Warren Comics Jigsaw Puzzles
Oct 24, 2008
For a time in the late 1970s MB Games (Milton Bradley) sold a selection of 6 Jigsaw Puzzles featuring a few famous and not so famous Warren Comic Covers.
Jigsaws were available showing the cover art of Creepy 28,71,81 and Eerie 38,59,84. As I own the Creepy 28 one I thought I’d pull out the actual issue for a closer look. Cover dated August 1969 it was published at a time when Warren needed to resort to using a number of reprinted stories to find enough material to fill the magazines. Despite having seen some of the stories before the new material is still interesting. The results of an earlier competition are announced whereby a reader had to send in a script to be published. The winner was Reuben Reid. I wonder if that was the only thing he ever had published?
“Grub” also caught my eye. Scripted by Nicola Cuti (perhaps his first for Warren?) with artwork by Tom Sutton.
The splash page artwork doesn’t really look like Tom Sutton’s work. The rest of the art has a polished “Wally Wood” space opera look to it.There is a nice shock ending.
I also like the story “The Doorway” drawn by Dan Adkins. Although it had already been published in Creepy 11 a couple of years earlier this time it inspired the cover artwork and I’m back to where I began. It’s a long time since I did a Jigsaw Puzzle…………………………
The Magic Robot 
Oct 27, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Aah, Warren magazines … I rmember discovering their existence, in the form of Eerie 23. The smalltown shop I frequented had a display section featuring all sorts of exotic American imports and it was here that I would be thrilled by the contents of Famous Monsters Of Filmland (films I was too young to see), Monster World, DC and Marvel comics and, eventually, a copy of Eerie put in an appearance. I think it was a Frazetta cover featuring the usual horror scene in which a scantily-clad girl was threatened by some nightmarish creature. I remember being very admiring of the cartoon cover girl and thus somewhat self-conscious as I made my way to the counter to pay my two-and-six or whatever it was priced at. I still hanker after buying it again all these years later, just for the nostalgia fix, but as it seems to be a scarce edition I have made do, for now, with a later issue from eBay priced at three quid. I was mildly entertained though it wasn’t quite the same, somehow.
Having written that, I then checked online to make sure my spelling of Frazetta was correct and that it was indeed Issue 23 of Eerie I remembered; it was, and what do you know, there were several available. I’ve since put in a bid for a copy. Gosh, I’m getting all self-conscious again.
Oct 27, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Wow. I’m pleased to hear you’ve gone out of your way to buy a Warren comic from eBay!!
I stood in W H Smiths on saturday and couldn’t find anything worth buying. (I came out with The Times and a DC Thompson “Commando”!!) That spinner rack in the local newsagents seems (is) a lifetime ago.
Actually it never ocurred to me to worry what the newsagent thought when I bought Vampirella. But a few years earlier I had had BIG problems in plucking up courage to buy “Lady Penelope”. It was a GIRLS comic but I was such a big fan of The Monkees and Bewitched on TV (and this comic contained strips of both series) that I just had to buy it……
Oct 28, 2008 at 10:35 am
I used to buy Commando comics and enjoyed reading them. I also recall Marvel’s Sgt Fury with some fondness but, well, there were just too many comic books for a boy to buy and so some fell by the wayside. I remember Lady Penelope comic but whether I bought a copy or not is beyond my recall. A repressed memory, perhaps?
As a kid I would make my own little comics (using coloured Biros) and sell them to the neighbourhood kids at a penny a time. I would also periodically do a 1960s equivalent of the carboot sale, in our back lane, spreading out all my ‘proper’ comics such as Valiant, Lion and Tiger (with stones on top of them to prevent them blowing away, and of course, it was always sunny in the 60s). It was amazing how word spread that there were bargains to be had.
