Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Black and White Wednesday: Archie Goodwin and Neal Adams' "A Curse of Claws!"

From Warren's Creepy 1971 Annual (reprinted from Creepy #16, cover dated August 1967) here's a chiller from Archie Goodwin and Neal Adams..."A Curse of Claws!"

2 comments:

  1. I love everything about this... love it, love it, love it! Neal Adams art, Archie Goodwin story... both excellent. I also dig the super clean lettering. Gawd I wish I could learn to letter like that!

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  2. I wasn't a Warren magazine buyer, but one day I was at a comic shop in Hollywood, Florida, and among the titles on the new books wall was EERIE 125 (Oct 1981), that as it turns out is an all-Neal Adams reprint issue. Among the stories reprinted are "Curse of the Vampire" 8p (r CREEPY 14, Apr 1967), "Terror Beyond Time" 16p (r CREEPY 15, June 1967), "Goddess From The Sea" 6p (r VAMPIRELLA 1, Sept 1969), "Thrillkill" 8p (r CREEPY 75, Nov 1975), the above story "A Curse of Claws" 6p (r CREEPY 16, Aug 1967), "Voodoo Drum" 8p (EERIE 10, July 1967), and "Fair Exchange" 8p (r EERIE 9, May 1967).

    This was one of the luckiest finds in my 40-plus years of collecting. Virtually every Neal Adams story for Warren collected in one issue. (The only ones not collected is his adaptation of "Rock God" by Harlan Ellison, in CREEPY 32, April 1970, And "The Soft Sweet Lips of Hell" pencilled by Steve Englehart and inked by Adams in VAMRIRELLA 10, March 1971.)

    This issue also makes it clear Adams' first work wasn't for DC, he spent the better part of a year doing stories for Warren before DC finally gave him some mainstream visibility in late 1967 with ADVENTURES OF JERRY LEWIS 101-104 (Aug 1967-Feb 1968), ADVENTURES OF BOB HOPE 106-109 (Sept 1967-March 1968), and some backup stories in OUR ARMY AT WAR 182, 183 and 186 (July 1967-Nov 1967), and finally his breakout series with Deadman in STRANGE ADVENTURES 206-216 (Nov 1967-Feb 1969) and when Adams ended that series he was already a superstar.

    But it's interesting to see the fantastic work Adams was doing for Warren, before and then simultaneous with his first assignments for DC. It took DC a while to appreciate the enormous talent that was right there under their noses.

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