While I guess there’s a bit of truth that Dark Horse
has become “the place where properties DC and Marvel loses the rights to go to
die”, look at all the fantastic collections of material, much of it never
before reprinted, that they’ve been putting out. There are few comic book
artists who have gotten as much mainstream recognition as Bernie Wrightson, and
hence, as many reprints as Wrightson has, but you know what? I don’t care! This
little hardcover collecting the work Bernie Wrightson did when he was at Warren
is fantastic. No enlarged or reduced
pages or panels, no garish coloring. Here’s everything as it as it was meant to
be seen. You know something has to be good when you buy it despite already
owning most of the stories contained therein!
A small caveat
though, is that, famous as Wrightson’s stories at Warren are, the amount of
actual stories he drew for the company is relatively small. A good chunk of the
book is made up of his covers, pin-ups, back-covers and frontispieces, as well
as stories where he was just the inker.
But anyway, on
to the stories:
Stories from Creepy:
-“The Black
Cat” from Creepy #62:
There have
been quite a few adaptations of The
Black Cat in comics over the years, and I don’t think this was even
Warren’s first! But damn, when you read the introduction where Bruce Jones
talks about Wrightson won over James Warren by intentionally withholding the
pages at first and showing him work he’d done as a teenager, you believe it!
Who wouldn’t be blown away by work like this?
It’s a pretty
straightforward adaptation of the story with almost no changes, but what do you
expect from a story as done to death as this? Gorgeous stuff.
Most memorable scene: When the narrator
kills his wife. Ugh! That hurts just looking at it. Note how there’s no blood;
it’s the sheer furor that sells it.
-“Jenifer”
from Creepy #63:
This is the
infamous shocker which got made into a Masters
of Horror episode (aka “The only worthwhile thing Dario Argento has done in
years”) and always gets cited when people bring up horror comics stories along
with Hoppin’ Down the Bunny Trail and
The Monster of Dead End Street. It's so popular Wrightson actually gets sketch requests of it.
Truth
be told, as good as the script by Bruce Jones is, I’ve never really gotten into
Wrightson’s art that much in this story. It’s great, but I always found the
titular character more comical-looking/pitiable rather than frightening,
although that’s sort of the point, I guess.
The story is
about a wealthy family man who rescues a deformed and (apparently) retarded
girl from being killed in the woods by shooting a man. Not wanting to face a
scandal, he buries the body and “adopts” the girl, who he names Jenifer.
Jenifer seems to exert a hypnotic influence on the man, making him overlook all
the horrible things she does to his family, eventually causing them to leave.
Half-horrified and half-attracted to her (Jenifer has quite a body), the man and Jenifer hit the road, with the man
trying to escape but always coming back no matter what, sometimes out of pity,
sometimes out fear, with each night a living hell of cheap motels,
female-on-male rape and the dead bodies of Jenifer’s victims. Yes, it’s a story
designed solely to prey on male anxieties about being dominated and a fear of
“ugly” women, but it’s so hauntingly, unrelentingly bleak that you won’t even
think to criticize the cliché ending.
Most memorable scene: When Jenifer
decides to get “frisky”. This is probably comicdom’s most sickening rape scene.
Oh, by the
way, “feminist” community Scans_Daily sees Jenifer as the real rape victim and
completely ignores everything about
the story in order to suit their “head-canons”. I wish I was kidding:
All of these dissenters have probably been banned now
-“Clarice” from Creepy
#77:
A man whose
wife accidentally died in a blizzard returns, but is she after revenge? And
which of them is truly dead? Told entirely in rhyme.
Not much to
say about this one either in terms of art or story (it is only 5 pages, with
four panels to each page), but I do like Wrightson’s snow effects and how he
tries to downplay the horror aspects to fit the romantic, melancholy mood of
the story.
Most memorable scene: I usually try to
avoid spoilers, but the last two panels manage to be surprisingly emotional,
although the ending doesn’t really make sense to me.
-“Country Pie” from Creepy #83:
This one was
actually drawn by Carmine Infantino and only inked by Wrightson. It’s about a
woman hunting down a serial killer. We see a woman who is apparently the one
tracking the killer, hitchhiking
undercover along with her ‘little brother’, getting in a car with a man
who is apparently the killer on a lonely, country road. Seems pretty reckless
bringing a child along on such a mission, and we never see how our undercover
girl is communicating with the police.
