Saturday, July 12, 2008

Eerie 4


The fourth issue of Eerie, featuring a cover by Gray Morrow.

Our first story is "House of Evil", with art by Jerry Grandenetti (uncredited) & Joe Orlando, and story by Archie Goodwin. A man comes to a large house where his brother lived but finds only a tape recording there, telling him of how he came to the house, which has an evil past, for inspiration. Suddenly a rotting corpse arrives. The man destroys the corpse, but soon finds that it was his own brother! He then looks at his hands and realizes that he's starting to rot as well.

Next is "Hatchet Man" by Eugene Colan (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). The story is about a hatchet killer who has killed a number of woman with a hatchet. A night watchman plots to kill his wife with a hatchet and blame it on the hatchet killer. Only when the police arrive and find evidence of other murders, it becomes clear that he is the hatchet killer himself, possessing another personality who commit the murders.

Next is "Gnawing Fear" by Rocco Mastroserio (art) and Ron Parker (story). A pair of doctors are working on a poison for killing rats. One of them ends up dying when the rats attack him. The other doctor follows them into a large maze of tunnels. When he finds a number of rats coming after him he shoots at them with a gun, but that caves in the cavern and the rats completely overrun him.

Fourth story is "Shrieking Man!" by Steve Ditko (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). The man of the title is in a mental institution, a man who does nothing but scream like crazy and act like a maniac. An employee at the institution becomes fascinated with him and ends up letting him out by accident when he can't control him. The screaming man goes crazy and ends up killing our hero's boss, for whom he was originally his boss, who was killed by him and brought back to life.

Next up is "Undying Love!" by Donald Norman (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). A man seeks to make a woman fall in love with her, so he has a sorceror cast a spell so that will happen. Only when he returns to see her, he finds that she has died! Soon afterwards however she comes back to life as a vampire, and being in love with him stays by his side. While he initially likes it, he is troubled by what she is doing, so he uses a stake on her and chops off her head. But even that isn't enough to stop her from coming back to him!

Last is the cover story, "Island At World's End!" by Gray Morrow (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). A man lost at sea, Sturgis is found by a boat and tells his story. His ship was taken over by a mutiny and he escaped on a lifeboat. Eventually he is on his own and he comes across an island where he encounters beast men. They carry him to a large pit where sacrifices are made. A beautiful woman, Cythlla, who tells him she is the last of an elder race appears and rather than killing him she wants him to be her mate. She worships 'Shoggoth', a mysterious giant entity that appears. Seeing how evil she is, he runs off and shoots her. Eventually however Shoggoth returns to claim him on the boat.

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