One of my all-time favorite issues of Creepy!The cool cover is by Ken Kelly and there's a great Uncle Creepy frontspiece by Berni Wrightson, and then we jump right into "The Escape Chronicle" by Budd Lewis and Jose Ortiz. The story of the nebbish-y Bernard Kedward, who lives in a grim, authoritarian future world and dreams only f escape via hot air balloon. Sad, tragic, hopeful.
Next is "Phantom of Pleasure Island", by Gerry Boudreau and Alex "The Man" Toth! A murder mystery set in an amusement park--a fun, diverting tale, made into a near-masterpiece by Toth's flawless storytelling. As if I had to say that.
Third is "Snow" by Bruce Bezaire, Rich Buckler, and Wally Wood--a grim tale of doing anything to survive in a snow-covered wasteland.
Next is "Death Expression" by Jim Stenstrum and John Severin. Treachery and murder in the upper echelons of government. No horror, per se, just a tough-as-nails tale of people willing to kill to control the levers of power. Like Toth, Severin takes a good, solid tale and makes it sublime.
Last is "Thrillkill" by Stenstrum and Neal Adams--TwoMorrows' The Warren Companion ranked this as the single best Warren story ever; the all-too-real story of one insane man taking revenge on society through the safety of a sniper's perch. Adams' storyelling is perfect; and through the use of captions instead of word balloons you feel you're on the street along with these people as it is happening, and that you might be next.
As real and relevant today as it was in 1975, it's definitely a contender for Warren's best, and a perfect example of how over time Warren went from an EC clone(and an excellent one, at that) to crafting its own brand of horror, and putting something out there that only they could've done(really; could you have pictured a story like this running in The House of Mystery or a Marvel monster mag?).
There isn't one bad story in this issue, and I'd say three of them rank as some of Warren's best ever, so this just might be the best Creepy ever!
Update: Based on a comment left by a reader known only as "Weirdo"(surely not the first blogger to try and register that name!), it occurs to me that since is one of(if not the) my favorite Creepys ever, I should've posted some of the gorgeous art in this issue.
So here are three masterful splash pages from the stories drawn by Toth, Buckler/Wood, and Adams:
8 comments:
You are one lucky bastard, having all of these Warren magazines. I would love to see the work of Wally Wood and Alex Toth.
this issue is surprisingly cheap and easy to find on ebay, and in terms of talent inside its incomparable!
Great, great issue, quite possibly Creepy's best. Thrillkill is certainly in my mind the best story to ever appear in Creepy. Both Stenstrum and Adams, both quite accomplished are at the top of their game here. I personally would only rank one other Warren story above it, "Yellow Heat" from Russ Heath & Bruce Jones, which appeared in Vampirella a year or two after this issue.
Death Expression is a very fun story to read, with perfect artwork by John Severin and quite an interesting twist regarding who really was in control of things. "Ghastly Terror" in fact, the only book other than the Warren Companion with a lengthy discussion of Warren out there I can think of has it as one of Creepy's top 10 stories, instead of Thrillkill in one of many idiotic observations the book has. Good story, but definately not top 10 of all time material.
The Escape Chronicle's another really good story, and had a sequel a few issues later which I didn't particularly care for. Snow and Pleasure Island also have pretty good stories and very good art.
And I too can say from personal experience that this issue was very easy to acquire. One of the earlier issues of Creepy I was able to get.
-Quiddity99
Ah schucks, I feel so special now. What I like about the old artists is that there is a sense of visual exaggeration or expressionism, like Will Eisner or Jack Davis. A lot of artists don't have that. They're so striving for realism that it takes the life out of the work.
Hey, I've never heard of Bruce Bezaire before but I like Rich Buckler. What I am surprised to see is that the protagonist of SNOW is called LUTHER MANNING! That was the real name of the DEATHLOK cyborg Buckler co-created at Marvel! Is there a story there? Did Luther Manning have any other appearances outside Marvel?
Chris S
Yup, I remember this one well. They printed my letter about this one in #77, I think.
My one disappointment was that I believe "Thrillkill" was to be in color, but instead it ran in black and white with the grey tones added by the Warren production department to Adams' art. I'd have preferred Adams himself to do the tones, as I'm sure anyone else would have.
But the story is beyond reproach. As is "Escape Chronicle."
But this can't be the best issue ever from Warren -- Frazetta's not in it!
Wow, it was supposed to be in color? Never knew that. Richard Arndt's in depth web site on Warren says that this was the issue where Warren started cutting the budget, resulting in a shorter letter column, shorter stories overall, and less color. Sounds like a color version of Thrillkill may have been a victim of that.
With so many American artists, an oddity for this era from Warren where the Spanish artists dominated the books. Unfortunate that they couldn't get Frazetta involved too :P By this time he was gone for good :(
-Quiddity
Hey Weirdo and others, before you spend your money,
Dark Horse is supposed to have archive collections of both Creepy and Eeerie in the future at some point.
http://tinyurl.com/25zg2q
Judging by their forth coming Savage Sword of Conan reprint(http://tinyurl.com/3yba5x), the series looks to go the way of the Marvel Essentials(500+ pages for $20). So eventually we should have all the magazines and their content in a dandy trade paperback. Works for me.
By the way Rob, keep up the good work. I'm really enjoying this blog, and the Power Records one.
(P.S: if you go to http://tinyurl.com/2czw5w, you can see a little post I did on Marvel Magazine’s Nightmare on Elm Street Series, with a link to full scans of them at the bottom).
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