Monday, 30 May 2016
Eerie (Warren/1980s)
Warren Comics produced a few memorable comics including the long running Creepy and Vampirella. There was a third title that lasted the course, Eerie. Like it's stablemates this was a magazine sized black and white format comic aimed at older audiences.
Starting as a horror title by the eighties it had become very much dominated by science fiction and the occasional fantasy story. One of the characters that appeared in this book was The Rook, a time traveller who went on to get his own book.
The quality of the stories varied depending on your tastes from issue to issue just like most anthology titles but there's some good stuff contained in these reasonably priced later titles. Warren also published their readers thoughts in a lively letters page at the beginning. Readers were not always happy! Nothing changes! (Hail Hydra).
Typical of the fare offered is in #116 (illustrated above) which contains four stories. The first, Blackjack is set in The Rooks continuity and sees his grandfather bugger off in time with a servo robot to the Jurassic age. Meanwhile The Rooks Time Factory is attacked by one of those super-villain types and there's a Blob like threat included.
Star Warriors comes up and next and is as corny as they get, though Cagim in which Merlin meets his younger inexperienced self is a bit better. As for the final feature...pass it by
The stories continue in a similar vein in #119 where the lead story, Zed Kamish is obviously influenced by 2000AD with it's bizarre opening at an interstellar bust stop on a small asteroid and tales of robot crime and rebellion. Humans beware is all I will say. Flesh bags that we are apparently.
There's Sindy Starfire set on Venus, but more like the wild west with native Indians n' all. A wronged woman who goes up against criminals and ends up being a fugitive herself. The final tale Haggarth is a disturbing tale of a young apprentice who regains his eyesight only to lose himself.
Personally I like these black & white format magazines but they are no more. Eerie went the way of the Dodo in 1983 with #139 being the last.
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