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?
















8 comments:

Mike H said...

Woromay was a fine artist but he's no Lou Cameron! Few artists can claim to be as good as Lou!!

Mestiere said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mr. Karswell said...

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

Brian Barnes said...

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 :)

Turok1952 said...

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.

Mr. Cavin said...

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.

Tim Whitcher said...

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.

Frank Forte said...

nice post--love the B&W