Of the many enterprises inspired by EC's classic line of comics from the 1950s, Jim Warren's Creepy was quite possibly the best of the lot. Edited by the immortal Archie Goodwin and featuring some of the best artists of the 60s (or any era), it is, pound for pound, possibly even better than the ECs that inspired them. Different eras and (slightly) different audiences, for sure, but Creepy is arguably less "clunky" to 21st century eyes. Although those things are happily in the eye of the beholder.
Only 10 years separate the ECs from the Creepys - almost contemporaries, but when Creepy first appeared and in most commentary on it thereafter, it was seen as an heir to EC, not a contemporary. And as a black and white magazine Creepy enjoyed the advantage of being able to actually publish the kind of material EC used to publish, something which the Comics Code at that time prohibited any actual comic book from doing. In a world where Pepsi was verboten, so to speak, Coca Cola enjoyed 100% of the market share. (Swap in your own cola metaphors as you please.)
But! Save the speeches for Malcolm X, as they used to say, at least in the movie Heathers. We're here on Scenic Route business. 'Tis the season... for CREEPY.
1.
NEW WINE
FROM OLD
DECANTERS
(as a fella once said)
The stories are all drawn from familiar tropes, and most follow the horror-comic tradition of the twist ending. (Sometimes to amusing effect: not only is character X a werewolf, but character Y is a vampire, and (penultimate panel) they've been wearing bullet-proof vests the whole time!)
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| And that's all well and good; everything moves along at a fast and familiar clip and the art is relentlessly great. |
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| Here are some panels - I'll do credits all at once at the end of the post - from the first ten issues. |
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| Chances are, even with no context, you'll pick up on what's going on in the larger story of every panel represented. |
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| Reed Crandall knew how to draw pants. It's a skill. I mean no snark here! The guy knew how to draw everything, I'm just saying, but look at all the pants here. Each pair is distinctive. It's the accumulation of perfect little details that give rise to a panorama of illustrative majesty. |
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| Is this from a Hitchcock movie? |
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| From the Poe story adaptation, obviously (one of a few in here.) Now this is a parade. |
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| They might've added a little something at the end. |
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| Twist ending for the Bluebeard saga, as well. |
I may be losing people by just posting snippets of different stories, I don't know. I just look at it like a collage or something. We all know the context of these things. No disrespect or irritation intended. The overriding concern is:
2.
ATMOSPHERE
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| Oh, Jack, you snarky bastard. |
3.
DITKO!
I'm going to be honest: there are times when Steve Ditko's approach and/or execution does not appeal to me. Obviously I have the highest respect for him and all the usual accolades, but I think he is at the very least guilty of crimes against finger and knuckles. Not everyone has fingers that bend in 3 different directions, yet all of Ditko's characters do. I exaggerate. Anyway, he has a story in here that is masterfully done.
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| A bit familiar. (This was 1965, I think.) |
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| This is a motif at the end of every other page of the story - |
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| the eyelids slowly drooping to lifelessness, |
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| before the final panel reveals: |
4.
TITLE PAGES
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| Some great ones in these 10 issues. |
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| The incomparable Angelo Torres and Joe Orlando. Such greats! Again, credits at the end, just a momentary lapse of restraint. |
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| And detail: |
5.
LOATHSOME LORE
Creepy had historical snippets strewn throughout, so you learn a little something about the historical legacy of the horrors presented to the reader.
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| Some of the details may be exaggerated a bit. |
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| This dude right here on the right is just waiting to be meme'd. |
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| As always, the French don't come across too well. Does anyone get mocked more than the French? |
6.
POETRY
7.
SOME RANDOMS
What? They've all been randoms! Here's more.
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| Add Batman to this tree and it's instantly a great 70s Batman comic. Incidentally, I have a craving to watch The Thing with Two Heads now. |
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| Jack Chick? It isn't but looks like him. |
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| ... |
8.
NEED SOME
HALLOWEEN
MULTI-PURPOSE
MEMES?
~
All screencaps taken from Creepy #s 1-10 (1964-1966) featuring art by all these luminaries and then some:
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| Even the table of contents pages were awesome. |
(1) That "...it's blood!" panel would have given me nightmares for weeks if I'd seen that one as a kid.
ReplyDelete(2) Easy to see why "Todd, Hunter From The City" never got its own title.
(3) That guy blowing his own brains out is pretty gnarly for a comic that old. Wow!
(4) The panel of the judge with the skulls in his eyes is terrifying.
(5) "Kill the warlock! Destroy the evil!" Sounds like goddamn Twitter...
(6) That giant devil among the trees is metal as fuck.
(7) Man! Those three panels right above the "Ditko!" section look like they could have come right out of "From Hell." There's some stuff elsewhere that put me in mind of "Tales of the Black Freighter," too.
