Confusing Time Travel or Rex Havoc & The Missing Magic Trick

Today, let us travel back to 1984 in 1978. As confounded as that might sound, it's actually pretty simple - the year was 1978, the comics appeared in Warren's 1984 magazine.

When a series opens with "You will never see anything more horrible than a boy's dead dog return from the grave to bite its young master's face off" one might immediately suspect that things are going to get a bit strange. And then when you see who's doing it, fun strange can be expected.

The team of Jim Stenstrum and Abel Laxamana, who we've seen previously with their Joe Guy: America's Foremost Hero, bring us another odd hero - Rex Havoc. As you might suspect from the opening statement, our hero lives in a world of monsters and denizens of the unknown.

Let's take a look, shall we?

Unsurprisingly, Rex Havoc's adventures were gathered together into a reprint magazine -
 

But! They skipped the second tale since they only had 72 pages, and this one was another 14 pages long. However, in so doing, they jumped right past the great magic trick, in which Abel and Jim turn a carrot into a potato -

That blurb should read "NEXT: The Scroll Of RA-Sisboom-Bah" but i guess the old Egyptian censors didn't like the nudity.

page art by Abel Laxamana for 1984 #s 4 & 5 (1978, 1979)

Warren Piece

What's this? Another cover post immediately following a cover post?
Yup.

I've spoken a few times of Warren's use of painted covers - let's pull up a pile and take a look. We'll stick to just Creepy and Eerie this time, and we'll still wind up with too many covers to fit in a single post.

First, an odd bit, just because - Odd. Check out the first issue of Eerie:

 With that cheaper-to-print black & white image giving it a small press feel, you might think this was perhaps the first Warren publication. But, as noted on the cover, Eerie came after Creepy, and Creepy had painted covers from the first issue. Not to mention that Warren had been publishing magazine for quite some time before Creepy debuted.

So why the stark b&w image? Sure, it's a great piece from  Joe Orlando  Jack Davis,  a great artist, but still... it's quite the anomaly and i'm left to wonder how the decision came about. I may not have that answer, but we do have 42 covers here so we need only find the question.

With a name like -3-, it's no surprise that i like things in threes, so next up - another cover post!
But one with a bit of purpose...

covers from the indicated issues of Creepy & Eerie (1964-1982)