You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better subject for a theme issue than Neal Adams, who contributed so much great work for Warren over the years. It's sad that Warren in its final days couldn't afford to have Neal do a new cover, and used one by Richard Corben instead. Not that Corben is some slouch; but like the previous all-Toth issue that sported a Rudy Nebres cover, it hardly helps sell the contents inside.Oh, but once you open the issue, you're treated to some of Warren's finest work, drawn by arguably the greatest comic book artist of the seventies:
"Curse of the Vampire!" written by Archie Goodwin, with Neal doing some really nice wash work
"The Terror Beyond Time!", written by Goodwin and featuring Neal's representation of evil itself!
"Goddess from the Sea" written by Don Glut and reproduced entirely by Neal's pencils.
"Thrillkill" written by Jim Stenstrum--TwoMorrows's The Warren Companion just might be right; this could be the single best story Warren ever published. Neal's execution of the way-to-true-to-real-life story makes a horrifying tale that much more real.
"A Curse of Claws!" written by Goodwin again features one of Neal's sexiest female protagonists.
"Voodoo Drum!", written by Goodwin(!!), is another all-pencil job
...and finally, "Fair Exchange", written by guess who, is famous for the way the story is told--each page uses a different sequential art technique--one page is all open panels, another is all page-size horizontial panels, one is constructed so it reads the same upside down! Neal definitely earned his page rate for this story.
An extraordinairily good issue, culled from some of Warren's finest moments. This issue is found on ebay easily for just a few bucks; any Adams fan couldn't do better than to pick this baby up!
1 comment:
Neal Adams is one of the best comic artists of all time. I thought his cover paintings were OK, but they still had that "comic-book" look that didn't grab me as much as the work of Frazetta or Jeff Jones.
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