Welcome kiddies to the next exciting episode of Nasty Horror‘s blog. You’re about to wade hip-deep into my opinion.

Saying that horror comics are important to me is like saying that sucking is important to leeches. I love good comic’s. Especially horror. I swear to the living Beaver that when I get cut, I bleed ink. When I speak, balloons float above my head.

So when I whipped open this new rag made by Dark Horse (Creepy issue #1), who had the huge brass-ones to actually put the name Creepy across the top of this thing, I was excited, but concerned.  How close could they have gotten to recapturing the spirit of a rag that has come to be almost worshipped among it’s followers? The short answer is, not very.

Just ripping off the original wouldn’t have been a good continuation. It requires fresh blood, no pun intended. It requires new artists. Preferably ones that have studied and admired the old artists, and it requires new writers. Again, preferably ones that have studied and admired the old writers. Or, at the very least, don’t suck. (That last part may have been hoping for too much.)

The only story in the whole magazine that even came close to seeming like a Creepy story was the one on which the cover-art was based. It was well done, and sadly the only really good one in the mag.

Case in point, let me grab the magazine, tell you about these stories and why they suck.

The first story is badly drawn.  It’s  similar to old twilight zone plots, a young man discovers a power. And of course horrible things happen around him as a result. It’s a very short story almost a vignette, it doesn’t actually end.  That one sucks. (Oh, and it didn’t raise enough interest to make for a compelling serial either.)

The next one is as close to perfect as any story in this magazine gets.

It establishes the main characters quickly, and further establishes that they are ignorant, bigoted assholes.  So as the story progresses to the logical conclusion of them being supernaturally boned, it was quite satisfying.  It’s very classic, I liked it. It was drawn by Angelo Torres. Enough said.

The next story I hate to even talk about. Certain subjects require you really do them intelligently. Such as anything involving concentration camps. This waste of ink is called Chemical 13. There’s so much to complain about with this story that I’m not going to. The magazine would have been better without it.  The idea could have been interesting, but both the writing and the art blew so badly that you have to actually think hard to try and imagine what they even wanted the story to be.  I don’t know what to say about this. If you get the magazine, I’d be interested in knowing if you agree. And what you thought of it especially if you don’t agree with me. Next story…

This one is a good classic horror tale. Very much in the vein of what this magazine is supposed to be.  The whole thing works very well. It has a lot of action scenes throughout, and is paced nicely. I personally wish that the artwork were a little more rendered, but the style used in this piece works. It might qualify as the first ‘new‘ Creepy story. The art in this one was by Brian Churilla. I think this guy’s new, but I like his stuff. The next one isn’t even a story.

It’s a narrated rambling through a bit of horror history. It introduces a nice character, which I believe is the Niece of Creepy or some such. I like it. I like the artwork and like where it goes. It has kind of a MAD magazine feel to it.  It’s a short little piece to go from one story to another. It’s just a couple pages and is a nice transition, the only one in the entire book. I would like to have seen more of them. I think they researched it by reading old Hustler magazines, but the artist is quite good. It’s credited to Hilary Barta. I’ll be looking for her stuff.

The last tale is a very lovely Outer Limits type. it’s a good story.  I’ll have more to say about it in future posts.. The artwork looks good.  The writing is good. This single story could have been twice as long as it was and probably would have been better. But it was not a horror story. Oops!

So that’s the whole magazine kiddies!

Things I would like to see are consistent art quality, varied story length and mood. Full page text fiction would be nice once or twice per issue.  I would also like to see the container characters drawn by the same artist throughout the entire issue. As it stands they where just tacked on the opening and closing panels of each story in that artist’s style and had no visual cohesion. The whole issue felt like a collection of random shit stuck together in one cover. It has no overall feel of place.

They added an ass-load of characters to the “family” of the host, but there is no connection to any of them. I am hoping the next one will be better. They claimed that this issue was a year in the making. If that’s the best they can do in a year, I don’t expect much in three months. I would love to be wrong.

Of all of the horror magazines that I have seen, recently, this is the closest one to good. If you don’t have it, it’s definitely worth the five bucks.

I can’t give you a link to it. So please patronize your local comic book shop. If you have no local comic book shop, look around online for some place to buy it. ( I believe Dark Horse has an order page on their site.) If you have any interest in the genre, get this. Though flawed, it’s still a must have issue.

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