Creepy 42

Sanjulian's first ever Creepy cover starts off this issue, the first of three S.I. artists making their Creepy debut in this issue. The frontis, "Creepy's Loathsome Lore" is drawn by Ken Kelly (a rare non-cover appearance) and written by T. Casey Brennan.

First up is "The Quaking Horror" by Auraleon (art, his Creepy debut) and Gardner Fox (story). This HP Lovecraft-esque story features a house that has a dark horror underneath it, a bizarre tentacled monster that was summoned hundreds of years ago. The entire house eventually collapses, destroying the demon for good. Some very nice art by Auraleon here.

Next is "A Change of Identity!" by Dave Cockrum (art) and Don Glut (story). A hunchbacked man attepts to get revenge on the townfolk that haven't treated him well by rescuing a killed werewolf, who becomes a vampire. The vampire promises to turn the hunchback into a werewolf so he can get revenge, but decides instead to kill him and turn him into a zombie guard.

Third is "The Amazing Money-Making Wallet" by Joe Staton (art) and Steve Skeates (story). This story is about a wallet that generates money on its own, but if you ever get rid of it, you'll dissolve. A thief steals the wallet, causing his victim to dissolve, and eventually he dissolves as well when he gets rid of the wallet.

Fourth is "Spacial Delivery" by Larry Todd (art) and R. Michael Rosen (story). This story is about a shapeshifting alien that crashes to our planet. In order to repair his ship he needs a metallic substance called Argentium. Taking the appearance of a wolf, he is accused of being a werewolf and is shot with a silver bullet, which ends up being the Argentium he needed to repair his ship and leave.

Fifth is "A Chronicle!" by Jorge Galvez (art, his Warren debut) and Steve Skeates (story). This short story at only 4 pages tells of a man who pays little attention to his life, focusing instead on a research project that ends up being meaningless when someone else completes it. He then gets fired from his job and tries to rob a bank but is killed trying to escape. Not much of a point to this story, wasting Galvez's pretty good art.

Sixth is "Escape From Nowhere World" by Jerry Grandenetti (art) and T. Casey Brennan (story). This story is a sequel to Brennan's very poor story "On the Wings of a Bird" from issue 36. A woman, Janeen suddenly appears in the mysterious nowhere world where Ahzid and the statue are. She and Ahzid try to escape, dragging the statue with them. The statue collapses, and using its sword Janeen and Ahzid tear their way out of the world and escape, while the broken statue lies there alone.

Last is "Ice Wolf" by Gary Kaufman (story & art). This would be Kaufman's final Warren appearance. Unfortunate, as he was quite a unique artist and a pretty good writer too. A tribe of wolf hunters in a winter landscape completely run out of wolves to hunt, so they head through the mountains, still to no avail. One of the men on the night of the full moon gains special powers. Tribe members start dying, obviously due to him. Eventually a wolf finally does appear, and kills him.

Creepy 41

This issue of Creepy features a rather odd looking cover by Ken Smith. The frontis for this issue is "Creepy's Loathsome Lore: The Hangman of London" by Richard Bassford.

First is "The Thing in Loch Ness", Bruce Jones's Creepy Debut. He provides both the story and art here. Bruce Jones would later become Creepy's best writer during the Louise Jones era. A man in Scotland falls in love with a bar owner's wife. They plot to kill the owner, who is hit by a car and tossed into Loch Ness. The man, seeking to pay off their debts so they can head to America, creates a fake Loch Ness Monster using an inflatable creature. It works, tourism goes up tremendously enabling them to pay off their debts. But when he heads back in the Loch Ness to get rid of the fake creature, the true Loch Ness Monster and the Bar Owner's corpse are there waiting for him.

Next is "Skipper's Return" by Ernie Colon (story & art). A rather interesting story about a chimp being sent out to space. He sends messages to his former trainer, and comes back to Earth, now evolved such that he can talk, and gets revenge by having his trainer sent out to space himself.

The Bill Dubay story "The Final Ingredient" is third. This is yet another solo story with Dubay handling both the art and story. A young woman wants a man to fall in love with her, so she asks her aunt, a witch to create a potion to make that happen. The witch needs a man's head, so the young woman sets up an axe to chop off a traveler's head. This works, and the potion is successful. The young woman and her lover ride off, only to have their heads chopped off by the axe.

