Radiant Comics

I’m back from a Friday trip to the comic shop this week and I got 2 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Grimjack – “The Minx Cat” – 1

The Walking Dead – 64

The Incredible Hercules “Smash of the Titans”

And I just noticed that my copy of “G-Man: Cape Crisis” didn’t come in. I’ll have to inquire next week.

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

Creepy Archives Volume 2 by Various

First off I’m in awe of a lot of the art in this book. That doesn’t happen to me very often. The artists, Reed Crandall, Gray Morrow, John Severin, Alex Toth, Angelo Torres, Steve Ditko, George Tuska, and others do an excellent job here. Their skill is amazing.

I’m not an “everything was better in the past” kind of guy and there are plenty of talented artists working in comics today but there is something special about the art in theses Creepy comics. It’s in black and white but the artists use that to add lush rendering and washes to the artwork.

Plus I’m amazed at the sheer variety of things that all the different artists can draw well. Since the stories are horror tales that generally involve bad things happening to real people everyday items as well as the fantastic are rendered in beautiful detail. And suits. One thing that most artists these days don’t draw well is guys in suits. Almost every artist here handles drawing an ordinary man in a sport coat masterfully. It’s rare to see this many great comic book artists in one book.

The writing was also good in this volume. It’s a step up from volume one. Archie Goodwin takes over the editing and a lot of the writing chores and makes more of the stories than Volume one’s more formulaic “Twist Ending” stories. Jay Taycee (Johnny Craig) also writes a couple of good tales that stood out for me in this issue.

As much as I like Volume One I’m much happier with this volume. As I’ve only read a handful of Creepy issues in my life I’m looking forward to reading more of these archive collections. Good show.