Tuesday, June 15, 2010

#10 - Top 12 Favorite Comic Book Short Stories

The Cask of Amontillado - Creepy #6 (December, 1965)
Adapted by Archie Goodwin & Reed Crandall- 8 pages

I was a huge Poe fan as an adolescent, so I was delighted when I later discovered the Poe adaptations scattered throughout various Warren magazine. Being buried alive is certainly a terrifying concept, but the thought of being slowly 'bricked in' really rattles me. Reed Crandall's artwork is simply gorgeous, and Goodwin is able to make Poe's prose more accessible for a 20th century crowd. He does, however, append an ECish epilogue that really doesn't do much for the story, and is the culprit for this one not being higher up my list. This was has been reprinted a few times in later mags.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wasn't big on B&W magazines when they were at the heights of their popularity in the 70's.

I was aware of the high quality of the artists represented in Warren's magazines, especially in the early issues, but I could never seem to really get interested enough to aggressively hunt them down.

I am now buying the nice archives editions published by Dark Horse and some of my favorite stories in are the Goodwin/Crandall collaborations. Among the best artists published in the same issues (Gil Kane, Steve Ditko,Neal Adams, etc. all of them doing some of their best work ever!) Crandall's art really stand out. His fine detailed craftmanship really shines in black & white.

Scott M said...

benday-dot (Craig), who posts comments here as well as at CSBG, and is a regular poster at CBR, sent me the all-Crandall issue of Creepy I'd been wanting. He's a good, good man - that b-d.

Crandall does look dynamic in black and white.