased some EC type fanzines and original Archie Goodwin artwork from him. Archie was known for doing rough sketches for many of his stories, and his artwork reminded me a lot of Harvey Kurtzman's. Really interesting stuff, and I wish I still owned it...  :(

Goodwin’s “Sinner” from Witzend #1 is a small classic that he wrote and drew.  It’s a shame he didn’t draw more stories.

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On 9/12/2022 at 9:46 PM, OtherEric said:

Goodwin’s “Sinner” from Witzend #1 is a small classic that he wrote and drew.  It’s a shame he didn’t draw more stories.

I wholeheartedly agree. 

But it certainly gives us insight into the scope of talent at Warren publishing...  (worship)

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Well, CREEPY #11 was no CREEPY #10.  Most of the stories had plot holes the size of Transylvania, and some of the art was just plain weird.  In one sense, though CREEPY #11 was just like CREEPY #10, in that it contained at least one giant error (reflected in the first letter on the letters page--the mixup of the page order in the "Monster" story of #10).

So I was reading "The Doorway" and about the time it gets to the point of the hero shooting at the "demon" and going "IT'S NOT STOPPING! IT'S NOT STOPPING!" that I was like, "Hey, this is the cover of CREEPY #28!"

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Sure enough, "The Doorway" is reprinted as the last story in CREEPY #28, inspiring the cover illustration by Vic Prezio!

Funny, though, I didn't remember seeing "The Doorway" when I read the Index page, so I went back and looked... and it's not listed!  They have a story called "Trial By Fire" listed on Page 20 instead!

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As a result, they don't have Dan Adkins (artist for "The Doorway") listed among the artists in this issue!  Parenthetically, this is the first time I recall seeing an "Assistant to the Publisher" (Richard Conway) listed on the Index page, but I may have just missed that previously.

So yeah, kind of a big error.  I'm surprised nothing was said about it in the Warren Magazine Index, although the Index does have the correct story/artist listed there.

And I did kind of laugh when reading the "scientist"s screed on how science can only take you so far, he thought it was best to go with magic and superstition instead.  As if any real scientist would think that way.

"Hop-Frog" was probably the strongest story, but that's not really surprising, since it was written by the master Edgar Allen Poe.  Not being familiar with the original, I don't know how faithful the adaptation is, but I believe this is the second Poe piece for which Reed Crandall did the art ("Cask of Amontillado"?), and I think his style suits the tone of Poe's writing very well.

Interesting that the last execution by guillotine was as late as 1977!  Nice piece of research by @OtherEric.  "Sore Spot" was otherwise kind of a silly twist on the "wronged dead return for revenge" theme; why didn't he shoot the OTHER head?  Or at least seek medical attention...

"Black Death" has to be one of the lowlights of not only this issue, but of the CREEPY title to date.  The art was mostly ugly and well, just poor...  look at these two here...

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Looks like Zippy the Pinhead and Fat Albert.  And then later...

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Just looks lazy and sloppy.  And as for the story, these guys sell treasures infected with the Black Death to a Count, and the very next day, they are picking up his "rotting corpse" and discovering the lengths to which the Count has gone to prevent them from stealing his treasure and take his revenge--all in one day???  C'mon, man...

I guess "Beast Man" is a pretty tight psychological thriller, and I would probably call it the best overall piece outside of the Poe story.  I truly don't know what @OtherEric meant when he said he was "in the tank" for the Ditko/Goodwin pieces, but I'm assuming it's a good thing, as this is a pretty strong story well-drawn by Ditko.

Is it just me, or do a lot of Ditko's villains bear some resemblance to Stan Lee?

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I agree with what @OtherEric said about the art in "The Devil to Pay"--it does look very much like a woodcutting, which kind of adds to the medieval feel to the tale.  I kind of liked it.

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But if Satan is too busy to be bothered with a run-of-the-mill soul deal, why does he have the time to be loitering for a drink or two in the local tavern?  Kinda funny that Satan fell for the old date-rape trick, though...

The twist in "Skeleton Crew" was that it wasn't dependent on the supernatural--it could have been an episode of Jonny Quest or something.  But seriously, how did the natives get a billion warrior ants inside the coffin without being noticed, when the coffin was ostensibly being guarded so carefully?  They had only been at sea a short while, so there wasn't time for a few ants and a queen to have established a new colony yet or something, so the natives would have had to dump that whole mass of ants into the coffin before it was loaded onto the ship!

Almost forgot the "Loathsome Lore." I was kind of surprised that John Severin was the artist when I saw the credits; it didn't look as familiar to me as some of his other art.  Not bad... just... different.

