CookieDoodle #6

 

For Cookiedoodle #6, I thought Cookie Monster and the Count could stand in for the characters from the cover of Creepy #4 by Frank Frazetta. I think Cookie is happy to receive a delivery from the Count’s Castle Bakery van.

In the late 1950’s and early 60’s, publisher Jim Warren found a niche with magazines aimed at the young fans of horror movies.  During the late 1950’s, a package of the early classic horror films was distributed to TV stations and created a new group of fans.  When these films began being broadcast, Mom wouldn’t let me or my brothers stay up late to watch them. She would relate the plots of the movies to us at breakfast the next day. I became very interested.

Warren began publishing Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958.  With the success of this publication, and having included a couple stories told in comic book fashion in his magazines, Warren in 1964 began publishing Creepy and then Eerie. These anthology  “comic book style” books were published in a magazine format and avoided the restraints of the Comic’s Code. Many illustrators for the stories in the magazines had worked for the notorious EC Comics, whose comics had been used as a prime example of why a Comic’s Code was needed to enforce self-imposed industry standards/regulations on comic book content, like no vampires, werewolves, or ghouls, etc., that would traumatize young minds. The damage had already been done to me, and I was drawing monsters and staying up late.

I had seen Frank Frazetta’s artwork on ACE paperback book covers, but when he began illustrating covers for Warren Publishing's horror magazines, I was hooked.