Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Creepy 1


Creepy's very first issue from 1964. The cover is by Jack Davis, his sole cover for Warren (unless you count the first issue of Eerie, which was actually taken from an ad he drew that was originally printed inside a Creepy magazine).

First is "Voodoo" by Joe Orlando (art) and Russ Jones & Bill Pearson (story). The story is about a man who throws out his voodoo practicing wife. He later finds her in the woods and a struggle ensues in which her head is chopped off. Before long however her headless corpse, with a shrunked head attacked chases after him!

Second is "H20 World". 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.

Third is "Vampires Fly At Dusk" by Reed Crandall (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). The story takes place in a town plagues by murders, suspected to be by a vampire. A man is suspected to be a vampire, particularly by his wife who finds that he'll only let her do things at night. One night she finds him missing from his study and she pulls back a curtain, revealing the sunlight which she hopes to destroy him with. Only it ends up that she was the vampire; while he was killing the people in the town, he was feeding the blood to her in her food. Due to the sunlight she dies.

Fourth is "Werewolf" by Frank Frazetta (art) and Larry Ivie (story). This is Frazetta's sole full story for Warren and infact is his last full comics story for anyone. It features a big game hunter heading after a werewolf like creature that oddly enough hasn't killed anyone. He finds it and shoots it, but this causes the werewolf to turn back into a human. The man thanks him for breaking the curse, saying he's been looking for someone to do this for years. By dying he passes on the curse to the hunter, who now becomes a werewolf himself.

Next is "Bewitched" by Gray Morrow (art) and Larry Ivie (story). A man buys some material which when burned is rumored to kill a witch. He soon finds himself pursued by a dinosaur and other bizarre events keep happening. He wakes up, finding it to be a dream, but then finds his daughter with a voodoo doll of him!

Sixth is "The Success Story" by Al Williamson (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). This story features a comic strip creator, Baldo Smudge who is actually ripping off three seperate people. He hires a penciller, whom he tells he is doing the inking and writing for. He also hires a writer whom he tells he is doing the pencilling and inking. And so on for the inker. All the while he takes the credit for the strip as a whole. This charade goes on for a long time, but the three of them finally catch on, so Baldo kills them. They come back as rotting corpses however and take revenge. This story is based on a true story (except the corpses part). Williamson drew Smudge based on himself and used Angelo Torres, Archie Goodwin and Al McWilliams as the likenesses for the three employees he was ripping off.

Last is "Pursuit of the Vampire" by Angelo Torres (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). The story features a group of townspeople being joined by a stranger who tells them two murder victims are actually going to turn into vampires since a vampire was their killer. He leads them to a house where they are and kill them. The town leader ends up being the vampire that killed them, but the stranger, who is a werewolf kills him to eliminate competition for victims.

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