Customer Reviews

Creepy Archives Volume 5

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The following stories collected in this volume were already printed in Dark Horse's Eerie Archives. Personally, I like the volumes of both Creepy and Eerie, but I'd rather only pay for the stories once.

Creepy #21: Room With A View! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 6p reprinted from Eerie #3 (May 1966)

Creepy #24: Black Magic [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 8p reprinted from Eerie #5 (Sept. 1966)
The Day After Doomsday! [Archie Goodwin/Dan Adkins] 8p reprinted from Eerie #8 (Mar. 1967)
Typecast! [Archie Goodwin/Jerry Grandenetti] 7p reprinted from Eerie #8 (Mar. 1967)

Creepy #25: Witches' Tide [Archie Goodwin/Gene Colan] 8p reprinted from Eerie #7 (Jan. 1967)
It That Lurks! [Archie Goodwin/Dan Adkins] 6p reprinted from Eerie #7 (Jan. 1967)
Deep Ruby! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 6p reprinted from Eerie #6 (Nov. 1966)

Information care of Richard J. Arndt's Warren Comics bibliography.

There was a time when mentioning the words vampire and werewolf would send young girls screaming in fright rather than making them all dreamy-eyed with thoughts of eternal, brooding romance and visions of Edward and Jacob swimming in their heads.

There was a time when these monsters were considered so frightening and dangerous that they were not allowed in regular comics, until the clever James Warren and Russ Jones figured that the way around this rule was to publish them at regular magazine size and thus evade the Comics Code Authority. The result of this bit of ingenuity was the horror comic magazines Creepy and Eerie from Warren Publishing.

Dark Horse continues their archive collection of Warren's Creepy with volume five, which collects issues 21-25 from July 1968 to February 1969. Each issue features six to nine horror-themed short stories that have no continuing plots or characters.

By all accounts, these issues cover a dark period in Creepy history (and not in a good, dark way). Editor Archie Goodwin had left the magazine after issue #17, and he took most of his stable of fantastic writers and artists with him--including cover-artist extraordinaire Frank Frazetta and such regular comics luminaries as Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, Alex Toth, and Wally Wood.

The departure of these creative talents, along with the increased costs of the pulp paper used to print the magazine, was a blow to Warren. The company struggled to keep Creepy afloat by combining extensive reprints with whatever talent they could find to create new stories. There was a clear decline in quality that would last until the success of Vampirella rekindled the coffers and the creative fires of Warren Publishing. Additionally, Goodwin returned as editor with issue #35.

Because of this dark part of Warren's history, the stories in Creepy Archives Volume Five are hit-and-miss--with some rough gems tucked in amongst the forgettable whole. One of the prime attractions of this collection is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls." However, at only ten pages, there isn't really enough length for this story to shine.

Artist Tom Sutton was able to come out from under Frank Frazetta's shadow to provide one of Creepy's most classic covers for issue #22, which shows a bunch of fresh-faced schoolboys digging up a rotting corpse from a graveyard. The story that accompanies Sutton's cover, "No Fair," is the best in the book. Sutton would later go one to be the chief artist for Vampirella.

Far too many of the stories feature some predictable twist on the "Shock! I'm a Vampire" or "Shock! I'm a Werewolf!" motif. Sometimes these twists were clever, like what happens to a werewolf astronaut who goes to the Moon, and what happens when a lonely vampire signs up for a computer dating service.

The Devil pops up quite a bit as well in some interesting places, as do Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden.

One of my favorite things about these Dark Horse Creepy Archives is how they preserve the entire comic, advertisements, fan letters, and all. I still can't believe there was a time when you could send away for a "Real Live Monkey" for only $19.95 from the Captain's Club, or that a lifetime membership in the Creepy Fan Club cost only a dollar.

Additionally, the fans of that era were none-to-shy about expressing their displeasure at the decline of Creepy's quality; the letters-of-comment pages are full of complaints. If only they could have seen a few issues into the future and glimpse the return to glory that awaited them!