No Fan Club this time...  and they're STILL advertising Blazing Combat!

They can't all be gems, I suppose.

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On 9/14/2022 at 5:05 PM, Axe Elf said:

"Black Death" has to be one of the lowlights of not only this issue, but of the CREEPY title to date.  The art was mostly ugly and well, just poor...  look at these two here...

Just looks lazy and sloppy.  And as for the story, these guys sell treasures infected with the Black Death to a Count, and the very next day, they are picking up his "rotting corpse" and discovering the lengths to which the Count has gone to prevent them from stealing his treasure and take his revenge--all in one day???  C'mon, man...

 

I guess "Beast Man" is a pretty tight psychological thriller, and I would probably call it the best overall piece outside of the Poe story.  I truly don't know what @OtherEric meant when he said he was "in the tank" for the Ditko/Goodwin pieces, but I'm assuming it's a good thing, as this is a pretty strong story well-drawn by Ditko.

 

To comment on these two points, at least.

I agree that Stallman's art looks pretty bad to me.  But here's a link to an obituary, where Mark Evanier and Gil Kane have some good words to say about his work:

https://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col146/

I firmly agree with what it says about Stallman's art for the Tower Comics line on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Undersea Agent growing on me, so I'm willing to grant that I'm possibly missing something here as well.  And Stallman had far too long and successful a career to be described as lazy and sloppy... you can survive a long time in comics as one or the other, but you don't work for decades if you're both.

With all that said, my initial reaction was similar to yours: it's a lowlight of the issue, at least to me.

On the other end, "In the tank" is a phrase that has shifted quite a bit over the years.  It initially meant throwing some sort of contest, but has evolved to mean uncritically supportive of someone or something.  I was trying to convey that I enjoy all the Ditko/ Goodwin pieces so much that I find it difficult to be properly critical about them... when you start something assuming it's a masterpiece, it's much more likely that you'll end feeling that as well.  I'm more willing to overlook the flaws and rank the good points higher than I might otherwise be if I was coming to the story cold.

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On 9/15/2022 at 1:02 AM, OtherEric said:

On the other end, "In the tank" is a phrase that has shifted quite a bit over the years.  It initially meant throwing some sort of contest, but has evolved to mean uncritically supportive of someone or something.  I was trying to convey that I enjoy all the Ditko/ Goodwin pieces so much that I find it difficult to be properly critical about them... when you start something assuming it's a masterpiece, it's much more likely that you'll end feeling that as well.  I'm more willing to overlook the flaws and rank the good points higher than I might otherwise be if I was coming to the story cold.

Appreciate the explanation; I thought you had generally enjoyed his work in the past, so I assumed it was positive, but I wasn't familiar with that usage.

As a poker player, being "in the tank" means having a hard time coming to a decision, or thinking about a decision for an extraordinarily long time--but it didn't seem like you were having a hard time deciding.  :)

 

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On 9/14/2022 at 8:05 PM, Axe Elf said:

Sure enough, "The Doorway" is reprinted as the last story in CREEPY #28, inspiring the cover illustration by Vic Prezio!

Funny, though, I didn't remember seeing "The Doorway" when I read the Index page, so I went back and looked... and it's not listed!  They have a story called "Trial By Fire" listed on Page 20 instead!

Nice detective work!  

On 9/14/2022 at 8:05 PM, Axe Elf said:

Is it just me, or do a lot of Ditko's villains bear some resemblance to Stan Lee?

Well, he didn't seem to like Stan too much, did he? hm

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On 9/14/2022 at 8:05 PM, Axe Elf said:

"Hop-Frog" was probably the strongest story, but that's not really surprising, since it was written by the master Edgar Allen Poe.  Not being familiar with the original, I don't know how faithful the adaptation is, but I believe this is the second Poe piece for which Reed Crandall did the art ("Cask of Amontillado"?), and I think his style suits the tone of Poe's writing very well.

