Friday, November 28, 2008

Eerie 95


Vampirella guest stars with the Rook on the cover of this issue, the first Eerie issue featuring the Rook on the cover in quite a while. The cover is painted by Jordi Penalva, one of S.I.'s artists who was pretty good, but not at the level of Sanjulian and Enrich, the two main spanish cover artists for Warren.

First is "Warriors from the Stars" by Luis Bermejo (art) and Bill Dubay (story). In this story Vampi, the Rook and the others arrive back in time, finding the aliens that originally brought the annihilator here. They are fighting other aliens, and our heroes help them. After the battle, the aliens give them a key enabling them to stop the annihilator and any other ones around the world when they return.

Second is "Willie's Super-Magic Basketball" by Carmine Infantino & Rudy Nebres (art) and Jim Stenstrum (story). Infantino's contributions appear barely at all here in the final product, one may think Nebres did this alone if it wasn't for the credits. The story is about a boy with a magic basketball that allows him to be good at basketball. The boy later goes to Vietnam, returning after his mother's death. Hooked on drugs, he runs from the cops and a drug dealer and his magic basketball turns him back into a kid, allowing him to escape them.

Third is "Faster Than a Speeding Whozit", the latest story in the Abelmar Jones series. Art is by Alex Nino and story is by Bill Dubay. Abelmar and his brother get into another adventure, looking for a superman in the city, but instead finding a powerful robot. Another very lame story, with some okay art from Nino. This series would conclude in Creepy 128, which came out a number of years after this issue.

Fourth is this issue's color feature, "Nuts!" by Pablo Marcos (art) and Nicola Cuti (story). Alfredo Alcala also appears on the credit line, but he doesn't appear to have had any input in the artwork for this story, and doesn't appear on the contents page (this was probably a misprint). This story features a pilot transporting a whole army, which has been dehydrated in order to hide themselves. Most of the story is quite lame, with various space action, and our protagonist eating a lot of nuts. The story does have a pretty good ending though, when it is revealed that the nuts he was eating are actually the brains of the soldiers he was transporting! Marcos's art is rather poor here, wasting a color story which would have worked better on many other artists.

Fifth is "Harrow House" by Jose Ortiz (art) and Bruce Jones (story). This is the first of a two part story, concluded in issue 99. This is a very good story, featuring an old woman seeking to sell a house of her's that is haunted with the ghost of her dead niece. Multiple people have tried to stay in it, but all went crazy. The man occupies the house where mysterious things start to occur. He does manage to make it out okay though. He returns to the house where he sees a spectral form of the niece on teh stairs, which is where this part ends.

Last is a new series, Mac Tavish, in "Caucus on Rara Avis" by Pepe Moreno Casares (art) and Jim Stenstrum (story, as Alabaster Redzone). This new series, which lasted in Eerie for quite a while, is very clearly heavily influenced by Star Wars. It stars Mac Tavish, a space hero, who is brought to Rara Avis to speak on behalf of the Governor, who is running for re-election. The governor is assassinated, and Mac Tavish pursues the assassin and kills him, who ends up being a robot. The murder is suspected to be done by a terrorist, Spider Andromeda, who is actually Mac Tavish's friend. Spider, who looks like a lion man shows up, and refutes that, suggesting Mac Tavish run for governor. While this has some good art, there's nothing here special storywise in this first part of a long series.

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