Sure enough,
there’s a twist, and I’m going to go ahead and give it away. The girl and her
little brother are the killers, the man is just a horny travelling salesman and
the woman hunting the killer is actually a psychic observing this all from
afar. Oddly enough, there’s a happy ending. Pretty weak overall and the
misdirections are obvious.
Infantino
would later draw a much better (or at least, more atmospheric) story about a
serial killer targeting travelling salesmen. Wrightson’s hand can barely be
felt.
Most memorable scene: When the salesman
is thrown into a lake and observes the corpses of all the other victims. “Sis”
must be a good swimmer to have tied them all down like that.
-“Dick Swift and his Electric Power Ring” from Creepy #86: A terminally ill young boy
is comforted by the author of his favorite dime novel hero as he lies dying.
However, the author has a secret: The electric power ring from the stories is
real, and he gives it to the boy. I’m not spoiling this one.
This is a
very sad, sentimental story that nevertheless manages to be uplifting. Warren
re-used this plot several times, but this time was the best. Infantino &
Wrightson’s styles mesh perfectly this time, capturing the mix of sadness and
childlike wonder that pervades the story.
Most memorable scene: The ending, but
since I’m not going to spoil it, I’ve decided to focus on the glimpses of the dime
novel itself, which are pretty funny (and spot on if you’ve ever seen any 19th
century dime novels) even though it looks more like a comic book.
-“A Martian Saga” from Creepy #87:
A stranded astronaut
with a rapidly dwindling air supply is welcomed by a Martian tribe,
kills a monster, saves a girl, is rewarded with sex, then dies from lack of
oxygen.
There are
worse ways to go.
Kidding
aside, this is a good one, not so much for the story, but for the way it’s
told. There’s no dialogue and everything is written in limericks. I love when
writers mix comics with poetry, but I love it even more when the poetry is
good, and Nicola Cuti’s certainly is. The subject matter may be a bit far
afield from what you’d expect from Wrightson, but it’s still beautifully drawn,
and with just one look at the ‘Martian monster’ (that looks more like a werewolf)
you know you’re in Wrightson territory. Dig the full page, thin panels too on
every page, similar to “Clarice”’s four panels-a-page grid. Wrightson’s layout
skills are underrated.
Most memorable scene: Our hero’s tragic
death. Like I said, there are worse ways to go.
-“The Laughing Man” from Creepy #95:
A disheveled
explorer staggers out of the African jungle and relates the strange tale of
what happened to him and his partner, Briggs. The two were on a quest to find a
tribe of intelligent apes to bring back to a freak show, which Briggs hoped to
infiltrate by skinning and dressing up as one. Unfortunately, the apes were
watching, and strong adherents to the old phrase “Monkey see, Monkey do”…
If you can
overlook that Wrightson’s art here is cartoonish to the point of caricature,
this is easily the, well, creepiest of his stories for Creepy. I’m not including a “most memorable scene” for this one. It
needs to be seen all its own. Rarely has the image of a smirking gorilla been
so scary, and an excellent way to end Wrightson’s work for the magazine.
Part of me
likes to think the scene of Briggs dressing up in the hollowed gorilla’s skin
was inspired Tintin in the Congo.
Huh, first boy’s adventure dime novels, now Herge. The writers for Creepy sure loved turn-of-the-century
kid’s stuff.
Stories from Eerie:
-“The Pepper Lake Monster” from Eerie #58: A tourist sailing on Pepper Lake runs afoul of the
legendary monster of Pepper Lake and decides to capture it, gradually becoming
more and more obsessed. His plan seems to be working, but perhaps the monster
is not the biggest problem he has to face…
This is hands
down my favorite stand-alone Wrightson work. Sure there are little flaws here
and there (Pepper Lake must be the size of one of the great lakes to fit that
thing in it), but damn if the drawings of the monster and our hero’s
increasingly obsessive attitude still aren’t drawn beautifully. I’m a sucker
for lake/sea monster stories in comics (I even considered making it the theme
for one past Halloween before realizing there were several I’d overlooked), and
this one, with its cynical but perfectly believable twist, is easily the best
of them.
Most memorable scene: There are plenty,
but the splash itself is simply incredible. Every medieval mapmaker whoever
scrawled a sea serpent would be jealous:
Here it is in
color:
-“Nightfall” from Eerie #60: A young boy named Nemo is harangued night after night by
a group of goblins, then by his parents for waking them up. The goblins insist
they just want to play, but Nemo knows better.
