Archive for July, 2009

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.

Welcome to today’s post. In yesterday’s post I mentioned that today’s post would be about something that Dark Horse comics was doing. And it is. To avoid rambling on and on, which I am known to do, I’ll just say it flat out. Dark Horse comics is printing a new series of Creepy magazine.

I only found out about it very recently. I’m sure they were planning it for quite some time. I’m also sure they probably had a lot of press releases or some such about it already. But I didn’t take up the whole blogging thing until just recently. I therefore did not make newsgathering or research an ongoing part of my existence, as it is now.

I don’t have a lot of information about the new production. I will share with you what I know right now, and I’m sure there is a lot of stuff out there on the net about it already. The main reason I wanted to get this blog post out, was to let you know that I am watching this magazine. And I’m going to tell you about how I feel about it. As of right now I feel very excited about it.

Some of the things that make it very exciting for me include the fact that some of the original artists from the 1960’s series are on board for, at least, issue number one. And issue number one is going to actually be in the store. In two days, that is Wednesday July 15, 2009. That I’m excited is an understatement.

My feelings about it are, of course, mixed. If it’s good, it’s exactly what I’ve been wanting. If it’s not good, or more precisely, does not meet my personal expectations, then there’s a good chance I’ll be unnecessarily hard on it. Very much the way, Star Wars fans were unnecessarily hard on episode one.

So, what I know for sure about the new Creepy, is that it’s going to be a quarterly publication. It will have a cover price of $4.99, and some of the writers working on it are original writers. Some of the artists are original artists too, by that I mean artists from the original Creepy magazine. Angelo Torres and Bernie Wrightson being among them.

According to Dark Horse’s own website writers for issue number one include Neil Kleid, Joe Harris, Dan Braun, and Mike Woods. The artists for the new issue include Angelo Torres, Bernie Wrightson, Jason Shaun Alexander, and others. I hate to say this but as of this moment, I don’t know if Richard Corben is alive or not. (note-I checked, and he is still alive.) He was one of my favorites, and I hope he shows up in this thing at some point. Whether he does or not, I will be doing some posts about him in the future and some of his other works, not the least of which was in Heavy Metal magazine.

So if you’re wondering where I’m going to be for at least a few minutes on Wednesday, July 15, 2009. It will be at the local comic shop snarfing up a copy of this magazine. Once I get home I’ll shut all the doors and windows take the phone off the hook, make sure I’ll be undisturbed for awhile and dive in. If it’s any good. I’ll probably go back to the shop the next day and buy the rest of them. (Just to encourage Dark Horse to make more.).

So check back on this blog on, or shortly after, the 15th to get detailed reviews and opinions of this magazine.

Oh, I almost forgot, the image included in this blog post is from a copy of comic shop news. It’s a complimentary newspaper, which is printed to be given out at comic shops. I wasn’t sure at the time, if it would be, but it turns out that this image is actually the cover of the new creepy issue. The image you see here was cropped to remove the graphics that were placed on it. They said. “Comic shop news, Summer preview”., across the top. And then at the bottom of the page. It had the word creepy, using a standard typeface. If you want to see what the actual cover will look like go to Dark Horse’s website. And if you’d like to see the actual cover of the comic shop news Summer preview issue, go to your local comic shop and pick up a copy. It’s free.

Thank you so much for reading this. I will see all you people, on Wednesday!

PS — I forgot to mention the cover painting is done by Eric Powell.

This is as good as it gets. Although technically it is Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, Bernie’s artwork takes it to an entirely different level.

Let me tell you a little story…

I fell in love with horror comics around 1970, primarily due to the existence of two amazing titles published by Warren Publishing. They were “Creepy” and “Eerie”. Each was published bimonthly and they were staggered so that, together, they came out monthly. Get it? So one month would be “Creepy” and the next would be “Eerie” and the next “Creepy” again, and so on. ( I Will be talking about these a lot in future posts)

For a few years I was completely enamored by these magazines. Thicker than normal comics, but still comic-like. They where little black & white gems in a sea of otherwise, well… crap. I tried other horror titles and they all sucked. (All the ones I had access to. There may have been good ones that I didn’t know about, but I digress…)

The years slogged on, and I became less interested in these magazines until, somewhere around 1975 I stopped getting them.

