All of the comics fans I know--from the readers I talk to at conventions to my coworkers at Dark Horse--can usually pinpoint one defining moment of their lives when their appreciation for comics evolved from being a passing interest to taking a form as real and solid as love of any kind can be. Sounds dramatic, I know, but I think it's true. I remember the same moment in my own life, and it happened the day I first laid my eyes on an old copy of Creepy magazine. Cue flashback: I spent my childhood in L.A., and a disproportionate amount of it was spent digging through magazine and comics boxes with my dad and two brothers at area swap meets. Typically my dad would herd us in the direction of the comics, where we would happily plop down to search through the piles while he was off looking through boxes of something called Penthouse, which didn't sound like much fun at all to me. Silly daddy.
It was during one of these outings that my oldest brother came up for air with an armful of big comics . . . big, spooky-looking things called Creepy. We were already being raised in a household that spent sunny Saturday afternoons parked in front of the TV watching old horror flicks hosted by a guy named "Svenghoulie," and at age six my favorite movies were the original Frankenstein and a made-for-TV nightmare about three little murderous demons called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. So to say Creepy was right up our collective alley would be a grave understatement.
We were pretty rabidly into comics by that point too, but I hadn't gotten very far beyond Richie Rich and other Harvey titles and was just starting to read the saucier, more mature Archie comics. But Creepy . . . oh, sweet, horrible Creepy. Amazing things happened in my weird little brain that day, and the best way to describe it is "I fell in love" . . . with Creepy (and soon Eerie, which we discovered shortly after) in particular, with horror comics in general, and ever more deeply with the medium of comics as a whole.
The only problem with my new love was that it was pretty hard to find Creepy beyond those first few swap-meet jackpots. By the time I was a teenager, collectors had really made their mark on the used comics market, and issues I could've gotten for a quarter at one point were going for twelve or fifteen bucks a pop. Even as an adult with a little money in my pocket, I've never been enough of a collector to want to spend $20 for the experience of reading one old comic.
So I don't know if anyone on the planet was happier than I was when Dark Horse made plans to publish all of the original issues of Creepy and Eerie in large hardcover archive editions. It probably sounds like a lot of marketing hooey when editors claim to be "so excited!" about books they're working on, but hey, it happens. And it seems to happen a lot here at Dark Horse, where we employ a lot of people with a lot of love for comics.
At the time of this writing, I'm waiting on pins and needles for the first advance copy of Creepy Volume 1 from the printer. Putting that book together was an exercise of pure passion for me and everyone here who worked on it, and I hope that love is evident when all you boils and ghouls finally get your claws on it.
Shawna Gore
Editor