Scary!

When I was a kid my dad owned used bookstores. He had hundreds of thousands of old comic books. I could read any comic books I wanted and would bring them home by the armload. This was back in the mid-60s, so you can imagine the amazing stuff I would bring home. 

At some point I decided that I liked horror comics. Probably because I was heavily influenced by horror movies and TV shows. Soon after the titles hit the stands I discovered Creepy and Eerie Magazines. One day in my dad's warehouse I saw a copy of Eerie #13. The cover utterly horrified me. In fact, it scared me so much that I almost didn't bring it home. But I did. I took it into my bedroom with the other stacks of comic books that I was reading--everything from Hot Stuff the Little Devil, to Ditko's Amazing Spider-Man, and Kirby's Fantastic Four, and Wonder Woman by Ross Andru, and Magnus Robot Fighter by Russ Manning...well, there was no shortage of comic book titles in those days.

For some reason I waited until it was dark before opening the cover to Eerie #13. These days I cannot recall the contents of that issue, but I vividly remember the cover art. It wasn't by any of the artists whose styles I had learned to identify. This was something that I didn't find particularly intriguing or inspiring--it was just pure, nihilist horror. It was also the only copy of a Warren magazine that I can remember having a word balloon on the cover.

But that cover utterly gave me the creeps. I was afraid to allow the cover art to touch my fingers and I ended up folding the page carefully back to keep that from happening. I do remember reading the contents and then initially putting the magazine at the foot of my bed with the cover down. Eventually I turned out the light and fell to sleep.

Sometime in the dark hours I was awakened. I immediately knew why I had come awake. There had been a sound in the night. A 'PLOP' sound. As of something having slid insidiously off of my bed to land loudly upon the floor, perhaps in an effort to get away, or to hide, or to sneak up on me.

I turned on the bedside lamp. I looked down at the foot of my bed and there were the comics I'd been reading--Richie Rich and Stumbo the Giant and Classics Illustrated and Spider-Man, Mystery In Space, etc. etc.

But that copy of Eerie #13 was gone.

My heart froze.

Where was that damned cover art?! I'd put it face down because I didn't want to see it again. And now it was gone.

It had intentionally crept away!

Shit.

I sat up in bed and looked down at my good comics. I have an image in my head right now of Magnus, Robot Fighter breaking a robot's metal neck with his steely hand. I had to know where that goddamned copy of Eerie #13 was! So I sat up, crawled out from under the covers, and looked at the floor at the foot of the bed.

The magazine was not there.

I looked a little farther, toward the dresser, and I still couldn't see it! 

Knowing I'd have to lean over the side of the bed into the unprotected zone where monsters could reach up and grab children and drag them into whatever dimension they used to appear under our beds, I began to build up my stupid kid's courage. The magazine couldn't be anywhere but right at the foot of the bed on the side below my window. If it hadn't slipped straight off, then my foot must have knocked it to the left.

I looked down. It wasn't there.

Holy shit.

Now I was more curious than frightened, so I leaned my entire head and shoulders over the side of the mattress and leaned waaaaaaaaaay over and looked down where the copy of Eerie #13 could not possibly be.

And that red-eyed skull face was staring straight back up at me!

My nine-year-old eyes bugged out. My throat constricted so much that not only couldn't I scream, I couldn't even choke on my own fear.

Using what courage I could manage, I hopped out of bed, grabbed a big dictionary that I kept on my dresser and I turned that copy of Eerie Magazine face down and covered it with that heavy Webster's hardback dictionary and weighted that oversized offering of horror pulp to the floor with the help of matter and Mr. Gravity!

There, you damned revenant! Try to get out from  under 10,000 years of language!

Strangely mollified by the thought of the big book covering the illustrated horror tales, I climbed back into bed, turned off the light, and managed to go right back to sleep. Zombie out of sight, out of mind.

Over the next couple of weeks I actually forgot all about the copy of Eerie #13 under my bed. I didn't look to check. Even my mom forget to come in and sweep under there. Then one day I needed my dictionary to look something up (this being the 1960s and not 2019 when you can look up anything on a cell phone or a wifi computer.) I recalled that my Webster's was under the bed holding down the offending horror magazine which was, I reminded myself, face down. So I reached under with the bright, yellow sunlight streaming through the window and I pushed away the dust bunnies and brushed off the grey layer on the book and picked it up, knowing I'd only see some advertisement on the back of the magazine.

But of course that blood-chilling artwork was staring up at me, those crimson eyeballs staring right into mine.

I rolled up that magazine, put it into a bag with some other comics, and walked into the front of the house where my mom was reading.

"Here," I said. "I've read these. You can take them back to the store and sell them."

And it worked. I never saw that copy again.

Scared the crap out o' me!

Scary Kid's Stuff!

Even when I was a little kid it was pretty tough to scare me with monsters and such. And believe me, I kept searching for things that would I could genuinely find frightening. Movie monsters generally didn't do much for me in that way. I thought that they were cool, but very rarely frightening. However, every now and again there were a few fantasy images and films that did scare the heck out of me.

The first time that I saw a film that frightened me was when I viewed the initial airing of The Outer Limits episode "The Zanti Misfits". Everything about The Outer Limits made me wonderfully uncomfortable. The announcer's voice, the opening shots, the statements that disembodied voice was making. He was telling me that everything seemed to be out of my control, and he was right.
When I first saw the alien ant-human hybrids, I thought my dinner was going to come up. There was just something so totally wrong about those things! And the idea of them crawling around trying to get into the house was a thought that wouldn't go away in the nights that followed. The topic of conversation around the neighborhood for weeks afterward centered on that episode of The Outer Limits. It seemed all of my pals had seen it, and all of them had reacted as I had. With total fear.


Due to the wonders of the Internet, you can now watch that episode online, for free, at Hulu.com. Of course you have to sit through the damned commercials. Yeah, that's plenty scary.

Today, though, the dialogue comes off as silly, and the special effects are generally bottom of the barrel. But back in the day...

Around that same general time line I could often be found digging through the enormous stacks and boxes of the overflow of the comics and magazines from my dad's used bookstore. Right off the bat I discovered the Warren Publications FAMOUS MONSTERS, CREEPY, and EERIE. I'd grab up any issue of those magazines that I could lay my mitts on and take them home to read. But there was a cover on one issue that I found it almost impossible to look at. Every time my eyes would rest on that image, I'd feel impelled to fold the cover back and keep my fingers from touching it. I damned near thought the thing would bite me!


What was it about these two things that scared me when almost nothing else could? Hell if I know! But I can say that the Zanti Misfits and that kickass cover of Eerie Magazine gave me more than my fair share of boyhood nightmares.

And it was cool as shit.





Corporate death penalty: Let's have it.