By: Jeff Parker, Doug Moench, Rick Geary, Dan Braun & Bruce Jones (writers), Colleen Coover, Kelley Jones, Geary, Kyle Baker, Bernie Wrightson (artists) and Coover, Geary & Nate Piekos (letters)
The Story: Another horror anthology guided by Uncle Creepy.
Review: I had mixed feelings on this issue. One one hand, we got a pretty nifty little story from Jeff Parker and Colleen Coover. Seriously…I don’t think I ever would have imagined that Coover’s breezy and light-hearted style would find its way into the pages of Creepy. But there it is… And it works so well. It just goes to show that we shouldn’t assume limitations for creators just because we haven’t seem them do “it” before. We also got some mighty fine artwork by Kelley Jones and that’s always good. Jones is an artist who really understands what Creepy is all about and ups his already gothic style to a whole new level.
But, on the other hand, the only story that blew my socks off and gave me the shivers was “Jennifer” by Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson. “Jennifer” is a chilling story about a man who saves a girl in the forest only to find out he’s gotten more than he bargained for. Jones and Wrightson masterfully never let you see the really horrible things; you get a tease, but will have to use your imagination to fill in the details. Imagination (with slight prompting) is so much more powerful than anything an artist could draw! What is Jennifer doing to these people? And what is she doing to our protagonist at night? It’s all so….icky. This story just blows the doors off everything else in the issue.
And, that is part of the problem with this new Creepy series. Jennifer was first published in 1974 in Creepy #63. Dark Horse has been consistently plucking gems from the old Warren Publishing Creepy Magazine and I can’t fault them for that too much. I DO have the issues, but most people don’t and it probably encourages people to buy the collected editions. But if you cherry-pick masterpieces like “Jennifer”, they make the modern stories look “meh” in comparison. In some ways, it isn’t really a fair comparison because “Jennifer” was better than most of the contents of Creepy back in 1974 too.
Conclusion: An interesting issue. The new material has some bright spots, but the hands-down star is an almost 40-year-old work. I’m not sure publishing current stories with all-star material from day’s past is the best publishing move.
Grade: B+ (mostly for those who haven’t read Jennifer before)
-Dean Stell
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