Archive for September, 2009

What should have been a week, became almost a month. Yes, kiddies, it was last month that I made the commitment to review each and every story in Dark Horse’s Creepy issue #1. I had two reasons for doing this.

The first was my mistaken belief that it would help me get used to writing everyday. It didn’t.

The second, was the need to really bitch out loud about a couple of the stories in the magazine. I wanted people to see that I could do more than just bitch. I hoped that writing reviews of the good stories would balance it out. That didn’t work either.

Free at Last…

The issue is over. Save this last couple sentences I never need to write about it ever again. Let’s get the last review out of the way quickly, shall we?

The last story in this new horror anthology was a reprint. It was called Daddy And The Pie. It may have been cool in the fifties or whenever it was originally carved on a cave wall, but in 2009 it just doesn’t cut it. Written by Who Cares, and illustrated by I. Dongiv Ashit.

I originally thought the story was one of the better ones in the rag. But that has changed. It was not a horror story. It was not new. It should not have been there.

When Creepy Did Not Suck…

The real Creepy magazine (Creepy TOS) had twice the number of pages as the new one does. If they are going to keep the page count so damned low, they don’t have room for reprints.

Many have said that it’s so wonderful that there are no ads in it. I disagree. Add about 20 pages even if they are all ads. The magazine will be better. I like seeing other things of interest. I think of ads as a service to me, not an imposition. (unless they’re Join-the-Fuckin-Army ads.) But if they are ads for things that I would like and otherwise would not know about, bring them on! I have no clue how often the best thing in some of the comics I have read has been the ads, but it’s pretty often that’s for sure.

Now that I have gotten this unnecessary challenge out of the way I get to write about things that are actually good. I recently got 2 new comics that are very good indeed. One of them is House Of Mystery and the other is Darkness: Pitt.

Come back soon kiddies and you will hear about good horror, and see way better images.

Oh, and the next issue of Creepy comes out in October (Joy). Let’s hope these guys have read my posts and improved the mag. I will buy it of course, because it’s my damned job. But if this one doesn’t show a marked improvement over the last one, I will not be as nice about the whole thing as I have been.

I need a shower.

Welcome back kiddies. Can you remember all the way back to the second or third article in this series, where I told you that when I got to the second last story. You have to remind me about something? Well this is it. This is the second last story. It’s also my second last article. The Horse at this point has been reduced almost to the point of a puddle. But I do have to get the last couple whacks in.

Then, I can finally get on to some more very interesting comic books that I found recently. The story I’m talking about today, is titled Loathsome Lore “Faustian deals”. It basically is a rambling narrative, which speculates about certain celebrities having been in league with the devil.

It’s interesting comic books stuff. The story is credited as “Haufner, Braun, and Gore. And the art is by Hilary Barta. As I said in a previous article, much of the writing in this particular piece seems to have been lifted from a 1974 issue of Hustler magazine. (That was the one in which they had the article, about Anton Szandor LaVey).

Now I have to complain about an editorial decision made in the magazine. As I said before, I had never heard of Robert Johnson before the story Hell Hound Blues. I naturally thought it was just made up for the story. That story was the second story in the magazine, Faustian deals was the second last. But in it it referenced the deal that Robert Johnson made with the devil.

I believe these two stories should have been switched in position, for two reasons. The first is that it would’ve allowed Loathsome Lore to introduce the concept of Robert Johnson’s deal with the devil before it was used in a story.

The second and possibly more important reason to switch these two stories is that Hell Hound Blues is the best story in the magazine. It should have been second last. Well, actually, it should’ve been last. But second last still would’ve been better.

As for the writing of this particular tale. It seems interesting enough. It is not however a story. I like it. But it really is not a story. The artwork is its saving grace and is unquestionably the best artwork in the entire magazine (not including the frontispiece by Bernie Wrightson).

Hallelujah! Although I’m not quite finished with this horse, yet. I feel are renewed vigor. I’m into the home stretch. There is only one more story to talk about and that one’s going to be pretty easy, because it’s a reprint. Yes kiddies, they didn’t even bother closing with something new.

