CGC Comics and Magazines

Comic and Magazine Showcase

Comics and magazines, Frazetta, Warren, Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, along with a few comics from Marvel and some independent companies. In the future we will showcase a few of these titles and/or select individual issues.

In the 60's and 70's I collected many of these books, however that collection is long since gone, the books shown here are the replacements that I have managed to find to share with other comic enthusiasts.

As a long time Frank Frazetta fan, a majority of these books will have his work in or on them, there will also be some Dave Stevens and Richard Corben in here.

This collection of Frank Frazetta Warren covers has been acknowledged by the Collectors Society;

A fantastic collection showcasing some of the late, great Frank Frazetta’s most well-known and sought after covers. With more than half of the books recorded in 9.6 or better, this set also boasts five Signature Series copies signed by the man himself, one of which is a pristine copy of the classic Creepy #9 in 9.8! Also included in this set are superb examples of the dark covers which are generally considered more difficult to locate in high grade, including; Creepy #6 (9.4), Creepy #16 (9.6), Eerie #7 (9.8!!) and a gorgeous 9.4 copy of Frank’s classic, the beautifully rendered Eerie #23 in 9.4! For the best in sci-fi & fantasy art all you need to do is feast your eyes on this collection of Frank Frazetta’s most iconic work.

http://www.cgccomics.com/news/viewarticle.aspx?NewsletterNewsArticleID=1316

Creepy CGC Magazines

Here is a collection of Creepy magazines, mostly Frank Frazetta covers. Creepy turned the world of graphic storytelling on its head in the early 1960s, as phenomenal young artists like Bernie Wrightson and Neal Adams reached new artistic heights with their fascinating explorations of classic and modern horror stories, the Frazetta covers pulled many a buyer in.

The Warren magazines are the most recognized of the black & white horror magazine boom for the 1960s-1970s, if only because they were there first and they lasted the longest. James Warren, the publisher of several different movie magazines, most notably ‘Famous Monsters Of Filmland’, was a long time lover of comics, particularly the EC comics of the early 1950s. He made a few tentative stabs at comics in 1964, producing a couple of stories adapting movies from the 1930s for ‘Monster World’, a sister magazine of ‘Famous Monsters Of Filmland’. In late 1964 he decided to take the plunge, producing a full-length comic anthology. It should be noted that the magazines he published were not comic books but magazines. They had to be.

The Comics Code Authority, established in 1955 to ‘clean up’ comics, had demolished the EC empire of quality horror comics as well as most of the lesser publishers of horror comics and forced those publishers who survived to water down the content to near pablum. You couldn’t use vampires, zombies, skeletons, ghouls, etc as characters in a comic book. You couldn’t show blood or horrific details. Nor could you use such words as horror or terror in titles. As the comic industry existed in 1964, a revival of EC-type comics wouldn’t have been possible.

The Comics Code Authority had no authority over magazines, since nobody had ever published a comic book in magazine form. EC had, in its dying days, published what they called Picto-Fiction. Prose stories dealing with crime and horror with a heavy amount of art in comic book style. However, this experiment was a failure. They also changed their humor comic, Mad, into a magazine. They promptly stopped calling it a comic, however. It was now a humor magazine.

So Warren decided to publish his comic stories in a format he was comfortable with, for a distribution system he understood and in a style that allowed him a great deal of freedom. Then he aimed those stories at the exact same audience that the regular four-color comics had targeted—12-14 year old boys. It was a smart and, as it turned out, profitable end run around the Comics Code.

Eerie CGC Magazines

In 1966 Warren Publishing in an effort to expand, was about to launch a new title called Eerie, the word through the grape-vine was that a rival company was also planning to launch a title called Eerie. To circumvent and assure the copyrights to the title Eerie Jim Warren had an ash can edition of Eerie #1 put together in 24 hours. The ashcan copy of #1 was then rushed by courier to Washington, D. C. to have it copyrighted, and there were two other couriers who had the job of delivering copies to four different states so that Eerie #1 could be quickly sold, thus establishing Warren’s right to the name. The real issue #1 was still in production and was released as issue #2.

The first few issues of Creepy were edited by Russ Jones. In 1965 Archie Goodwin succeeded him, with Joe Orlando acting as a behind-the-scenes story editor. Archie Goodwin, who would become one of comics' foremost and most influential writers, helped to establish the company as a major force in its field. After 17 issues of Creepy and 11 of Eerie, Goodwin resigned as editor in 1967. Goodwin wrote many of the stories in those issues and they are still considered by most to be some of the best of those two titles.

