Tuesday, May 18, 2010

What's the 1967 scary comic about the "killer arm" that snakes out of the sewers nightly to stalk kids?

Yeah, there is a horror comic book called Creepy Tales, I believe, that included a wicked story in the late '60s about a demonic hand that pops out of the sewers and crushes kids it snatches from their bedrooms. Horrible, I know, but that story has excellent, eerie artwork, and I would like to find it before Halloween. The hero of the story is a teen-ager who sets out in search of the monster that killed his little brother some years ago. He spots it one night, snaking in and out of apartment building windows, searching for prey. The boy is almost grabbed from behind by the fiendish snake-like claw, but a team of crimefighters shows up at the ultimate moment to shoot the beast to death. This story is located online somewhere, because I read it on a website in its entirety two years ago. The site was devoted to comic books of the past. If you can help, I would greatly appreciate any clues where to find it.

What's the 1967 scary comic about the "killer arm" that snakes out of the sewers nightly to stalk kids?
In 1967, there was no comic book titled 'Creepy Tales' but James Warren of Warren Magazines published a black and white anthology magazine titled 'Creepy' which featured horror stories in strip format. By doing a google search, I've found a couple of websites dedicated to Creepy and some of Warren's other magazines, but I wasn't able to find any websites that contained complete stories from any of the issues of 'Creepy', 'Eerie' or 'Vampirella'. Chances are someone posted scans of the story to some website devoted to horror comics or possibly just to comics. I only know a few websites that present comics scans and a quick check of those failed to find such a story. Chances are the story was posted for a few months and then was rotated out so another story could be featured.





Sorry I can't point you a link that would take you to the story scans, but if you go to a comics shop and ask about back issues of 'Creepy' there is a slim chance you might find the issue that contained the story. 'Creepy' lasted for 19 years and sold well enough that back issues are available, although not plentiful. The good news is that if you can find the issue in question, the book shouldn't be very expensive since the black and white comics magazines never seem to achieve the same kind of inflated value that most comic books from the sixties and early seventies have.





Good luck trying to find the story.


No comments:

Post a Comment