Meanwhile

No Movie Matinee or even Sunday Funnies today.
Here's 3 Frank Frazetta illustrations for Movies to hold you over.
I'll be back in a couple days.

After The Fox:

What's New Pussycat?

Yours, Mine And Ours:

Famous Creepy Eerie FreakOut

We're running out of year pretty soon, did you notice that?

Any 50 years ago in 1967 sort of things must be tended to in the next several weeks. There was a lot happening in '67 - in fact, it was A Happening in '67. But i'm not in an overly wordy frame of mind, so let's take in something visual - I trust not too abysmal. And let's intersect with another subject i've had on the back burner for quite a while - Warren magazines.

We'll later be talking about what goes on inside the magazines, but today, let's just take a look at Warren's '67 covers. As they developed over the years, their magazines often sported some of the coolest and most interesting visuals on the magazine rack.

Their Big 3 comic magazines were Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, with a host of other titles supporting them over the years. But back in 1967, Vampirella was still a stirring in Forry's... imagination. So, instead of Vampirella, here's his other magazine - Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Not a comic magazine, but just around the genre corner:

There's a reminder - Christmas Is Coming! That sounds somehow very different in a post Game Of Thrones world...
Meanwhile, back at Warrens premiere comic magazines... Creepy is the Big Brother of the two titles, being a whole year older. So we'll honor the elderly and let them go first-

Frank Frazetta was a frequently featured cover artist on Warren's publications. Even when re-purposing a pre-existing illustration that many had likely seen before, it was still a good draw on the newsstand. A great number of other fantasy and horror artists' paintings were used on the cover, Warren seeming to splurge on the colour covers to offset the mostly black & white inner contents.
Worked for me, though these were before my time buying the titles. I was still living in Asia at this point, and Warren was having enough troubles with distribution in the USA.
On the cover's of  Eerie's mere five issues for '67 we had Frazetta once again leading off-

I particularly like that Gray Morrow cover on #10 above. So simple & clean compared to the typical offerings of the time, and a striking design that makes good use of the white space to draw the eye to the image.

Though perhaps not up to later levels at the peak of their covers, not a bad collection for the year of 1967.
Of course, this is The Voice Of ODD!, so we'd be remiss were we not to peek at the covers of Warren's oddest publication for '67 - Freak Out U.S.A.

Yes, the second issue is actually cover dated for 1968, but it was published in '67 and it was just too damn odd to leave out. I mean - how many of you looked at that and Austin drawled "Yeah, Baby!"?
You can expect to at least see a bit of The Monkees from the first issue (16 pages they got!), as might be expected from some of my previous indications of Monkee mania.

But the question looms in my mind - which covers make you want to look inside the magazine?

all covers from Warren publications (1967)

Blue Monday, not Monday Blues

Fighting the urge to draw back deeper into the cave today. Nearly Monday Blues instead of

Instead of withdrawing, how about we dig something up out of the darkness? Say maybe an Un-comic with a Frank Frazetta cover for a Neal Adams comic strip? That work for you?
Hope so...


NOTE: The images from this post contain nudity, and thus have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics. (Fair warning, there's not a whole lot of nudity, but a lot of oddity. And you do get a naked cover from Frazetta)
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Ah, 70s....  how we miss you.

Dragula by Tony Hendra and Neal Adams from National Lampoon #20 (1971)

Len & Friends go Crazy, Crazy, Crazy

Sunday Morning Funnies time once again, and still dropping Odd bits from Len Wein after we lost him two weeks ago. So this time, let's go to Crazy #1...

Okay... That's not at all confusing. Just a little Crazy. Len's parody is in the 1973 black & white Crazy #1. But let's take the long way there, starting with 1953's Crazy #1-

The first tale in this Crazy features the only "Lace Cadet" i've ever encountered-

19 years later, we get another Crazy #1-

 

Oddly enough, the indicia in this issue gives copyright notice of reprints from the 1953 series, but the material seems to be all parodies of 1960s Marvel Titles. One might think they were reprinting from Not Brand Echh instead. The lead story from this version of Crazy #1 starred, as all the stories in this issue did, the ignoble Forbush Man!

A year later, they decided that really didn't work out any better than NBE, so they tried once more with the black & white magazine style of the other mental illnesses (Mad, Cracked, Sick, etc.,.)

Wait.... what..? That can't be...
GODHELL!!! That's a Kelly Freas painted cover to kick off the new title! How did this come about? In whose name do we burn offering for this?
Um...       excuse me.
I may have mentioned previously that Frank Kelly Freas, like Jack Kirby, was one of the Masters who inspired me to follow the path of the artist. (Artdo? YiShuJiaDao seems a bit unweildy... (and the combined brushwork on those 4 characters is overly busy and inelegant, too))
Y'know... I think i might be old man rambling again. And, speaking of old people - how many remember one of the first of the big Irwin Allen disaster movies that created the genre - The Poseidon Adventure?
I actually had the movie poster for this up on my wall, along with Planet Of The Apes and others. Back in them old days, you could just go to the theatre and ask the manager for the poster after the movie run was over. They were just going to throw it away, and you might get lobby cards and other promos, too. Develop a relationship with them, and you could even wind up with life-size lobby stand-ups.
I really don't think that happens much now. Not without cash changing hands.
Okay - rambling again...

Here's Len Wein's parody adaptation of the movie, with art by Ross Andru & Vic Martin, from our Crazy #1 number 3:

Bonus Oddity! Here's a satirical(?) view of the future from Harlan Ellison, with illustration from Basil Wolverton! They really weren't skimping on the talent for this first issue, were they?

And, simply because it took me this long to remember where this was and dig it out to prep for the VOO, and - what the heck - because Tony Isabella worked on this issue of Crazy, also, here's my favorite view of Len Wein as editor, from Giant-Size Chiller #3...

 ...and at the end of the book:

Another Oddly Enough remark - this issue reprinted the first story that Marvel published by Len Wein. (The Moving Finger Writes, from Tower Of Shadows #3 (1970))

Well, that was a long post.
And i'm all out of potatoes. Left them all in a barrel in Skyrim and they disappeared on me.

Here's a bear. They don't eat potatoes.

fun with bears by Frank Frazetta