One of my favorite Warren covers, courtesy Gray Morrow. Nice colors, brilliantly composed. And even though its depicting a horrible act of violence, it's against a vampire so who's gonna complain?"Creepy's Loathsome Lore", by Angelo Torres, is about (surprise!)vampires this time, and then the opening story is "The Coffin of Dracula!", by Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall. About a vampire that just won't die, this is rare in that the story is directly continued into the next issue, something Warren rarely did.
Next is "Death Plane" by Larry Ivie and George Evans. If you had a story centered around planes, you generally called Alex Toth. If he was busy or in a cranky mood(50/50), Warren usually then called Evans, whose love of planes was well known.
Third is "The Mountain", with story and art by Jay Taycee, whose work looks suspiciously like Johnny Craig. Reproduced right from his pencils, which looks just awesome, its about a woman who wanders a snowy mountainside, collapsing right outside a cabin, having been rescued by a strapping, handsome guy who lived there. They end up hatching a plan about black magic and murder. A completely crazy story--including an appearance by Satan, no less--beautifully rendered by Craig...er, Jay Taycee.
Next is "The Invitation" by Englehart, Jones, & Whitman(didn't they sing "Don't Pull Your Love Out On Me Baby"?) with art by Manny Stallman, someone whose work was not exactly beloved by fans, but I think does a great job here, about a visitor to a spooky castle, filling the panels to the very edges with little creepy details.
Adam Link is back in "Adam Link's Mate!" by Eando Binder and Joe Orlando. Adam, in his lonliness, creates an Eve. For some reason Adam thinks Society will, having not been able to accept one man's-brain-in-a-robot's-body, will now accept two.
Next is "A Vested Interest" by Ron Parker and George Tuska, a goofy tale about a werewolf stalking the city streets. It's mostly a crime story, full of men with guns and wearing snap-brim fedoras, perfect for Tuska, the veteran of like a million crime comics.
Last is "Fitting Punishment" by Goodwin and Gene Colan, always a welcome presence in Creepy. He turns in another superb art job about a modern-day grave robber. He paces the story just perfectly, allowing him the room to do a full-page panel, setting the tale very effectively:
...Colan was apparently so proud of this splash he signed it(bottom right), and I don't blame him. I know I've said it like a hundred times before, but Colan's Warren stuff was top-notch, almost always the best thing in any given issue.
Another fine issue, with "The Mountain" and "Fitting Punishment" sticking out to me as bona-fide classics.
Another fine issue, with "The Mountain" and "Fitting Punishment" sticking out to me as bona-fide classics.
5 comments:
("Jay-Tay-Cee..." Wonder what J-ohnny C-raig's middle initial was, hmmm?)
Gray Morrow. Such nice work. And ended his own life, much too young.
John Thomas Alexis Craig.
I never heard that Morrow killed himself--are you sure about that?
"The Invitation" is one of the Warren stories I remember most, but reprinted in another issue--I don't know if I ever had this one.
MDG-
When Morrow died a few years back -
only in his 60's - the story given was that he'd taken his own life after a long illness.
http://xrl.us/5y39
-Craig
jeez, i didnt know that. :(
looking back at these early Warrens, i wish they had done more "best of" collections like they did for Wrightson and Toth.
wouldve loved to have seen best of johnny craig, morrow, and gene colan, they did so much great work in these early Creepys.
You're doing Warrens again? Joy! :)
This is Craig's first appearance in Warren if I remember correctly. Craig's my favorite of the original EC artists, so its a blast to see him in the early Warren issues. Unfortunate that he didn't do more for them (only about 10 stories or so total if I remember correctly). "The Mountain" is one of his better ones, I'm also particularly fond of the one set in Egypt that was done in the Warren early days.
Evans or Toth... hard to pick one when it comes to plane stories. Although Evans did very little work for Warren (I think this was his sole non-Blazing Combat story), he did a ton of them for EC in Two Fisted Tales & Frontline Combat. Like Craig would have liked to see him do more stories for Warren.
For your reference Rob, Warren did do some other best of collections for some of the original artists including Reed Crandall (Creepy 74), Al Williamson (somewhere in the 130s), Angelo Torres (the 140s I think) and Wally Wood (also somewhere in the 130s). Unfortunately no Johnny Craig or Gray Morrow specials though.
Overall, a very good issue!
-Quiddity
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