Creepy number hit the stands way back in 1964, if you can believe that, and cost a mere 35 cents for 48 pages (the page content would increase soon enough) of finely drawn and written horror stories. Publisher James Warren had had some success with comics and especially with his magazine sized publication called Famous Monsters of Filmland edited by the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman. The idea Warren had for his Creepy and Eerie magazine (and later Vampirella) was to circumvent the restrictions of the comic code authority by publishing “magazines” rather than comic books. The books were to be displayed and sold in the magazine section rather than the old style rotating comic book racks one rarely sees any longer.

By today’s standards the content of the Warren line is all pretty tame but at the time it caused a small stir, and especially his Blazing Combat series, which I will do a post on later. The first Creepy ssue had some good stories drawn by greats like Reed Crandall and Al Williamson but the best one to me was the one called Werewolf drawn by Frank Frazetta . By this time Frazetta was beginning to draw less and less interior work and was turning towards doing all cover art paintings in lush color. It was written by Larry Ivie and Frazetta’s pen and ink with light wash work is simply thrilling to look at and study. My only complain about Creepy #1 would have to be the sort of out of place cover by EC and Mad Magazine great Jack Davis. I love Jack Davis but the cover does not fit and by issue #2 Frazetta would begin doing a series of immortal covers. Those will be posted here eventually in a single post gallery. My understanding is editor Russ Jones was rushed and pressured by publisher Warren for a magazine and it all came together quickly and hapzardly, with the cover art preceeding the actual title of the book, which Jones created hurriedly during a phone conversation with Warren while glancing at words balloons from a Graham Ingels comic book cover.

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