Archive for January, 2010

Another gorgeous cover from Eric Powell.

Welcome back kiddies!

Well, as some of you may remember. I did, not only a review of the original Creepy, but I revisited it several times and in doing so did a review of each and every tale  in Dark Horse’s resurrected classic Creepy, issue number one. This is a new imagining in the tradition of the old EC style comics, more specifically in the vein of a few lovely comics published throughout the 60s and 70s by Warren publishing,

Dark Horse has apparently gotten rights to a lot of the original Creepy and Eerie material . Eerie was a sister publication to Creepy. Creepy was published bimonthly and Eerie was published bimonthly as well. So that each one would come out the month that the other one did not. The end result being a monthly horror comic. Very clever idea.

The new Dark Horse’s Creepy is supposed to come out quarterly. The second issue took a month longer than it was supposed to get the stores. I am told by the personable and brilliant gentleman who runs the comic book store (who, by way of fact, has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all things comic.) that Dark Horse, often runs late on publication dates. I never fault a company for having practical issues they have to deal with. It’s lateness originally annoyed me, but only because I was afraid it wouldn’t come out at all. Once it finally hit the stands. I bought it.

Like the first one, it has 48 pages, all black-and-white except for the cover, which is again illustrated by Eric Powell, who I believe I’ve praised heavily from the first issue. He does beautiful work and I’m interested in doing some reviews on his other works. Maybe even an interview with him about his pre-Creepy works. Comment heavily if you want interviews.

Issue number one had 48 fear filled pages, whereas, issue number two has 48 pages of bloodsoaked terror, I don’t know about you, but I vastly prefer bloodsoaked terror to fear filled pages.

I don’t intend to beat this particular horse. This publication, which I am holding in my hand right now as I’m writing this has a cohesiveness that the first one did not achieve. The first one looked like a bunch of random crap slapped together between two covers. This one looks like it was meant to be between these two covers, if it sounds to you like I’m leading up to a good review of number two. You have a good ear. (or eye, if you are not having this read to you)

Eric Powell did a beautiful job on the cover. I love it. The contents of this issue are six stories. Although one of them isn’t a story. It is a vignette about the history of horror. That’s the Loathsome Lore, and one of them was not made originally for this publication. It’s actually a reprint from the old Creepy Magazine, and this is something else that I have to talk about.

In the original,(Dark Horse Creepy Issue #1) they screwed the pooch on this last one. I had read through a mediocre magazine and the last story in it, a reprint from a classic era of this magazine, was a science fiction, not  horror. It was very disappointing to all concerned. Someone at Dark Horse is actually reading my blog.  Or (more likely) my opinion reflects popular opinion. Therefore they heard a lot of people saying the same things as I.

	This guy is up to something.

The opening story is titled  Human Nature and a character named Walter fancies himself a great judge of character.  He stands in a crowded area looking at one person after another and imagines  their stories. What’s going on in their head, and so forth. He makes a judgment call on a person that turns out to be completely wrong and the consequences of how the story turns out afterward, at the very least, belong in this magazine.

The second story is a beautiful idea, everything about it is done really well. The the title is Muscle-Car and involves a car that runs on meat. You can probably guess where this one goes, but you really have to see it get there. It’s done really well and in this particular case, the harsh black-and-white style works. Next one.

The third story in the book is called Drawn-Out. This one is an absolute classic, instantly recognizable as the style and genre and the way these things are supposed to be. I can’t say enough about it. I may have to do another review just talking about how good this is and why.

Then we come to the one I was worried about part two of The Curse. longtime fans of me will remember the curse as being the single stinkiest story in the entire first issue. It stank on ice, and I said that at that time, Because both of the men involved usually do amazing work, it was weird that this sucked so hard.. Fortunately it wasn’t the first story in the magazine, this time. It was relegated to fourth place.

I also mentioned that the artwork and the writing were so bad that when they got to the “shocking” end panel you couldn’t tell if his mother was dead, or just ugly or rotted. Or if she died just at that moment or she’d been dead for hundreds of years. So, I must quote Uncle Creepy. “When we last saw poor Jude, his boring life had taken a terrible, twisting turn. Soon after discovering he had the power to manipulate reality and make people think something was real, that really wasn’t… he found out his mother had been manipulating his own reality all along. His mother was dead. He’d been living a lie. But then, that’s the way things go when you’re saddled with… The Curse part two.”

So they explained what wasn’t clear in the first episode. That helped.

The artwork isn’t anywhere near as annoying as it was in the first one. Some of the panels are actually good. The main character still has a slimy persona. We find out that he killed his mother and then hangs around some weird friends and toward the end he does some kind of perverted justice on somebody. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it to get his jollies by hurting someone. Or if he was actually saving someone from somebody else’s dark fantasy. Tough call, but at least it’s more interesting than the first one was.

Now I see there will be a third one. So all I can hope is that we’ll also be interesting. I also hope it will be the last one.

The second last piece is Loathsome Lore and is just a little overview of some old torture devices with nice illustrations of people being tortured with such devices. This one is done by Angelo Torres. I love Angelo Torres art, but Hilary Barta did a much better job Although, that being said, this is still gorgeous. It’s not a matter of comparing a good artist or bad artist. It’s a matter of comparing an artist with one style to an artist with a different style and both good. I merely think that Hilary’s style worked better for this piece.

I don’t know if this caption really needs another caption, but I did it anyway.

Then we come to The Shadow of the Axe. This story is absolutely gorgeous. I don’t know what it was originally taken from, other than Creepy. The artwork is flawless, has a lot of really good lighting. Excellent use of onomatopoeia.

If any one of these stories had been in issue number one, it would have made the entire issue worth the five bucks. Now imagine having all five of these in one magazine. They could charge $25 for this magazine, and it would be worth every penny. I don’t know about you, but I’m stoked. I’m chomping at the bit I can’t wait to get my hands on number three. (but given the Horse’s tendency to miss deadlines, I’m sure I will be waiting quite a while)

…one more thing.

I remember complaining about their choice of shiny stock in the first issue. It might be my imagination, although the stock in the new issue is as smooth and seems almost as thin. It does have a little bit more body, I’m not sure if they actually did use a slightly better paper. Or if this was a normal anomaly of manufacturing or if maybe the contents of the magazine impressed me so much it made me think it was better paper. In any case, I love love love this issue. If I can figure out any way to do it there will be a link here for you to be able to buy it. If not then go to your local comic book dealer and ask for it if you don’t see it. I am definitely on board for Creepy number three, which should be out sometime in late January or February.(If we’re lucky)

Please join me again tomorrow kiddies, when I will be talking about something other than Creepy. I’ve been finding a lot of good websites out on the net with some very nice horror related stuff. I also found new comic books with a lot of good horror stuff. I intend to get the hardcover books by Roman dirge of the collected Works of Lenore, which have now been colored (they were originally black and white, duh). I also have all four issues of the new Richard Corben Work, called Star: The Slayer.