Poe 1965, Pt. 8

(Continued from Poe 1965, Pt. 7)

CREEPY  6
"THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO!"

The real "golden age" of POE comics continues!

Warren was the small empire of magazine publisher James Warren.  CREEPY was his first all-comics magazine.  Freed from constrictions of the Comics Code due to its B&W magazine format, editor Archie Goodwin managed to recruit the cream of the old EC artists, including Jack Davis, Joe Orlando, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres and Reed Crandall, as well as Gray Morrow and Frank Frazetta.  After doing his final comics story in CREEPY #1, Frazetta switched over to cover paintings, carving an entire new career for himself in the process.

Mixed in with new stories were a nice spattering of adaptations of classic works, among them those of Edgar Allan Poe.  In the late 60s, 6 of these appeared, the first 3 in CREEPY, the other 3 in its brother magazine, EERIE.  I feel safe in saying that despite the high caliber of some of the versions seen before this, these may have to rank among the BEST ever done.

Their 2nd offering...

     "THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO".

     This was the 5th comics version of this, following...
EC's CRIME SUSPENSTORIES #3 (Feb'Mar'51),  
Gilberton's CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED #84 (Jun'51),
Continental's CLASSICOS OF TERROR #1 (1960), and
Dell's Movie Classic of TALES OF TERROR (Feb'63).

It strikes me that Reed Crandall may have modeled his version of Fortunato on Peter Lorre, his wife on Joyce Jameson, and Montressor on Basil Rathbone.

CREEPY  6
cover by FRANK FRAZETTA   (Warren  /  December 1965)

"THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO!"  /  Version 5

Adaptation by Archie Goodwin  /  Art by REED CRANDALL  /  Page 22

Page 23

Page 24

Page 25

Page 26

Page 27

Page 28

Page 29

I've noticed a trend in adaptations over the years to either add more personal drama, or tack on "poetic justice" at the end, to ensure a criminal gets what's coming to him, in case they didn't in the original.  For the 2nd time in a row in a Warren version, the murderer winds up coming to a nasty end, even though, in this case, he got away scot free in the original story.

REPRINTS

Warren ran into some financial difficulties in the late 60s, resulting in the loss of most of his best talent and a 2-year period where both CREEPY and EERIE consisted of at least 50% reprints of material that wasn't that old yet.  "The Cask Of Amontillado!" was reprinted only 29 months after its original appearance.

CREEPY  20
cover by ALBERT NUETZELL   (Warren  /  May 1968)

VAMPUS  1
cover by KEN KELLY
(Ibero Mundial De Ediciones  /  Spain  /  September 1971)

MACABRE  1
cover by ENRICH   (Semic Press  /  Netherlands  /  [1973])

By the time this story was reprinted again, Warren's main competitor, Skywald, had come and gone, and Warren had done another adaptation of the same story.  The reprint of this version appeared 6 months later, together with a reprint of "Hop-Frog", in an ALL-Reed Crandall reprint collection.  The cover, a paste-up department composite of Crandall art, is a bad idea when it comes to coloring line-art intended for B&W.  I can't believe then-editor Bill DuBay actually let this cover go thru, with Crandall's name MIS-SPELLED.

CREEPY  74
cover by REED CRANDALL   (Warren  /  October 1975)

Here we have the 1st of 5 reprint collections using the same cover (more or less).  This book collects 15 various Warren POE stories by a variety of artists, from from 1965-1976.

CREEPY RINDE TRIBUTO A EDGAR ALLAN POE
cover by RICHARD CORBEN   (Toutain Editor  /  Spain  /  1980)

This French magazine has 5 different POE stories reprinted.

FANTASTIK  2
cover by SEGRELLES   (Campus Editions  /  France  /  March-April 1981)

This German edition only included 10 of the 15 stories, and assembled those in a completely different order!

EDGAR POE
cover by RICHARD CORBEN   (Volksverlag  /  Germany  /  1981)

A sample page of the story in German!