Is there an EAP adaptation in Creepy #3 as well?   hm

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On 9/15/2022 at 6:07 PM, The Lions Den said:

Is there an EAP adaptation in Creepy #3 as well?   hm

So third Poe piece for which Reed Crandall did the art.  :)

I remembered the Cask of Amontillado because it had Crandall rats in it.  <3

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Tuthill told POP!, “I know it wasn’t over $25 bucks because I wouldn’t have bought it if it was. I remember I saved up the money to buy it, and I had it delivered to a friend’s house that lived around the block from me. He called me up when it was delivered, and there was actually postage due upon delivery, which I expected. It was less than ten bucks. I was 15 years old. When he called, I rode over on my bike. It came in this little cardboard box. I mean, I’m saying small. It was probably the size of a shoebox, except it was higher. It had a little chicken wire screen window in it. There was a cut out. All you could see if you looked in there was his face. I brought it home, and I actually snuck it into the basement of the house. We had a basement entrance door, a regular opening door that opened onto the stairs going to the basement, and I snuck it down. I remember distinctly my father had his brother and his wife over, and they were entertaining upstairs. And I snuck it in, and my friend came along, because he was curious to see what this thing looked like. Now, the basement in my parents’ house was separated by, half of it was finished off, and the other half — ‘finished off’ being paneled walls and a drop ceiling — and the other half, where the furnace was, was untouched, basically, so you had all the plumbing up above on the ceiling. Now, when I was a kid, I had a menagerie of animals. That’s why I actually had Dutch toy rabbits and gerbils and all that stuff. I had the rabbit down in the basement, so I brought the monkey down to the basement and I put him into a cage, a rabbit hutch, basically, that opened from the top. I put the whole box inside the cage and then opened the box up. He jumped out. Now, instead of having a collar, because you’d strangle it, it had a belt. It basically had a collar around its waist.”

Tuthill continued, “No instructions [were included]. He had this waist belt on, a collar, if you will, on his waist, with an unattached leash inside the box. So I opened the box up inside the cage, the monkey jumped out, I withdrew the box and found the leash. I have no idea where it came from; I assumed it came from Florida. I figured, well, it’s probably near dehydration, so I opened up the cage to put some water in it. It leapt out of the cage when I opened it up the second time! I mean, it was eyeing the pipes that I was unaware of. As soon as I opened the cage, it leapt up and grabbed onto the plumbing up on the ceiling and started using them like monkey bars, and he was just shooting along in the basement, chirping pretty loud. It was heading towards the finished side of the basement, where there was a drop ceiling, and if it got into those channels, I never would have got it. It would have been days to get this thing out of there. I grabbed it by its tail, and it came down on, starting literally up by my shoulder, like a drill press it landed on my arm, and every bite was breaking flesh. It was literally like an unsewing machine. It was literally unsewing my arm coming down, and I was pouring blood. I grabbed it by its neck with both my wrists, threw it back in the cage. It’s screaming like a scalded cat. I’m pouring blood. My friend’s laughing uncontrollably, and my father finally comes in the basement door and goes, ‘Jeffery! What are you doing to that rabbit?’ And I go, ‘It’s not a rabbit, it’s a monkey, and it just bit the hell out of me.’ ‘A monkey? Bring it up here!’ I’m pouring, I wrapped a t-shirt around my arm to stave off the bleeding, carried the cage upstairs, and I don’t know why I bothered sneaking it in, because they fell in love with it, and it was like, there was no problem at all. They took me to the emergency room and I got 28 stitches on my arm.” The young comic reader learned the hard way to never grab a monkey by the tail.

Instead of developing any animosity against the monkey, the animal enthusiast Tuthill grew to embrace his new pet by reading up on the breed and teaching it, even though it took two months just to have him stop biting him. The monkey was named Chipper. Quickly Jeff learned that his monkey didn’t like bananas, but preferred eating peanuts and seedless white grapes. The boy also devoted an entire summer to training the primate to stay in the backyard in his Long Island home, where the small ape enjoyed swinging from the maple trees, hunting birds and rounding up insects into the night. If the pet ever drifted off from the backyard, it could be pried back with some food and a crab net. For young Jeff, the worst case scenario were if the primate wandered off the property and found some intermingling branches, because “it could go from tree to tree, and it could even leap from one branch in one tree to another branch in another tree, as long as it wasn’t too far apart.”

Tuthill said, “One of the reasons I trained it to fend for itself outside is because they’re very prone to getting rickets because their protein intake is so high. If they can’t get insects on their own, then you have to feed them mealworms. I remember when I was a kid there were some pet stores in department stores that sold mealworms. But then those were hit and miss. And I was doing mail-order mealworms. It was ridiculous. So I trained the animal to stay out on its own. That’s why I trained it to stay outside, so it could get its own protein.”

For all the trouble that this monkey may have been, it was a very affectionate animal towards Jeff and his family. Occasionally, the foot-tall pet would let himself out of the cage at night, and nuzzle up beside his owner in the middle of the night. It was also capable of riding on the back of the family’s Sheltie collie like a horse. Although the dog didn’t enjoy it, he learned to deal with Chipper. In time, the monkey became like a sidekick to his teenage owner, traveling with him in outdoor activities. Having trained him to stay on command, Jeff could even take him on his leash when he was hanging out with his friends. The majority of the time, Chipper seemingly enjoyed just climbing on the shoulders of the lad.