The tale in question, Daddy And The Pie will have to wait for the next post. Only then will I be able to inflict the final whack.

Be careful driving home, and remember – time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.

I like to talk about comics here, but I rarely source them.  That is I don’t usually tell you where to get a copy.

This New blog I found seems to pretty weel just do that.  He includes reviews of actual customers of the works and it seems like a good place to find Horror Comics to buy.

Go there now and check it out.

I am still doing the ongoing review of Dark Horse’s Creepy issue #1. This is day 5. Today I will be talking about All The Help You need. It is one of the good stories so I don’t need to say much about it.

You may be wondering about the image accompanying this post. It is from the story under discussion. But it is not colored in the magazine. In looking over my last few posts I noticed that all the images have been gray scale. That’s what the book is. But on the blog it gets monotonous (snicker). So I figured screw it, and colored the picture myself. Further down the post you can see a different example that I left alone.

The author of this story is Neil Kleid. He has won awards for being awesome. And in this story he did not disappoint. It’s a great story. He’s a good writer, and if you look him up on Google you can find a lot of his earlier works. I will be seeking more of his stuff.

The other guy is obviously a good illustrator, which you can tell just by looking at this story, but what a lot of people don’t know is that he did not originally start out to be an artist.

Just after the war…

Brian was born in 1953 just after the United States lifted the ban on selling rubber. This was fortunate for his family, because his father had been a freelance rubber salesman before the war.  Since the United States entry into WWII his dad was forced into alternative lines of work such as going door to door and begging for dust. Also, after spending his last money on a mail-order trade school, his father tried his hand at fish grooming, but was unable to get the necessary equipment because of all the fish clippers being sent to troops fighting in the south Pacific.

By the time Brian was 6, his father was back on top of the rubber game. With his father often gone for weeks on end and his mother too drunk to stop him, Brian took a great interest in tap dancing and the making of unusual noises using only his hands.

He graduated from the East Albert High School with a full tap-dancing scholarship. He then attended New Smithville University where he found himself unable to keep up with the demands of college English.

Although a brilliant tap-dancer, he lost is scholarship his second year due to the English Professor being an “asswipe”. In later interviews Brian referred to that Professor as “the cocksucker [who] had it in for me”.

Dazed, and still a little hung-over, he was wandering from door to door trying to find his girlfriend’s apartment when he noticed a circus recruitment poster in the local drugstore window.

The following morning he enlisted in Barnum & Bailey’s and became Willy the Tap-Dancing Clown.

Unfortunately for Willy, tap shoes don’t work on sawdust. After an agonizing three weeks of stomping almost to the point of exhaustion, just to try to make a sound, he was forced to juggle.

Again his natural talents came to his aid. Although two dead weasels in a burning wet sack could juggle better then he, the strange noises emanating from his hands whenever he managed to actually catch a ball made him a crowd favorite. After only 8 short months on the road he was promoted to King of the Circus and given a hand wash and wax, as was the custom.

By the late 60s the lesser circuses had all but shut down and even his was feeling the pinch from lack of public interest. Then if the failing circus wasn’t enough, he got caught up in an elephant molestation scandal.

A woman that he had fired several months earlier, accused him publicly of fondling the elephants. He denied the allegations, but by the time he was cleared of all charges the circus was unrecoverable.

He hanged himself in his own studio a year later.

His younger brother, Ned, found him still alive. He cut him down and called an ambulance. The doctor on call said that had Ned arrived a few days later, or had Brian hanged himself by the neck, rather than the nut-sack, he would have died.

Brian was placed into an asylum after that, where he remains to this day.

Wait…

That was Brian Chinchilla. The guy who drew this was Brian Churilla. Nevermind.

Point is I don’t need to write anything about this story. It’s great and both the people involved are very talented guys.

Look at the artwork, then go buy the book. I have two more stories to review and they are both good.

Tune in tomorrow kids for Loathsome Lore: Faustian Deals.

Is that brimstone I smell?

No.

I had eggs and beer last night.