On 24 July 2013 I visited my regular comic book store Zeno’s Books and picked up from the owner Wayne Ehrmann two copies of the hardcover book Creepy Presents Steve Ditko. The publisher Darkhorse has  reprinted in hardcover for the last few years Creepy and Eerie magazine horror stories from the 1960s and 1970s. I bought the first few editions of each because I dabbled in buying the original magazines in the 1960s. I liked them because they had stories with art by the big name EC comic book artists as well as my favorite comic book artist, Steve Ditko. 

I quit buying the Darkhorse reprints when they reached the point in the late 1960s when all the good EC artists and Ditko quit and were replaced by mostly new artists I didn’t like. However Darkhorse still puts out special editions containing all the stories done by a particular artist. I had already bought the Bernie Wrightson and then the Richard Corben books and was eagerly anticipating this Ditko edition. Steve Ditko did some of the best work of his career on these black and white horror stories for Creepy and Eerie. 

In the early 1990s I wrote an article on Ditko’s stories for these magazines but couldn’t get it published. It’s here on my website if you want to read it. Most of these Ditko stories were published in a magazine in 1982 by the original publisher Warren Publishing. Warren also put out special magazine editions devoted to other artists who worked on Creepy and Eerie in the 1960s that I like: Al Williamson, Wally Wood, Reed Crandall. Let’s hope Darkhorse eventually follows up this Ditko hardcover with hardcovers of these other famous artists.