(8) Boy, those title pages ARE great. Not sure which I'd say is best based on these glimpses. "Return Trip" might be it. "Hot Spell" is pretty great, too, though. Both of those make me want to read the story, so success on that front. But that's most of these, really.
(9) I feel like Rob Zombie probably has a movie about the Beane clan -- whom I'd never heard of -- in him. All parts to be played by Bill Mosely and Sid Haig.
(10) That dude waving confusedly at the zombie dancers outside his window is priceless.
(11) "Does anyone get mocked more than the French?" -- Steve Guttenberg, maybe.
(12) Thumbs up on the "Poetry" section.
(13) Wouldn't that be a hoot if Jack Chick was actually drawing a bunch of the great horror comics of the day, too? As a side gig? Man.
(14) I archived a few of those would-be-memes panels. Yessir.
(15) Man, this seems like deeply good stuff. Thanks for shining a light on it!
Let me work through these backwards:
Delete15) I just put all my ECs on an easy-grab shelf and have been flipping through them lately. They're so out of control and dated and repetitive and clunky but sheesh: they're fantastic. Like I say up there, pound for pound, Creepy is probably objectively better, but ShockSuspenStories, Weird Science, and Two-Fisted Tales all still rule. Anyway, maybe I should do one of these Scenic Routes for EERIE as well. But that might be overkill. (insert overkill-related-pun here.)
(13) It would. (And (11) Very probably.)
(10) I love that panel so much. Like it can be used to indicate white-guy-scared-by-what-he-doesn't-understand, or it can be sued to indicate holy-crap-has-the-world-gone-mad, or even more. I probably should have cropped it more and put it in with the Multi-Purpose-Memes section.
(9) Not for the first time I wish I was a rich Hollywood producer who could greenlit projects and put deals together.
(8, 7, and 6. And 5, alas.) Absolutely.
(3) I thought the same thing. Wow! EC got in trouble for the blood dripping from a severed head on the cover. Granted this isn't the cover, and granted it's ten whole years later, but sheesh! I approve of course.
(2) Ha! That made me laugh to picture. And also made me wish I could swap in YOR HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE for all of Todd's appearances in this story.
Glad you enjoyed! I've broken out my Scenic Route hat lately and have a bunch more of these i'll be putting up over the next few months, though this will be the only one for CREEPY. (Tis the season and all, I figured, for some CREEPY.)
(15) This is one of what I consider to be my major horror blind spots: I've read virtually none of any of these types of comics from this era or after. Which, given how huge an influence they were on Stephen King and his generation, is kind of unforgivable if only from a standpoint of amateur scholarship. But then also, it's unforgivable given how clearly awesome so many of those comics were. So these are on the list of things that I 100% WILL be ingesting one of these days. It's not an if, it's a when.
DeleteAnd this post only ramps the desire up.
(3) Me, too. Although, it must be said, I'm incredibly glad I encountered none of this as a child. Some of this shit would've wrecked me. I know this because I read a bit of the "Creepshow" movie adaptation comic when I was 7 or 8, and it fucked me up fo sho. I'm kind of glad now that it did, of course.
(2) To nobody's surprise, this panel definitely caused ol' Yor to float into my mind. God help me.
(15) I've read an enjoyed the hell out of "Tales from the Crypt". However, "Creepy" is one of those spin-off imitations that always just exists off on the sidelines for me.
DeleteI've never bothered to check them, and part of me wonders if they can ever come close to EC's original line. Probably not, yet it's also one of those things that need a looksee, just for the sake of finding out what's on offer.
ChrisC.
I love EC's whole line. I've got a WEIRD FANTASY post materializing sooner or later around these parts. My intention was to get it out before Halloween, and looks like I will, since it's just about done. Barring any unforeseen axes to the face by escaped asylum killers, I should be able to get that one done!
DeleteCREEPY and its sister mag EERIE have several things going for it that EC didn't have: less captions and words crowding up the panels, and a bit more sophistication in the art. But undoubtedly EC was lightning in a bottle.
I forget which publisher was reprinting some of the many, many EC knock-offs from the 50s (just prior to the hammer came down thanks Dr. Wertham) but I picked up quite a few of those. I was surprised at the level of quality in even those. EC set such a high bar; it really looked and felt like nothing else prior to it and was just way ahead of everyone else at the time.
Once horror comics became re-established in the 70s the DC and Marvel lines are all kind of forgotten these days, but some of them (particularly at DC) had some fantastic atmosphere. (And Joe Orlando worked on all of them, God bless him.)
If you've only ever read TALES FROM THE CRYPT definitely give VAULT OF HORROR and SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES a spin. But really, you can't go wrong with any EC.