I shouldn't say that Dark Horse preserved the entire magazine, however. Because this era was so rife with reprints, much of the material originally published has already been presented in an earlier volume of the Creepy Archives series, and so the reprinted stores are not collected here. On the title page, there is a short note next to the stories indicating which Archives edition the reprinted story can be found in.

If you are a collector of both Eerie and Creepy, you will notice some duplicates in the collections as several of the Archie Goodwin reprints in this issue originally appeared in Eerie. Dark Horse had made the policy of presenting each story only once in that respective series, but if a story appeared in both Creepy and Eerie, then it shows up in both Archive editions.

The collected edition retains the original size of the magazine, making it a nice heavy hardback. The dust jacket cover is another lovely Sutton creation from issue #23, although I personally would have gone with the creepier cover from issue #22. Nice glossy paper makes the black-and-white images shine even more than in their original publication.

If you are going to get only one of the Creepy Archives, than this is definitely not the one to get. The earlier volumes were superior under Archie Goodwin, and these issues represent a time when the franchise was struggling. However, if you are a fan of the series in general, you definitely won't want to skip this volume, as there is enough here to make it worth your while.

I love what Dark Horse is doing as far as reproducing Creepy and Eerie magazines but with this new volume, there is way too many reprints of material originally published when Archie Goodwin was the editor. Goodwin was truly a legend but his leaving Warren left a major hole that took quite some time to recover from. I guess the only way Warren could keep going at the time was by issuing reprints and publishing some new stories. There are some very good stories in this volume but I'm really looking forward to future volumes when you can get original stories all the time.

The reprints were needed as Warren was having money trouble at this time. The reprints filled in the area that would have been blank. At around issue 30 of CREEPY the reprints stop and the stories start to mature more. More blood and guts and a little later even the curse words like $&!% and %*(#$$** were actually spelled out. Then a little later a little nudity nothing nasty but added to the story lines. Now I feel that the idea of the books being presented again 5 issues per book that if there was a reprint in the original the new reprint should be include the reprint making the issue it appears whole completing the archive. Am I right? I certainly hope DARK HORSE reprints all of the CREEPY and EERIE issues to the last number.
Remember Warren started to add a color story at one point. These books are worth every dime even if they had a reprint in them. One last statement. DARK HORSE is doing such a knock out job with these books. Remember (some of you do the thrill of getting a new CREEPY EERIE or VAMPIRELLA off the magazine racks and the smell of the paper and the way they just felt in your hands.) Yeah I'm nuts. The same with these new hard bound books they should be complete even with the few reprints.
I will continue buying them until the last is offered. I just wish that DARK HORSE would buy VAMPIRELLA from who is it Harris Comics and reprints it in them same fashion as CREEPY and EERIE. All 3 of the best together again!!

I read this Creepy Vol 5 just after reading Eerie Vol 1.

This Creepy volume indeed contains reprinted material from the Eerie volume. All the stories in the Eerie volume were good to excellent, and very well illustrated.

By contrast, this Creepy volume contained poorly scripted tales and not particularly well-illustrated, discounting the reprinted stories.

Eventually, the sameness of the horror and gore became routine and started to bore after a while.

I CANT THANK DARK HORSE ENUFF FER REPRINTING THE WARREN MAGS. hOPE THE DO THE SAME WITH SKYWALD. hOWEVER, SINCE WARREN WENT THRU A ROUGH PATCH FINANCIALLY FOR A TIME AND HAD TO INCLUDE REPRINTS OF EARLIER STORIES, BUYING THIS VOLUME, ESPECIALY IF YOU OWN THE FIRST 4 VOL. OF CREEPY AND THE FIRST TWO OF EERIE IS A RIP OFF. for those too young to have the original mags, i heartily recommend the first 4 creepy and first two volumes of eerie. The stories and artwork are superior to the legendary ec line.