Fourth is "Prelude to Armageddon" by Wally Wood (art) and Wally Wood & Nicola Cuti (story). Some very sexy art by Wood in this story about a medieval war between various creatures such as centaurs, minotaurs and other creatures. The moon explodes during the battle, dealing heavy damage to the Earth and wiping out the battlers, leading to our society many milleniums later.

Fifth is "Extra Censory Perception" by Gary Kaufman (art) and Steve Skeates (story). This story is about a comic book editor who goes crazy with censorship. Walking down the street, he kills a man asking for a match when he finds a knife on him, then kills a young woman because her skirt is too short. The police find him crazy, stamping the logo "censored" with her blood.

The issue concludes with "A Tangible Hatred" by Richard Corben (art) and Don McGregor (story). A very incomprehensible poor story from McGregor which has some very nice Corben artwork. It features a rotting corpse hitchhiker who is created due to people's hatred. The story features, Detective Turner, a recurring character in many McGregor stories. As is often seen from him, absolute crap from McGregor with a lot of political/hippie nonsense.

Creepy 39

A whopping four artists' Warren debuts highlight this issue of Creepy. The art is by Basil Gogos. The frontis is "Creepy's Loathsome Lore: The Evil Eye!" by Clif Jackson (art) and Richard Grose (story).

First story is "Where Satan Dwells..." by Sal Trapani (art) and Al Hewetson (story). This story is a rarity, it actually stars Uncle Creepy himself! Uncle Creepy, getting bored of just telling stories seeks to find an adventure of his own. He comes across a bookstore where the bookkeeper gives him a book with the same title as this story. He reads the book and suddenly finds himself in a position where he has to save the bookkepper and his family from the evil spirit Groton. It ends up being a dream, and the bookkeeper ends up being Cousin Eerie!

Second is "C.O.D. - Collect on Death!" by Dave Cockrum (art, his debut) and Dave Wood (story). A man makes a deal with the devil to spurn death, but in exchange he must kill someone each day. If he misses even a single day, he will die himself. This eventually forces him to kill his own fiance when he loses track of time due to her. Her brother leads him to a desert to kill him. He does so, but is told that he's so far away from society there's no way he'll be able to kill someone else within a day, which results in his ultimate demise.

Third is "The Water World", featuring the debut of artist Pablo Marcos. The story is written by Buddy Saunders. A trio of astronauts crash on a water filled world and drift aimlessley on a raft over very clear water. Soon two are dead and the last remaining one fishes using the remains of one of the others. This catches a fish, but one so huge that it ends up eating him!

"Death by the Wizard" with art and story by Pat Boyette is next. Not as good a story as usual from the usually excellent Boyette. It features the Wizard Merlin who is facing his own demise due to a woman he was with. He is turned into a tree by her.

Fifth is "Harvest of Horror!" by Frank Brunner (art) and Phil Seuling (story). This story interestingly enough features three different endings, surrounding a man who is on the run, finding a scarecrow in a field. A rather interesting concept, surprised that Warren didn't use it more often.

Sixth is "The Dragon Prow!" with Richard Bassford (art, his debut) and Steve Skeates (story). The story features a serf who wishes for freedom so he tries to steal a horse and escape, but he is captured and put aboard a boat as a slave. A sea storm causes the ship to crash and he thinks he finally has his freedom only to realize that he died in the crash.

Last is the debut of Gary Kaufman, in "Mad Jack's Girl". The Jack of the title is a gang leader who does a lot of bad deeds. His girlfriend tries to steer him right but can't do it. Eventually she gathers up corpses of his victims then kills him and sets him up in a dinner setting with them.

Creepy 40

A terrific cover for this issue, by Larry Todd & Vaughn Bode. The frontis for this issue is "Creepy's Loathsome Lore: The Loch Ness Monster" by Clif Jackson (art) and Al Hewetson (story).

First up is the cover story, "The Fade-Away Walk" by Tom Sutton (art) and Don McGregor (story, his Warren debut). Taking place after a nuclear holocost, the story features two mutated men fighting around Mt. Rushmore. One of the men falls to his death after what else, but one of McGregor's typical pseudo-political ramblings between the two.

