I hadn't written about an issue of Eerie in awhile, and it seems only appropriate to do so following an issue of Creepy!Ken Kelly provides the weird-ass cover, featuring the ongoing character The Spook, a giant, justice-dispensing giant(no way would this run now).
After a nice Cousin Eerie frontspiece by Berni Wrightson, comes "Night of the Jackass!" by Bruce Bezaire and Jose Ortiz, about a man turned monstrous under the influence of a drug called ominously "Hyde 25." Next up is "The Hacker is Back" by our pal Steve Skeates and the I've-run-out-of-superlatives Alex Toth. Toth brings his usual grace and light touch to what is a very gruesome tale...you get a severed head right on the first page!
Third is the Spook tale "Coming Storm...a Killing Rain!" by Budd Lewis and Leopold Sanchez, about a man who uses voodoo to conjure The Spook to help him stop a war that is threatening to spill over onto their land. "El Cid and the Troll!" by Budd Lewis and Gonzalo Mayo is next, a more fanciful tale starring, yes, El Cid, and how he is contracted to fighting, yes, a troll who is stealing a small town's women!
The final story is "The Death" is by Budd Lewis(again!) and Jose Ortiz, and stars the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and features a hula hoop as a prominent plot-point. I will say no more.
Overall, an okay issue--a lot of this comes down to personal tastes, and as I've stated before, I find a lot of the work Warren was using at the time--the ultra-detailed, heavily-cross-hatched, more "illustrative"(for lack of a better term) kind that exploded in 70s comics--to look very, very similar, so to have all but one of stories done in this style makes the whole issue run together. Except of course, for the story drawn by Alex Toth, which sticks out like a good, yet sore, thumb. But of course, you take Toth where you can get him!
Back in the Captain Company section there's an ad for a Warren Publishing tote bag! Emblazoned with the line "Warren--Make Us Your Bag!", it retails for only ninety-nine cents, and I want one so bad.
3 comments:
Happy to finally be seeing more Warren horror mags again :)
You're right in saying that the Philipino artists at Warren for the most part looked similar. But there weren't any Philipino artists in Eerie #65. Jose Ortiz, Leopold Sanchez and Gonzalo Mayo are all Spanish. The Philipino artists didn't really take over Warren until a few years after this issue. That would include artists like Rudy Nebres, Alfredo Alcala, Vic Catan, Abel Laxamana, Leo Duranona, and Alex Nino (who on the contrary didn't look like any other Warren artist and was arguably a top 10 warren artist IMHO). I personally don't think the Spanish artists looked very, very similar at all. The only two I think that can even be compared are Auraleon and Jose Ortiz. Esteban Maroto, Fernando Fernandez, Luis Garcia, Luis Bermejo, Leopold Sanchez, Gonzalo Mayo, Jose Gonzalez, Isidro Mones (at least in his first stint at Warren, his art was horrible when he returned in the 80's), Martin Salvador and the other Spanish artists who dominanted Warren all had very distinctive styles IMHO and were miles ahead of the American and Philipino artists stylistically to me. The era where they dominated the magazines was the peak of Warren if you ask me.
anon-
i confess to my lack of knowledge on the subject. maybe i should've been a bit more careful in my criticisms.
youre right--Alex Nino was INCREDIBLY distinctive and couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.
i guess instead of labeling it by geographical standards, i guess i should say it was more that ultra-rendered, highly intricate line worked style that, to me, starts to all look the same after awhile.
i think i'm going to rewrite this post a little--i dont want my ignorance to be everlasting. :)
thanks for the corrections!
Glad I could be of some help! While I disagree regarding the Spanish artists in general, admittingly this isn't the best issue if you're looking for a lot of distinctive styles since Ortiz gets two stories (although they are probably his two best serials, "Night of the Jackass" and "Apocalypse"). Although I personally love Ortiz, and would rank him as my #3 Warren artist after Luis Garcia and Esteban Maroto.
And if I had to rank all the Spanish artists I'd probably put Sanchez and Mayo towards the bottom (although I'd still love to see them over most of the Phillipino artists and most of the Americans outside of some of the old EC greats like Toth, Crandall, Wood, etc...). Mayo's art is so overly detailed and cluttered at times that its very hard to go through the strip.
Looking forward to the next one!
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