We're heading into, thus far, untraveled country here today. Since this blog began last year, I've focused on Pre-Code horror comics; but as the title implies, it's a history of American horror comics, which means it reaches farther afield from those rooted in the horror heyday of the 1950's.
That said, we have James Warren to thank for resurrecting horror comics out of their (mostly) horrifying doldrums of the Post-Code 1950s. Warren stunned the lethargic market when the first issue of CREEPY appeared on newsstands on November 11, 1964, just a decade after the collapse of the comic book industry that especially affected horror and crime comics.
What was surprising is that he chose to use stories that were firmly rooted in the EC tradition, Using a parcel of "Aghhh's", "Eyahhh's", twist endings and a host that could have easily been The Crypt Keeper's cousin, Warren even went so far as to hire EC alumni to work on the magazine-sized horror comic.
Warren, who never missed a publishing trend, sensed that the time was right to resurrect the classic combination of sensational writing and first-rate illustration which were the hallmarks of E.C.’s achievements. He even brought aboard a number of the same artists from E.C., who were only too willing to get back to work scaring the wits out of youngsters with their macabre stories. With A-list draftsmen like Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig (a.k.a. Jay Taycee), John Severin, and the greatest fantasy artist alive, Frank Frazetta, the formula was an instant success. To make this first issue all the more EC-esque, Joe Orlando had a hand in the plots of all of the stories in the first issue.
An element in horror comics that was used -- somewhat frequently -- was that of adapting stories by famous authors who wrote horror and weird fantasy tales. Comic book versions of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" had all been adapted in earlier years. However, there was one author who was conspicuously absent: H.P. Lovecraft.
We have to wait until July, 1968 to find the first actual, title and all, Lovecraft comic adaptation. Other stories came close, such as "Island at the World's End", a take on Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" scripted by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by Gray Morrow in CREEPY's companion magazine EERIE #4 (July 1966), but none of them were complete adaptations of an original Lovecraft story.
In CREEPY #21, artist Bob Jenney brought to life the first ever Lovecraft comic story adaptation to commercial publishing. Jenney had the previous distinction of illustrating Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” in CREEPY #19, as well as the art chores for the Dell Movie Comics versions of THE WOLF MAN (1963) and FRANKENSTEIN (1964). Billed as “Adapted from a story by H. P. Lovecraft”, the writer goes mysteriously uncredited. The late Archie Goodwin, who churned out story after story as CREEPY'S first editor, and who had relinquished his editorship after issue #17 and subsequently slacked off script writing a bit, could possibly be the author of the adaptation. Another likely candidate is Bill Parente, who was CREEPY'S new, official editor as of issue #21. The story was apparently a big enough editorial event to warrant a cover spot which was painted by the newly-hired Brazilian comic artist Gutenberg Monteiro. Marred by 2 misprints on the contents page (the story was listed as “The Rats in the Wall”, and artist Jenney’s name was misspelled “Jenny”), the appearance of this Lovecraft adaptation is nevertheless a milestone for Lovecraft aficionados.
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