I usually
love stories about primal childhood fears, but this one is just okay. The
design of the goblins looks unintentionally comical. Just look at the one in
the splash pages’ tail:
Looks like a
man in a saggy suit.
If you overlook that though, it’s a lot of fun. The
boy’s name and a few clever visual gags provide the set-up for this to be a
wonderfully dark parody of Winsor McKay’s Little
Nemo, but it never goes far enough. Still, you have to love that wash work.
Most memorable scene: The Little Nemo
shout-out, by far.
Dime novels,
Tintin and now Little Nemo. Yeah, someone at Warren was definitely a big fan of
turn-of-the-century children’s entertainment. Love it.
-“Cool Air” from Eerie #62
Coming away
from comics beloved in countries that don’t like comics or speak English, we come
to the world of pulp magazines with this adaptation of Lovecraft’s Cool Air, the story of a man made
immotal being keeping himself frozen temperatures, which has had a number of
retellings in comics (and what do you think inspired Mr. Freeze?), but this is
the best.
Most memorable scene: The money-shot at
the end:
Oh come on, even if you’ve never read Lovecraft’s
story, how did you think a story about a man kept alive by the cold would end?
-“Reuben Youngblood: Private Eye in: Beware the
Scarlet Combine” from Eerie #72:
Depression
era private eye Rueben Youngblood accepts a job as a bodyguard for some wealthy
Germans having a party on a zeppelin, shortly after his partner was murdered by
a blood cult called The Scarlet Combine. Little does he know that the Combine
is closer than he thinks...
I was
initially hesitant about this one since it’s really more of a detective
story/pulp parody than outright horror, but it’s actually my favorite in this
volume of the stories I haven’t read before, mostly because it’s so different.
The writing tries a little too hard to create a period atmosphere, but it’s
still a fun read. I could easily see this being a decent poverty row horror
movie, or serial. Also, Wrightson’s art is excellent. He apparently relished
the chance to draw a good old fashioned adventure story.
Most memorable scene: The escape from
and destruction of the zeppelin. If you’re wondering why Youngblood and his
lady friend are dressed like that, it’s because of a costume party.
-“The Muck Monster” from Eerie #68:
A
Frankenstein-like mad doctor creates a monster from a blob which came to earth
on a meteor, but the blob is sentient and realizes it has no place in the world
of man, and thus refuses to come to “life” despite the scientist’s methods. The
doctor hacks the creature up in frustration and dissolves it in acid, dumping
it outside, but instead it oozes into a nearby cemetery and fuses with a long
dead corpse. Now having been brought to life against its will for real, the ‘creature’
sets out to find a purpose….
Despite the
title, this story manages to be a melancholy, surprisingly, optimistic blending
of both the blob monster and Frankenstein archetypes, with maybe a little
inspiration from The Incredible Shrinking
Man, at least as far as the ending goes (“To God there is no Zero” pretty
much sums this whole thing up). Good as the story is, the real draw, is of
course, Wrightson. Along with “The Pepper Lake Monster”, it’s the most
beautifully drawn of all the stories here, and like the Arcane stories in Swamp Thing #2-3, feels like a dry-run
for Wrightson’s later Frankenstein illustrations, but even more so. The ‘Muck
Monster” is virtually identical to Wrightson’s Monster, and the unnamed
scientist is also identical to his Victor:
Even the damn
test tubes are similar!
This is also the only story here printed in color.
Wrightson was reportedly unhappy with the coloring, but it doesn’t really
obscure any detail. Finding black and white copies of this story isn’t
difficult anyway. In fact, if you’re really curious, you can buy the recent
“Artist’s Edition” from Fantagraphics (I thought they hated horror comics over
there? Must need the money) which reproduces Wrightson’s original art in
full:
Currently
going on Amazon for the cheap, cheap price of $74.99. At that price, why not
buy two?
Most memorable scene: The liquefied
creature “leaking” down a mountain.
Just the panel layout alone is breath-taking.
That’s the
end of the stories reproduced in this volume, the rest of the book is mostly
covers and introductory splash pages. Some are good, some are a little too
cartoon-y for my tastes.
All in all,
while some of the stories are a bit better than others, everything here is just
of such high quality it is impossible not to love this volume. I give it a full
5/5.
Now if only DC would
put out a Wrightson collection like this…
Happy Halloween!
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