After the monkey intimidated a local veterinarian, Jeff ended up taking his pet to the Bronx Zoo for check-ups and treatments. At the zoo there were specialized cages that would allow a zoo veterinarian to inspect or inject the simian without any incident. This was a pet that embraced being free. It didn’t particularly enjoy being corned or enclosed. It was also an animal that didn’t enjoy having jumpy or agitated people around it since those types of actions would make it feel threatened.

Tuthill acquainted, “Training it to stay outside was really neat, and what was amazing to me was, there are high voltage wires going across, so he would actually crisscross. Some mornings, I’m not kidding, I’d find him in trees on the opposite side of the street from my house. So I don’t know how the heck he got over there. I assume crossing the wires, like I’ve seen squirrels doing, but how he didn’t get electrocuted is beyond me. I can understand the urge of being able to just keep going from branch to branch to branch. I mean, if you try and think like a monkey for a minute. I could understand him wanting to just endlessly go. But, yeah, it was such a relief to be able to do that, when I knew I couldn’t take the monkey with me, I’d let him out and know he’d be there when I came home.”

Sadly, this squirrel monkey didn’t live past the summer of his fifth year as a pet. About Chipper’s last day, Jeff recalled, “I came home one afternoon. It was just around summer, I was 18 years old, and I came home. It was actually the summer before I went to college, and I came home and brought the monkey in, and it came onto the porch when I called it. Its chest was swollen up like a balloon, and the only thing I could think of was that it ate a wasp, and didn’t bother chewing it up, and got stung internally. I mean, I wasn’t sure. That was what I assumed, because I had no other reasoning why its chest would be swollen out like that. I was calling the Bronx Zoo vet to get an appointment, and before I could finish with the phone call, it died.”

LINK

 

In 2014, Tim Tate told NPR about how he and his brother Tom sent away for a comic book monkey in the mid-1960s. The animal arrived just as their mother’s bridge club was getting underway; Tate unboxed the monkey, which had been waiting to defecate while en route to its new home. It proceeded to jump out, poop everywhere, and then leap upon several members of the bridge club.

As the Tates rushed to contain the monkey—which they named Pepe—inside a crib, they were horrified to see their aunt reach her arm in between the bars of the bed, in an attempt to soothe the animal's nerves.

“But where an arm can go in, a monkey can come out,” Tate said. “And out comes Pepe. And a monkey who believes he's about to go to the next beyond in panic jumps out—and to escape, bites the first thing in front of his eyes. And what is that? That is my aunt's pendulous breast.”

Pepe fled the scene, only to be found dead months later in a nearby forest. The Tates gave him a funeral procession in the box he was shipped in. Years later, their mother admitted the monkey had been spotted repeatedly in the neighborhood, but she hid any newspaper reports of the sightings from her sons. She didn’t want the monkey back in the house."

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Edited by Axe Elf
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EERIE #6 - November 1966

1081425897_EERIE6F.thumb.jpg.000ea2e8eb7ef4754c0951b82423a1fa.jpg

According to the Warren Magazine Index...

6. cover: Gray Morrow (Nov. 1966)

1) Eerie’s Monster Gallery No. 5: The Man-Made Monster! [Archie Goodwin/John Severin] 1p [frontis]

2) Cave Of The Druids [Archie Goodwin/Reed Crandall] 8p

3) Deep Ruby! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 6p

4) Running Scared! [Archie Goodwin/Mark Ricton] 8p

5) The Curse Of Kali! [Archie Goodwin/Angelo Torres] 7p

6) Trial By Fire! [Johnny Craig] 6p   [art & story credited by Jay Taycee]

7) Point Of View! [Archie Goodwin/Rocco Mastroserio] 6p

8) The Changeling! [Archie Goodwin/Gene Colan] 8p

Notes: Striking cover by Morrow for the interior ‘Cave Of The Druids’ story.  That story also featured strong artwork by Reed Crandall.  Torres’ artwork was in the same style of the story in the previous issue.  ‘Druids’ and ‘Deep Ruby’ were the best stories.  An average issue for this period, which means it was pretty damn good!

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This is my only EERIE that I think would grade out in the 9s.  It was advertised on daBay as a "warehouse find," but wherever it came from, it's in pretty good shape for the $16 I paid for it.  And buying the "warehouse find" copy made my undercopy expendable, so this will be another issue I will be enjoying in the rotting, decaying flesh, so to speak!