Second is "The Impersonation" by Pablo Marcos (art) and Steve Skeates (story). A secret agent who poses as other people tries to get out of the line of work since the real person always shows up. His boss convinces him to go on another mission because the guy he's impersonating is dead, so what happens? The guy comes back from the dead to reveal the truth yet again! They are both put into a trap they must escape from and the dead guy vanishes, trapping the agent in there for good.

"Swamp Demon" by Dave Cockrum (story & art) features a swamp monster that can appear as anything to someone who sees it. The natives sacrifice maidens to it, so one warrior heads into rescue his girl when it ends up being her. He thinks he kills the swamp demon and rescues her, but it ends up that the swamp demon survived and took her place.

"Disintegrator" is fourth, by Ken Barr (art) and Nicola Cuti (story). The story features a man who creates a disintegrator gun to gain back his life after his business partner swindled him. The business partner steals the gun from him, but it ends up that the disintegrator power was within him all along, not within the gun.

Next is "Lost and Found" by George Roussos (art) and Steve Skeates (story). A wizard loses his ability to walk through solid things, which is transferred to a man in the present. The man tries to steal from a bank vault with the power but the wizard gets it back just as he's going through the vault. The last panel is rather confusing, saying he dies because the vault passes through him, shouldn't it be the other way around?

Last is "Dual Dragon" by Gary Kaufman (story & art). Kaufman was a fairly good artist & writer who did about a half a dozen or so stories around this time for Warren. The story features a man who tries to defeat a dragon to impress a girl. A blind old man living in a cave gives him a necklace which enables him to find the dragon, but it results in him killing the girl instead! Afterwards, with the necklace on his neck he looks for her but can't find her, even though her decapitated head is right in front of him.

Vampirella 13

A fairly good issue of Vampirella. It features one of Sanjulian's earliest covers for Warren. The frontis for this issue is "Vampi's Feary Tales: Lamiae" by Gary Kaufman.

Our Vampi story for this issue is "The Lurker in the Deep!" by Jose Gonzalez (art) and Archie Goodwin (story). Vampi joins the cruise of a famous playboy named Triton, who in actuality is luring victims to the ocean to be provided to a fish like demon that he has a pact with. Mistakenly thinking that Vampirella worships the evil god Chaos, he falls in love with her, but the jealous fish demon considers this a break of their pact and destroys his ship and him. Sandwiching this tale is short segments featuring Adam and Conrad Van Helsing. Conrad, at this point believing Vampi is responsible for his brother's death wants to kill her while Adam reveals that he's fallen in love with her. A fairly good Vampi story from early in its run.

Next is "From Death's Dark Corner" by Steve Hickman (art) and Gerry Conway (story). It features a mother and son who head to the swamp to feed a beast that lives there. The mother tells the son of how she met his father, who died shortly after his birth. It ends up however that the beast is her real son, and she gives him the boy to eat. Instead the beast, upset at her for abandoning him eats her!

Jose Bea's art debut is next, "The Silver Thief and the Pharoah's Daughter", written by Dean Latimer. The story is about a pharoah who orders a vault to be made with all his treasures. The vault architect creates a fault in it so his sons after his death can steal from it. They initially are successful, but one is trapped inside and is killed on purpose. His body is stolen to hide his identity, but the pharoah's daughter is able to uncover things. Ironically however the pharoah rewards the surviving son due to his intelligence, making him an advisor of his.

Next is "The Frog Prince" by Bill Dubay (story & art). A woman meets a talking frog who tells her he's a prince. She kisses him and he turns into a human and agrees to marry her. However it is soon revealed that as a human he can't speak, only croak!

Last is the issue's best story, "Eye of the Beholder" by Gary Kaufman (story & art). The story features an ugly countess who decides that a beautiful peasent girl is her property and hers to use to make herself beautiful. The countess has her doctors transfer the girl's body parts to her, such as her hair, teeth, etc... but each transplant is botched, making the countess even more ugly. By the end of the story she's a freakish blind hunchback, but finally does find a man in her similarly mishappen servant. Kaufman's best work out of the half a dozen or so jobs he did for Warren.