Friday, May 23, 2008

Eerie 22


Another Eerie issue from Warren's dark ages. The cover, by Vic Prezio, is for the story H20 World. The frontis for this issue is "Eerie's Monster Gallery: The Minotaur" from Eerie 11 by Neal Adams.

First up is H20 World, originally published in the first issue of Creepy. The art is by Al Williamson & Roy Krenkel and the story is by Larry Ivie. It is about a pair of divers who come across an underground civilization. There they meet the mutated people who live there, who force them to forget that they ever encountered them. Very beautiful artwork here, particularly Krenkel's backgrounds.

Our first new story this issue is "Family Curse" by Tony Williamsune (art) and T. Casey Brennan (story, his first). A newlywed couple visits the castle owned by the bride's ancestors, who were rumored to be monsters. While there, she encounters an old woman as well as a book detailing the horrific family history. The bride decides to kill herself to prevent herself from being a burden on her husband and the world, only the husband finds out that she actually wasn't part of the family after all, but rather related to the old woman they met.

"The Devil To Pay", originally from Creepy 11 is next, with art by Donald Norman and story by Archie Goodwin. A duke summons a demon, seeking more power for himself. The demon refuses, instead telling him that he'll die within a year and his soul will belong to hell. He can prevent that if he finds someone wiling to give up their soul, but if he fails, he'll die within a day. The duke finds a man and hypnotizes him into doing his deed, only for the man to end up being Satan himself!


"Permanent Members" by Tom Sutton (art) and Bill Parente (story) is fourth, featuring an initiation into a kid's gang that takes place in a cemetary. One of the boys becomes a vampire, but it ends up all the other boys are werewolves and they kill him.

Fifth is "Scooped" by Ernie Colon (art) and Bill Parente (story). A reporter discovers two men that are actually cochroach-like aliens. He and his supervisor confront them, who say they're actually peaceful, and want to help mankind. This results in the reporter and his supervisor killing them, for they are also aliens, of a different race, who want to take over Earth.

Last is "The Spirit of the Thing!" by Steve Ditko (art) and Archie Goodwin (story), probably their best collaberation aside from the well known "Collectors Edition" story. This story was originally printed in Creepy 9. It features a professor who hypnotizes a student of his, resulting in his spirit leaving his body. The professor then steals the student's body, as his is about to die. The student's spirit, now bodiless, steals the professor's corpse from the graveyard and uses it to brutally beat to death his own body (with the professor's spirit) until the professor is forced to leave.

A very good issue, mostly on the strength of the reprinted stories, although the new stuff is fairly good too.

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