Tuesday, January 3, 2017

The Classic Creeps

Hope everyone is having a great new year so far, and as you can see things are certainly shaping up nicely around here with the addition of my new assistant performing a sensational bang-up job in making THOIA's archive so much easier to navigate. Yes, roaming our dusty, web draped halls in search of that one particular story you loved but forgot the name of, but you knew it was about a werewolf, or it was drawn by whoever, will now be that much easier (hopefully) to unearth as well. Continued kudos of eternal gratitude to Nequam for volunteering in doing what everyone has always said would be the impossible-- going back and tagging nearly 2,000 THOIA posts! Do you have any other comments, thoughts, or suggestions about our progress? Drop us a line! And as we progress in one sector of this scarifying domain, least we forget to continue with the spook stories as well-- shortly before xmas I was asked to share some Skywald Horror-Mood, and that was exactly how I had planned to kick off the new year, but things took a slight delay with an unfortunate illness etc etc. Anyway, let The Classic Creeps ring in 2017 proper, from the Sept '73 issue of Psycho #14 --with possibly more Skywald in our next post as well!

Stay tombed...





























12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder where the stills from "Dracula" really come from? The one looks like a publicity photo or a stage play shot.

Also, "What IS it about that guy that... that RINGS A BELL?" after seeing him as Quasimodo?! Cute, Hewetson. Very cute.

john said...

did everyone notice the little girl got mowed down as well. well done cops. never a one for a happy ending was Al Hewetson.

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brian Barnes said...

Ah, I love me some "Horror Mood." Dark Horse will be done with it's reprint of Creepy/Eerie, it should do the Skywald magazines. Karswell, use your sway in the industry to make that happen :)

This one has some great B&W artwork in it, very much like earlier Warren mags (Warren absolutely hated Hewetson as Hewetson left his employee after being a writer at Warren to start up the Skywald line.)

This is very much the typical story Hewetson wanted to tell, no real twist, just a dark and "moody" story. He had a real gift for those.

Guy Callaway said...

Man...Hewetson...sure...loved...his...pauses.
Intfantcide aside, a neat story with very cool art.
Incredibly similar to the '80 film 'Fade To Black', about...a deranged horror fan*...who dresses...as his favorite...movie creeps...to kill!!

*Not an "ordinary degenerate pervert" for sure.

Dr. Theda said...

We love this story... have posted it several times !!! one from my childhood... and its cove log gone... thanks for posting the cover... Happy New Year , Mr. Karswell !!
... and hello from Marshville...

JMR777 said...

Downbeat endings seem to be par the course in seventies media (horror mags, movies, some TV shows.) I guess the talk of pollution, overpopulation, war, oil running out etc. weighed heavily on the minds of the writers and the public back then.

If someone from 2017 were to travel back in time to the 1970's and try to tell everyone that the world wouldn't end by 1980 no one would believe them. If anyone does travel back in time to the seventies, buy up all the horror comics and horror mags before the prices go up (just a little financial advice to time travelers out there.)

Grant said...

The ending reminds me of the end of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, where the idiot police detective shoots at Robert Walker while he's on that merry-go-round full of kids! I always want that movie to "punish" that detective a lot more than I want it to punish Walker (but it doesn't happen), and that's how I feel about THIS ending.

Guy Callaway said...

Yeah, JMR777, there are SO many '70's films with a dark, nasty pessimistic tone. A more difficult time than most care to remember.

Glowworm said...

This is such a morbid tale--with quite a sad ending. I do love that "John!" "Marsha!" sequence in the car though.

Guy Callaway said...

"I wonder where the stills from "Dracula" really come from? The one looks like a publicity photo or a stage play shot."

brandiweed: both stills are pub shots for the '31 film.
The artist also based a couple of his panels off stills: Fer instance, the 2nd on page 7 is from a shot of Barbara Steele in 'The Horrible Dr.Hichcock' (1962).

Mr. Cavin said...

Great catch on that "bell" line, brandiweed. That sailed right past me.

You know, there is some pretty neat artwork here, but the whole piece is so inconsistent that it makes my eyes cross: Besides the photo panels scattered here and there as a gimmick, there's gray wash panels juxtaposed with high-contrast black and cross-hatched panels, a lot of brush on one half page and a lot of ink pen on the other, a little Zip-A-Tone over here for good measure. This guy used every tool in the kit.

Really loved seeing Dr. Phibes counted among classics from three, five decades earlier.