The Beast Within

In some ways we must all deal with the beast within.

Berni Wrightson — Who's the Fairest of Them All? —1980

The Siren of Satan

Picture, if you will, growing up in the 60s having read tons of comics that were silly, inane and pretty much cut from the same cloth. Oh, there were highlights and all of it was fun for a growing boy. But just as I was about to drop comics out of boredom and embarrassment, along came a new breed of graphic storytellers—their stories were 'daring and dynamic'. I look back on them now and see and read flaws of all kinds, but at the time they were unique enough to keep a high school teen involved in collecting.

Neal Adams was the first major artist to make a major impact on me in the late silver, early bronze age and revive my interest in collecting. I would buy multiple copies of his work, not to salt away to sell another day, but to cut-up and create advertisement-free graphic novel albums (who knew that someday all comics, good or bad, would be reprinted in handsome editions, sans advertising?).

These days, the comics market is so saturated with thousands of examples of dynamic storytelling, that some of those from the past may seem a bit lame. But back in days of yore, when something unique snuck up on me in the middle of really lame material, it was pretty electrifying. Among many such examples were the stories illustrated by Berni Wrightson.

House of Mystery #181 — July-August 1969

And hoo boy, the marketing departments spared no effort in pulling out their typography and hyping up our frenzy to seek out the 'daring and different'. They had me with the Neal Adams covers. I bought anything with Neal Adams on it or in it:

Eerie and Creepy

Some Eerie and Creepy images by Berni Wrightson (and a bit of Jeffrey Jones).

The Wrightson Stuff

In 1970 I gave up comics for a couple of years, but not before getting this Wrightson story from House of Mystery #186. Wrightson put in a lot of beautiful effort, ala the panel above.

The Wrightson Stuff

The Wrightson Stuff

The late 60s and early 70s were really a golden age of material for the comics, having, among others, Neal Adams, Jeffrey Jones, Barry Windsor-Smith, Mike Kaluta, and this guy—Bernie Wrightson. Their art and story-telling, at that time especially, were fresh and exciting—something comic readers had seen before maybe only in the EC days. 

The above drawing of Uncle Creepy was of course from the Warren mags. But Wrightson did some stories for DC that were mesmerizing for the times. I think the coloring of the stories was sort of revolutionary as well, odd colors, green skin coloring, without being the Hulk. DC was in an era they could be proud of, with the young turks starting to crowd in.

I had this horrible habit of cutting up my comics. I would buy 2 or 3 copies of certain issues, and then cut them out to paste into quality binder pages, so that they could be free of ridiculous ads. Little knowing that archives and trade books would someday collect all this stuff. How was I to know?

So, I don't know what comic title or dates or whatever a lot of these stories are from. But I didn't buy them to resell as collector's items, I bought them because I loved em, even if I had a funny way of showing it.

I'll be posting more of this kind of stuff down the line.

The Wrightson Stuff