Creepy Magazine was a black-and-white comic book publication that ran from to 1964 to 1983. It went under the title of a magazine to avoid The Comics Code.
Hosted by the namesake Uncle Creepy, it specialized in pulp horror tales and featured the likes of Frank Frazetta, Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall, Neal Adams, Dan Adkins, Johnny Craig, Steve Ditko, Gray Morrow, John Severin, Angelo Torres, Alex Toth, Al Williamson and Wally Wood. Archie Goodwin is remembered as being the one of the comic's best writers.
Creepy has been revived as a comic publication by Dark Horse Comics, who are publishing the original Creepy comics as the Creepy Archives.
Tropes:
- Animated Tattoo: The story "Pelted" involves a mobster getting a demon tattooed on his chest for accomplishing his first kill. The demon in question is not very nice, nor still.
- Body Horror: Many, many examples. For example, a man who wrongfully sentenced his victim to death has the head of the executed man grow on his chest.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: The comic adapted various horror stories by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker.
- Creepy Doll: An issue of the revamped comics has a story titled "The Doll Lady". Needless to say, it's creepy.
- Deal with the Devil:
- In "The Cool Jazz Ghoul" from issue #34, a jazz musician whose day job is at a funeral parlor offers his soul in exchange for enough money to start his own jazz club — then slips the devil's human form some wine laced with embalming fluid and sells the body to a circus.
- In "Gunsmoke Charly" from issue #35, a gunslinger wannabe sells his soul to the devil in exchange for invulnerability to bullets. Eventually, the guilt and paranoia get to him.
- Determined Homesteader: In "Family Reunion" from issue #5, two of the three Cartwright brothers come back from the grave to prevent the third brother from selling the family farm to the local lawyer.
- Disintegration Chamber: "The Silver Stallion Conspiracy" is about a vast conspiracy of famous but supposedly dead political, military, business, and criminal leaders which rules the world from behind the scenes, using cloning technology to fake their own deaths, and the disintegration chamber to execute traitors from within their ranks. The whole thing is a sham, perpetrated by a bunch of actors who've had plastic surgery to look like famous dead people. Then they're all assassinated by an agent of the real shadowy conspiracy which secretly rules the world.
- Downer Ending: Many. Special mention goes to "A Hero Within": a small child is eaten alive by a vicious dog owned by his equally vicious foster family.
- Extra Y, Extra Violent: The story "X-tra X" from issue #34 has a strange inverted example — here, violent behavior is linked to an extra X chromosome (known as Klinefelter syndrome
), hence the title. To make matters more complex, the story focuses on a genetic mutant whose extra X chromosome is sensitive to the gravity of the full moon, producing a fluid that induces a physical transformation along with a violent psychological state — in short, making the man a werewolf. - Ghostapo: In "Army of the Walking Dead" from issue #35, a Nazi Mad Scientist uses then-current technology to create a bunch of zombies that obey only his verbal commands. This ends up biting him in the butt when he breaks his jaw during a plane crash.
- I'm a Humanitarian: An issue of the revival series has a story about a homosexual couple, one of whom is a cannibal, the other one wanting to be his victim.
- Man-Eating Plant: In "Blood and Orchids!", a gardener is mistaken for a vampire because she exhibits many of the trademark vampire traits. She's really just finding victims to feed to her plants, which are vampires.
- Method Acting: The story "Type Cast" in issue #24 features Roland Bryce, who, forced into horror roles despite hating them, gets in-character by actually mutilating corpses, sacrificing animals and so on. He eventually snaps from guilt and pressure and strangles his agent, ending up in an asylum, which he's mistakenly released from some time later. The asylum director, calling to check on him, is informed that he has a job at another studio. The picture he's appearing in? The Story of Jack the Ripper...
- Monster Clown: An issue of the revamped series features a murderous clown who kills "demons" wherever he sees them. He sees them everywhere.
- Origins Issue: Uncle Creepy's origin story is told in "Monster Rally!". He's a mish-mash of different monsters formed after a strange substance was spilled in a house full of monsters.
- Our Vampires Are Different: In the story "Valley of the Vampires" from issue #28, vampires are humanoids with the ears, wings and feet of a bat. Their supposed weakness to garlic, holy water and crosses is a myth perpetuated by them, but they can be harmed by ordinary bullets.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: In "X-tra X" from issue #34, a mutated form of Klinefelter syndrome causes the extra X chromosome to be affected by the full moon's gravity and produce a certain fluid which is responsible for lycanthropic transformations.
- Whole-Plot Reference: In "Home Is Where", two crooks break into a creepy curio shop. They make their way into the dungeon-like basement where they encounter many dangerous monsters that they barely escape. The final panel reveals that the curio shop belongs Uncle Creepy himself and that the monsters are his associates. The whole plot is a recreation of "While the Cat's Away" from The Crypt of Terror, only there it is the Crypt Keeper whose house gets broken into.