For years I assumed that I had grown out of them. And I further assumed that they hadn’t really been that great, simply that I had been at just the right age to have liked them. Because later issues that I got just didn’t do it, for me.

More recently, I was remembering how much I used to love these things. Since I didn’t have them anymore, I went on a Creepy/Eerie hunt at the local shops. I found a few and bought them. They were disappointing. But they were also published in the 80s! Amazing to me, because I thought they had stopped much earlier. Still, I thought that I wanted to see the old ones, the ones that I had ACTUALLY had. After a bit of Ebaying I found some.

And guess what? They were stunning. Absolutely breath-taking. There was brushwork like I have seldom seen, and the use of grayscale was almost supernatural. These things should have a course taught around them. Even the stories were really good.

So, it turns out, that I had not out-grown them. They had changed into something different, and had become less interesting.

So, how does this relate to the subject of this post? Well, it should be very obvious that one of the things that changed in the magazines was the staff. In the best issues, and in the best times there were a handful of artists that performed miracles with ink and paint. I WILL be hitting each of them on this blog in time, but the one I MUST start with is Bernie Wrightson.

Looking through these old comics I realized that Mr. Wrightson almost single-handedly defined the comic zombie. His original stuff is like a reference book on every technique one would ever need to create really good horror images. Like I said, it doesn’t get any better than this.

In the 70’s, Mr. Wrightson decided to illustrate “Frankenstein”. He was not under contract for it, and no one was ‘art directing’ him. This is pure uncut Wrightson at his best. Many people consider this to be his greatest work. Many consider it to be the best book ever made in the history of all printing. (that last one would be me)

I had read about it and heard about it and looked for it and drooled about it, but I could not GET IT! It was long OOP and completely unobtainable. Until…

The hero enters the village riding a dark horse with a sly grin and a subtle metallic odor. (terrible sentence structure) But my subtle point is in 2008 Dark Horse publishing reprinted it! It is big and gorgeous and reasonably priced and I strongly suggest that you buy it immediately before you do anything else. (if you are even remotely interested in this sort of thing) Not only will you have some of the best artwork by one of the best artists in the genre, but you will have a classic of literature as well. And did I mention that the intro is by Stephen King? Well, it is.

The moment I found out it was in the shop I bought it, paying the entire $29.95 cover price plus tax. Over thirty bucks I spent on it. And I am exceedingly pleased with it. Now before I give you the good news, let me show you this clip from a published write up of it… Few works by comic-book artists have earned the universal acclaim and reverence that Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein was met with upon its original release in 1983. Twenty-five years later, this magnificent pairing of art and literature is still considered to be one of the greatest achievements made by any artist in the field. Now, Wrightson and Dark Horse Books are collaborating on a beautiful new hardcover edition of the book, published in a larger 9′ x 12′ format intended to show off the exquisitely detailed line art of one of the greatest living artists in comics today. This book includes the complete text of the original groundbreaking novel, and the original forty-seven full-page illustrations that stunned the world with their monumental beauty and uniqueness.

Now here’s the good news. If you buy this thing through my link (it goes to Amazon) you can get it for less than $20!) This is not a special deal just through me. Anyone can get it cheap through Amazon, but if you buy through my link it helps to support this blog and will let me know that there are people out there other than just me, who care about good horror comics and that I should really keep this up.

Oh yes… if you add something to the order to get the final total to at least $25 then the shipping can be free. The details are on Amazon about that.

Here’s the link. Click on it now and then feel free to browse around. This link will take you off my site. So you could open it in another tab if you wish.

Keep an eye out for the next interesting thing here. (hint-it’s what Dark Horse is up to right now)

Thank you so much for reading this, and please let me hear from you by making a comment.