Saturday, June 8, 2013
Creature of Evil / The Moon Was Red
It's been a long time since we've done a comparison between a pre-code horror classic vs. its later black and white Eerie Publication remake. So here's a good one, and this time I'll bypass the link to the story I originally posted back in 2011 and just re-post it here again after the remake. "Creature of Evil" from the March 1971 issue of Terror Tales #V3#2 is a complete re-draw of Lou Cameron's mind-bending monster masher "The Moon Was Red" (originally presented in the May 1953 issue of Web of Mystery #18.) See which one you like better-- being a complete Cameron fanatic, you already know my answer! Enjoy, and maybe we'll do a few of these comparisons for the next couple of posts-- sound good?
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8 comments:
Woromay was a fine artist but he's no Lou Cameron! Few artists can claim to be as good as Lou!!
Thanks for the art cred on the Eerie pub version, Howler-- I should've known cuz I love Woromay!
It's an additional credit to Lou Cameron that the axe chomp face panel in the original (last page) is still 1000 times more horrific than in Larry's re-draw! Man... seriously
The side-by-side is a lot of fun. It shows the problem with non-square page layouts (there's nothing wrong with them, but you have to be careful.) There are a few times in the Eerie version where it's a bit hard to follow the captions and the text.
I like Woromay too, but he's got problems with the all important panel composition -- the ship smashing on page 4 (eerie) vs page 4 (original) show Cameron's much stronger compositional skill. Creature, ship, and action up front.
I'd love to see the original Cameron story in B&W, from the pencils. I say that about all these stories, I really think the 4-color coloring is a determent.
I actually like the Eerie pub version of the monster better. It's more ... "realistic" .. as it can be. An armored, scaly more fish-like monster. It'd be embarrassing to get killed by a monster with that hair :)
Each version is superb. I do prefer the original monster, though. Especially memorable is the first Beast standing in the water up to his waist.
I would have loved to have seen a Jack Kirby version of this tale, even though both Beasts would have been orange with head fins and wearing skin-tight underwear.
I actually think the redraw is pretty poor, but I realize that I'm kind of predisposed against seventies-style inkwash horror stuff, with its mealy paneling and rushed caricaturing. (But I loved the book, Mike!) These Eerie Pubs retools are at their absolute best when they are garishly tarted-up for their supposedly more adult market; but in this case, there is hardly going to be anything more lurid than the original, with that bloody victim-crushing and its monster designed right off the scary part of a medieval map or the ink on a salty old pirate's back. Myron's low contrast black and white rush jobs can hardly compete with that.
Wow. That Terror Tales cover; what a bizarre mish-mash of images! Pure 70's schlock! Much, much better than the cover art of Eerie Publications that came out after.
nice post--love the B&W
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