This must be the "Trial By Fire" story that was erroneously listed in CREEPY #11 in place of "The Doorway."  It makes sense because Jay Taycee was credited among the artists on the title page of CREEPY #11, but he does not actually appear in the issue.

Do you suppose the Cave of the Druids contains any Crandall rats?  I'll be on the lookout...

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Eerie #6 thoughts:

Cover:  I really like Morrow's work here, but I think it might have been a bit more effective if they had cropped the image a bit.  There's a lot of relatively dead space betwen the Eerie and the figures, and on the sides of the image.  You could still get the scale if the upper part of the portal (or whatever it is) was behind the title.

Eerie's Monster Gallery:  Nice work by Severin overall, undercut by the fact the monster seems to be looking UP, and therefore not actually looking at what he's attacking.

Cave of the Druids:  Crandall does some beautiful work on a story that is more straightforward fantasy than conventional horror.  It's good to see Goodwin mixing up what the magazines can do; although Eerie arguably goes too far away from horror by the end of its run for a lot of people's taste.

Deep Ruby:  Magnificent Ditko weirdness, dropping to a notionally more normal final page that just sells the horror of the tale.

Running Scared:  Mark Ricton is actually Sam Citron, doing his only story for Warren.  He apparently started out as one of Joe Shuster's ghosts on Superman and worked all over the place.  The art suits the story well, but I don't think it's one of Goodwin's better stories... the explanation on the next to last page doesn't explain what we've seen, and the last page feels tacked on.  I can sort of get that the last page is trying to explain why the next to last page didn't quite track, but it overall doesn't come together for me.

The Curse of Kali:  A very nice Torres/ Goodwin piece, you can just feel the heat of the sun pouring off the splash page.

Trial by Fire:  A solid story by Johnny Craig as "Jay Taycee", but the art feels a little rough compared to his usual stuff, and I'm not sure if it's a deliberate style choice or just a looming deadline.

Point of View:  A decent mash up of Frankenstein and the ever-popular insane asylum stories.  I think Mastroserio is second only to Morrow in "artists who have risen in my assessment" since I started the reading club.

The Changeling:  I think Colan was trying something different with the art here as well, the inking seems very think and heavy.  I appreciate the experimentation but it's not really working for me here.

Another solid issue but nothing to really make it stand out above the crowd for this run... although, as the Warren Index observes, an average issue is pretty good right

Eerie_006.jpg

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On 9/18/2022 at 12:33 AM, OtherEric said:

Cover:  I really like Morrow's work here, but I think it might have been a bit more effective if they had cropped the image a bit.  There's a lot of relatively dead space betwen the Eerie and the figures, and on the sides of the image.  You could still get the scale if the upper part of the portal (or whatever it is) was behind the title.

Good point.  I haven't read the story yet, so I can't speak to what might be the key elements that the cover should retain, but I agree that the title could be in front of the top of the portal. If it was zoomed in a little, it might lose the side pillars and not feel quite so claustrophobic, but I don't know if that's important or not.

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On 9/18/2022 at 1:33 AM, OtherEric said:

Cover:  I really like Morrow's work here, but I think it might have been a bit more effective if they had cropped the image a bit.  There's a lot of relatively dead space betwen the Eerie and the figures, and on the sides of the image.  You could still get the scale if the upper part of the portal (or whatever it is) was behind the title.

I totally agree here. When I was a kid looking at those tiny black and white back issue pics, this cover never really spke to me as i couldn't tell what was on the cover. here's my quick photoshop hack of what I'd would have liked it to look! :nyah:

 

EERIE6.jpg

Edited by Jayman
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On 9/18/2022 at 5:55 PM, Jayman said:

I totally agree here. When I was a kid looking at those tiny black and white back issue pics, this cover never really spke to me as i couldn't tell what was on the cover. here's my quick photoshop hack of what I'd would have liked it to look! :nyah:

EERIE6.jpg

That's pretty impressive for a quick hack! I particularly like the care you took to make sure the signature was still visible and not obstructed by the banner at the bottom.

And we're clearly on the same page, because that's pretty much exactly how I envisioned it!

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On 9/18/2022 at 9:00 PM, OtherEric said:

That's pretty impressive for a quick hack! I particularly like the care you took to make sure the signature was still visible and not obstructed by the banner at the bottom.

And we're clearly on the same page, because that's pretty much exactly how I envisioned it!

Thanks, I did want to keep Morrow’s sig showing and wanted her hand under the apex under the R.

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