Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Eerie 94


Don Maitz paints another terrific cover featuring the series Honor & Blood.

First is "The Coming of the Annihilator" by Luis Bermejo (art) and Bill Dubay (story). Despite being part of the Rook series, this story actually more heavily features Vampirella and Pantha, in a guest starring role. This story takes place just after their return from Drakulon (which should have taken place between issues 66 and 67 of Vampirella). They encounter a monster known as the Annihilator which absorbs energy, so they hope to go back in time with the Rook's help to prevent it from ever being brought to Earth.

Second is the second story in the "Honor & Blood" series with art by Leo Duranona and story by Nicola Cuti. This story continues with the daughter from the prior story, Sybil, now all grown up. She takes part in a pagan ceremony attempting to give birth to the anti-christ by having sex with a man with an elk mask. She gives birth to a son, Ian, and the doctor, seeing that he will be a vampire himself, tries to stop it by putting dirt from a vampire's grave on him. Sybil interferes, but the sun ends up killing her. Ian grows up to become a well known lawyer, but he is murdered when he tries to help a man who is framed. He comes back to life as a vampire, and while he desires only revenge against the man who killed him, he can't help but take other victims as well. He is eventually killed for good by his step-father the doctor, who is revealed to be his real father. The story ends with his son appearing to display homicidal tendencies as well. This series continues to be extremely good, head and shoulders above anything else in this magazine.

Third is "Dead Man's Ship" by Isidro Mones (art) and Nicola Cuti (story). A ship heading to China comes across a ship filled with corpses, dead of the plague. The captain, thinking that he sees himself as one of the corpses, orders the ship destroyed. They arrive in China, where they are told that a ship with the same name was there mere months before. The ship departs, and soon the crew start coming down with an illness. Scared of their fate, the captain orders an approaching ship fired upon, thinking it is their ship. But is actually a completed different one, that fires back, killing them all.

Fourth is "Divine Wind" by Esteban Maroto (art) and Louise Jones & Budd Lewis (story). This is a rather poor story, featuring the Mongoloid invasion of Japan hundreds of years ago and the weather which helps the Japanese fight htem off.

Fifth is "Don't Drink the Water" by Martin Salvador (art) and Gerry Boudreau (story). A group of boys come across a canteen containing an antidote for a sick alien. The antidote has horrific effect on humans however, and a boy who drinks it goes on a murderous rage, killing one of his friends. His brother later kills their mother when he drinks it. The whole town's water supply ends up getting contaminated with the stuff.

Last is "Bruce Bloodletter of the IRS" by Fernando Fernandez (art) and Fernando Fernandez & Bill Dubay (story). This story was originally created by Fernandez in Europe as an educational story and was rewritten by Dubay in its reprinting here. Bloodletter of the title is an IRS agent, coming to a planet of lunatics where he is coming after the tax cheat Silas Mendicant. Despite Fernandez's good art, this is a very lame story and ends right in the middle of things. Bloodletter would return for his final Warren appearance a few years later in Eerie 117.

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