These days I’m still involved in making ‘comics’, albeit a grown-up comic in the form of bi-monthly UK-based music magazine Rock’n’Reel. It’s really just a bunch of music enthusiasts raving and drooling about the kinds of music that presses their buttons and it’s as far from the WH Smith/’Fleet Street’-style corporate publishing as it gets, these days (although it is available via the Smith chain and is put together very professionally). Our latest edition (lucky thirteen) should be in the shops early next month (November 2008). If you happen to be browsing, give it a look (Pink Floyd are featured on the cover). It’s a far better read than Mr Murdoch’s watered-down version of The Times.
Frankly, these days I think there’s simply too much information and too much of the corporate-bland approach to modern culture. I look back at those more innocent days, when America seemed such an exotic place, full of promise to an eleven-year-old boy what with its amazing comicbook heroes, real live sea monkeys and X-ray specs. But as Tom Robbins says in one of his books, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Oct 28, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Yes I agree that there is too much information. Certainly in music we are long past the point where one person can keep their finger on the pulse of every genre. For a long time I managed to buy the music press and attend gigs/keep up with trends. I think I finally opted out in 1997 when I decided there was nothing at all worth listening to in the top 20. For a time I amused myself buying CD versions of all my favourite LPs and then as finances allowed filling in the gaps of all the music I desperately wanted as a teenager but just couldn’t afford then. It may seem a cop-out to say I’ve now got all the music I need, but as with comics I’ve too much information to process. My 10 minutes per day on this blog only scratches the surface. I always enjoy it when friends point me in the direction of new music they think I’ll like but left to my own devices I load the mp3 player up with older stuff. This week its crammed with The Fugs/Music Emporium/Prince Buster/Soundtrack from Zabraski Point/Ronnettes.
I’ll certainly investigate “RocknReel”. “Mojo” seems to be turning into “Q” magazine and doesn’t interest me like it used to.
With this blog I like to think I’m not so much re-living my childhood as re-investigating what I think were the better bits of popular culture in the second half of the C20th……
Oct 30, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Oops! When I said Rock’n’Reel 13 would be circulating in early November, I meant Issue 12. I’ve just started working on issue 13, in fact.
And I’m now happily awaiting my Eerie 23 winging its way to me from the States. eBay is a wonderful thing (when they’re not busy ‘improving’ it, that is). I came close to bidding for a copy of The Magic Robot game recently but managed to resist the temptation. For now.
I used to have a battery-operated toy robot, too, with a sort of video display built into its chest via which an ‘alien landscape’ could be seen as the robot ‘negotiated its environment’ (ie. walked about). I seem to recall that the robot was green and made of metal but that’s as much as I can remember about it. Wish I still had that toy box and its various treasures. All those Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox cars, for example, would have been a veritable pension fund for me.
I was a big fan of Airfix models and those little plastic soldiers you could buy in a box of forty-eight figures, was it? Back in those days childhood required and encouraged a vivid imagination. Nowadays it’s all too easy to stare at a monitor and zap baddies at the press of a button. Zzzzz.
Oct 30, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Hi Dave
I’m trying to resist the lure of eBay but I couldn’t resist a few more “Magic Robot” games.There were so many fascinating varieties available. In the 1970s you could get a football/sport version with a picture of Dickie Davies on the box and a footballer rather than a robot sitting on the mirror!!
And don’t get me started on the values of “collectables”.
Who thought to save the boxes that the Corgi Batmobile came in..and luckily I don’t lose any sleep over having sold Spiderman 1-50 and Fantastic Four 3-100 and similar for a few £££s in the early 1970s!!
Eerie 23 contained the anti-smoking ad “Easy way to a Tuff Surfboard” which I believe was drawn by Frank Frazetta. For anyone who’s not familiar with it click here.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ll4HgslXX4
Oct 30, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Very nice! I stopped smoking a couple of decades ago but I never did end up with a surfboard. I’d certainly have settled for the surfbird pictured in Frank Frazetta’s artwork!
Yes, if only we’d kept all our wonderful goodies in their boxes, we’d be laughing all the way to the bank. But then again, look what happened to the banks.