Creepy horror comic rises from the grave and is terrifyingly good

Back in July, Dark Horse Comics relaunched the classic horror title Creepy, one of those titles that caused straight America to recoil in terror. Creepy's short stories veered between morality plays in which some awful person did some terrible deed and received his comeuppance to unabashed, straight-ahead horror in which terrible people did terrible things -- often to other terrible people -- and got away with it. I rather think it was this latter that got the censors' bowels in an uproar.

The relaunched Creepy, a 48-page black and white monthly, is true to the original spirit, and each story is introduced by Uncle Creepy, a Crypt-Keeper-like ghoul with a penchant for grisly puns.

I love the art in this book -- each story is done by a different artist, but all hanker back to the golden age of horror comics, funny and ghastly lines that can be straight-ahead cartoons or stippled impressionism as the story dictates.

Creepy Comics 1

Creepyuniverse.com

And in case your tastes run to the original Creepy: Dark Horse's handsome archival collections of classic Creepy

• [cinemajay]

  If the favoriting system was up and running, I would so favorite this post. This comment will have to suffice!

• [HeatherB]

  Growing up I was a huge fan of the EC reprints of ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘The Vault of Horror’ and ‘Haunt of Fear’. My dad remembered them all from growing up with these classics.
  Comic books were an important part of my childhood and in some ways even more important to my adult life (met my husband thanks to a comic book).
  Thanks for the update on their release. It’s spiffing to have such classics in print again.

  • [mark42]

    Those EC comics were indeed wonderful. When I was in high school and college, I used to work in a comic book store, and occasionally I’d give back a good chunk of my weekly earnings in order to pick up one of the hardcover EC Library collections that were being published at the time.

    I still go back every once in a while and reread them, and every time that I do, I can’t help but lament the decline of the anthology format in comics and television. Part of the fun in reading those EC reprints or in watching shows like Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents for the first time was knowing that the writer was free to take the story in any direction he or she chose, that any fate between “happily ever after” to “rest in peace” could befall the protagonist.

• [8Bitz Jack]

  Always likin this Creepshow fare! This need to be a game!

• [Anonymous]

  The reprints have been a dream come true. As great as Archie Goodwin was at the time, I hope/can’t wait for the reprints to start with the Wrightson/Corbin/Spanish artists. Right now, in regards to the Dark Horse archives (issue 20 and on for a while I think)at the time, Jim Warren had to reprint several of the original stories, but soon enough, we’ll get into some of the “new” artists.

  As awesome as the reprints have been, wish Dark Horse could be more forthcoming about their intentions and update us with more news generally. Awesome job though-they’re apparently Dark Horse’s most successful archives sales-wise.

• [ben]

  I believe that last link should be: http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/15-381/Creepy-Archives-Volume-1-HC

  But, thanks for the heads up on this one, looks quite nice.

• [holtt]

  Mind you, why would two guys in suits be out walking knee deep in a swamp? Fits in there with, “DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE! I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO IN THE HOUSE! FOR CHRISTS SAKE LEAVE THE CAT BEHIND YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN DON’T YOU!??!?!”

• [Moody]

  Lukas Ketner is the shizzle.

• [Anonymous]

  Extremely pleased to see horror comics back in full force! *__* I love how the folks behind Creepy has handled the revamp treatment of this series, unlike Tales from the Crypt. :( It’s unfortunate that the “revamped” Crypt issues hasn’t fared as well as Creepy. It lacks the incredible artistic talent and sophisticated ironic/horror plot twists I love. At least I can get my fix in a Creepy issue. <3

• [Andrew Mayer]

  If anyone wants a free taste of the new Creepy you can check out a piece written by me and drawn by Lukas Ketner called “Om Nom Nom”. It was the first original story for the new Creepy and was published in MySpace Dark Horse presents last year.

  You can read the whole thing here:
  http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepresents?issuenum=16&storynum=2

  It mixes a modern meme with some good old-fashioned horror, including little dogs in adorable bonnets.

• [tomaq]

  Looking forward to checking this out. The original Creepy really warped my outlook & I do believe polluted my precious bodily fluids. It was something like rock ‘n’ roll.

• [Anonymous]

  HA! That little short on Creepy Universe is a Chiodo Brothers production. I worked on Team America and an episode of the Simpsons with them. Salt of the earth. There’s really not enough stop motion in the world for my taste.

• [druidbros]

  I am old enough to remember (and I have) Creepy from the first time around. The best was when the cover featured an illustration from the great Frank Frazetta. I can only hope the covers are as good this time around.

• [3lbFlax]

  I wasn’t that impressed with the new Creepy, sadly, except the reprint in the back. Nothing wrong with the art, but the whole affair seemed to lack the charm of the original. But Creepy and Eerie regularly hosted stories by some of comics’ finest, setting a high bar for anyone to match.

  Still, I’ll pick up the next one to at least show my support for the wonderful Creepy patches they’re selling.

  The most Boinglike horror comic of all to my mind must be The Saga of the Victims, the truly demented serial published by Skywald. And by truly demented, I mean heroically, incomprehensively demented, information-rich in as much as it’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen on the next page. It has no peers – the EC classics are my true love, and on a far higher plane artistically, but if Tales from the Crypt is Mozart, Saga of the Victims is easily Captain Beefheart.