There were a number of future and current great artist in those issues as well, Neal Adams, Wallace Wood, Johnny Craig, Gene Colan, Al Williamson, Jack Davis, Alex Toth and Steve Ditko. Steve Ditko produced some of his best work to date, influenced by Frank Frazetta and Wallace Wood, his art was very different from that which was normally seen in previous titles like Spider-man. Ditko’s pencils were ink-washed – this added a depth and boldness.

By publishing graphic stories in a magazine format to which the Code did not apply, Warren paved the way for such later graphic-story magazines as the American version of Heavy Metal; Marvel Comics' Epic Illustrated; Psycho and other "horror-mood" series from Skywald Publications; and Warren's own line of magazines.

Vampirella CGC Magazines

Vampirella #1 was the first all original Warren issue since Eerie #11 (Sept. 1967). Frazetta’s cover of Vampirella was a substitute for the original cover by European artist Aslan. That cover also featured Vampirella, but was rejected over fears that Vampi looked rather anemic. That cover was eventually used as the cover for the Vampirella 1972 Annual. Vampirella’s costume and hair style was designed by artist Trina Robbins. The first Vampirella story is a horror spoof rather than a straight horror tale, as was made obvious by the first two pages being taken up with a sequence of a nude Vampirella taking a shower for no particular reason, except for good clean fun. Several years later, this origin tale was greatly rewritten to fit the more horrific manner of her later tales. Best stories are the Graham, Crandall & Adams’ stories, all written by Don Glut. Adams’ story is in pencils only.

The question arises of exactly who edited this first issue? Bill Parente is listed on the masthead but he doesn’t appear with a single written story. Unusual for an issue edited by him. Forrest Ackerman created, or at least had a strong hand in creating, Vampirella and he clearly had a major influence in shaping the light-hearted bad girl story style of this issue as well. Neal Adams remembered that Archie Goodwin was the person calling up artists for this issue and that this was the main reason a very busy Adams agreed to do his story. That makes sense. Goodwin & Warren had a close relationship and only months later, Goodwin would be back on the masthead as a contributing editor. It’s even possible that all three, along with publisher Jim Warren, had an editorial hand in shaping this issue.

The Vampirella story arc:
Considered a Vampire because she needs blood to survive, Vampirella has all their powers but none of their weakness. She was sent to Earth to kill all evil vampires.
Vampirella was born from a race called Vampiri who lived on a planet named Drakulon. That planet orbited around 2 suns, when one of them erupted it destroyed most of the Vampiri that lived there. When astronauts crashed landed on their planet, Vampirella was sent to investigate it. She discovered the astronauts and they started attacking her. In self-defense she discovered that they had blood inside their bodies. She would take the ship and pilot it back to Earth. Vampirella decides that she would be a "good vampire".

Her adventures lead her to befriend vampire hunters, Adam Van Helsing and his blind-psychic father, Conrad Van Helsing and an old magician named Mordecai Pendragon, who took in Vampirella as his assistant. Most of these adventures involved her assisting the Van Helsing's against followers of Chaos who dabbled with dark magic. A recurring theme in the stories was her uncontrollable blood lust, which with a help of a serum made her overcome her thirst very similar to True Blood however due to unfortunate circumstances would make her more dangerous and feral around Adam and her friends if she wasn't nourished with the serum or blood.

She would later find out that she was the daughter of Lilith, the first wife of Adam from the Book of Genesis. Lilith was cast out of the garden and then mated with a demon and gave birth to Vampires. She lived on Drakulon which was a part of hell. She would seek redemption from God and results in her giving birth to Vampirella. Lilith then sent her down to Earth to kill all evil vampires.

Tally-Ho 1944 1st Frank Frazetta

Tally-Ho 1944 CGC 5.5 signed by Frank Frazetta

Tally Ho! Comics from 1944 featuring Frazetta's first published comics artwork, Frazetta was the tender age of 16.
It's the Snowman, a wooden idol who comes to life to combat the evil machinations of standard issue bad guy The Fang.
This is believed to be the Snowman's first and only appearance, Frazetta would go on to have many more appearances.

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