Semic Press was at one point the largest comics publisher in Sweden.  Here they did a "CREEPY SPECIAL" that reprinted 15 Warren POE stories from 1965-1976.  Oddly enough, the cover was a reprint of one that had been used by another publisher on an all-Richard Corben collection!

EDGAR ALLAN POE  /  CREEPY SPECIAL
cover by RICHARD CORBEN   (Semic Press  /  The Netherlands  /  1982) 

Dark Horse started as a small "independant" comics publisher in the early 80s "direct market" boom, and remains, currently, one of the FEW survivors of that brief, glorious period. In 2008, they began a series of reprints of CREEPY and EERIE, licensed from James Warren, who had gotten back the rights to those series following a lawsuit with Harris Comics, who had earlier acquired them via a bankruptcy auction.  "The Cask Of Amontillado!" made its appearance in the 2nd collection-- oddly enough, with the SAME cover painting from the issue it originally appeared in.

CREEPY ARCHIVES Volume 2
cover by FRANK FRAZETTA   (Dark Horse  /  December 2008)

Copyright (C) Warren Publishing.

Scan of CREEPY #6 (1965) from the Heritage Auctions site.
Scans of CREEPY #6 (1965) interiors from The Golden Age blog.
Scan of CREEPY #20 (1968) from the Heritage Auctions site.
Scan of VAMPUS #1 (1971) from the GCD site.
Scan of MACABRE #1 (1973) from the Eboek site.
Scan of CREEPY #74 (1975) from the Heritage Auctions site.
Scan of CREEPY RINDE TRIBUTO A EDGAR ALLAN POE (1980)
     from the Whakoom site.
Scan of FANTASTIK #21 (1981) from the Bethedique site.
Scan of EDGAR POE (1981) from the Mexifast.com site.
Scan of EDGAR POE (1981) interior page from the Monster Magazine World blog.
Scans of the CREEPY SPECIAL (1982) from the Catawiki.com site.
Scan of CREEPY ARCHIVES Volume Two (2008) from the GCD site.

Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa

For more:
Read about Edgar Allan Poe at The Poe Museum site.
Read about Edgar Allan Poe at the Biography site.

Read about Reed Crandall at Lambiek Comiclopedia.
Read about Reed Crandall at the Steve Stiles site.
Read about Reed Crandall at the Comic Book Historians site.
Read about Reed Crandall at the Pulp Artists site.

Read about THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO at Spark Notes.
Read about THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO at Cliff Notes.
Read the complete story at the Poe Stories site.
See the AMONTILLADO Gallery of Illustrations.

     Audio / Video:
Hear the WEIRD CIRCLE radio episode!
Watch the Bela Lugosi-Romney Brent SUSPENSE TV episode!
Hear the Basil Rathbone recording!
Hear the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER episode!

     Comics:
Read the Graham Ingels AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Rudy Palais AMONTILLADO adaptation!
     Read the Iger Shop AMONTILLADO sequel!
Read the Gedeone Malagola AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Fran Matera AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Reed Crandall AMONTILLADO adaptation!

Read the Osvaldo Talo AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Juan J. Aguilar AMONTILLADO illustrated story!   (coming soon!)
     Read the Frank Brunner AMONTILLADO sequel!
     Read the Cirilo Munoz AMONTILLADO sequel!   (coming soon!)
Read the Maro Nava AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Martin Salvador AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Guido Del Carpio Rivera AMONTILLADO illustrated story!

Read the Don McGregor / Mike Golden AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Arturo Cassilas AMONTILLADO adaptation!   (coming soon!)
Read the Noly Zamora AMONTILLADO adaptation!
     (Coming soon:)
Read the Pablo Marcos AMONTILLADO illustrated story!
Read the Anne Toulmin-Rothe AMONTILLADO illustrated story!

     Misc.:
Read the Reed Crandall TELL-TALE HEART adaptation!
Read the Reed Crandall AMONTILLADO adaptation!
Read the Reed Crandall HOP-FROG adaptation!

See the CHRONOLOGICAL list of Edgar Allan Poe stories!
See the ALPHABETICAL list of Edgar Allan Poe stories!

(Continued in Poe 1965, Pt.9)