ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
Heh-heh, Welcome--Welcome to the comic world's newest, most exciting and most imaginative magazine in 10 years. I'm Creepy, your nauseating host! I've scrounged around the lowest places imaginable to dig up the comic industry's greatest and most fiendish artists! -- Uncle Creepy (Creepy Magazine No. 1, 1964)
Uncle Creepy is back! And this time around he brings his bad-blooded relations, along with Sister Creepy, to punk out the night with four new stories oozing black and white terror, one loathsome lore, and one reprinted story. And let's not forget the Dear Uncle Creepy letters section, too.
The artwork is all very good, with Angelo Torres pencils visualizing Dan Braun's Hell Hound Blues, and Alex Toth's reprinted Daddy and the Pie lending some classy support; but from the lighter lines of Hillary Barta's Loathsome Lore on Faustian Deals and Brian Churilla's All the Help You Need, to Shawn Alexander's The Curse Part One and Saskia Gutekunst's Chemical 13! darker, starker characters, the stories capture the old Creepy mystique fairly well, especially with Uncle Creepy providing the introductions and appropriately quippy last words.
In The Curse Part One, Jude discovers he has a certain knack for making his wishes come true. Unfortunately, his mom has been doing some wishing, too, and Jude is in for a shocking surprise. Hell Hound Blues plays off the Robert Johnson legend, wherein the Devil provides the soulful chords for a price. Or was it really Tommy Johnson who met up with the Devil at the crossroads one lonely midnight? Who the devil knows? The story could have used a few more pages to flesh it out, but the ending is classic Creepy. In Chemical 13!, the Nazis get exactly what they bargained for, and Delia Gold gets the fat farm treatment--to the max--in All the Help You Need. The only problem is the farm next store prefers to chew the fat more than lose it.
On the Dear Uncle Creepy letters page is a family snapshot promising some interesting happenings with oddball relatives popping up in future issues. For issue one we are introduced to Sister Creepy, a cool, naughty, Goth who dishes up the Loathsome Lore with relish.
An unexpected oddity for this issue is the reprinted Daddy and the Pie, a story more sci fi than horror. It is a well-executed story but still not horror, so it ends this issue with a whimper instead of a chill. But it is nice to see the classy creepster back in action, and I am sure, based on this first issue, the chill will return soon enough.
Yes, I'm looking forward to the next issue. It's nice to see an anthology approach that's more serious; wish Papercutz Tales from the Crypt had gone more adult.
Posted by: Iloz Zoc | August 03, 2009 at 07:55 PM
Daddy and the Pie didn't keep up the horror but it was a Creepy classic drawn by living legend Alex Toth so it got a pass from me.
This wasn't a mind blowing comic but it was one of the only new horror anthologies that "got it." I'm excited to read more.
Posted by: Jake T | August 03, 2009 at 07:46 PM