Tentacle Tuesday: Warren and Its Many Tentacles

Welcome to Tentacle Tuesday! Today’s edition features beautifully painted covers from series published by Warren, and oh boy oh boy, are there are a lot of tentacles to be found there! To borrow a title from the first cover we’ll be ogling today, “THE SLIMY, CRAWLY SLITHERING GROPIES DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO PRETTY LITTLE GIRLS!” It’s a tad lacking in subtlety, but summarizes the state of things quite nicely.

On with the show…

1994#12-Manuel-Sanjulian
1994 no. 12 (April 1980). The cover was painted by Sanjulián (his real name is Manuel Pérez Clemente), a Spanish painter who started working for Warren publishing in 1970. The girl’s demure pose coupled with her terrified eyes is quite striking.
1994#20-NestorRedondo
1994 no. 20 (August 1981). Cover by Nestor Redondo, an exceptional Filipino artist.

I wouldn’t expect cephalopods to care for patriarchal, machismo standards of female purity, but apparently Lecherous Groatie (great nickname) wants his maidens virginous (which isn’t even a word, you guys). “Little Beaver!”, you say? Way to go in being offensive to both tentacled creatures *and* Indians. This issue also contains the story “The Russians Are Coming… All Over America!”, a title which I, for one, find hilarious.

1994#25-Lloyd-Garrison
1994 no. 25 (June 1982). Cover by Lloyd Garrison. Aaah, a rare silent cover. It’s clear enough: Ukranian Santa will surely rescue the maiden, if he doesn’t get too distracted by her ass or Chinese-takeout container-inspired undergarment.

Leaving 1994 behind (although technically we’re going back in time), and moving on to Eerie, we get to tentacles that look like worms coming out of a lumpy, squishy brain – the joy of any good anatomical pathologist.

Eerie#76-Sanjulian
Eerie no. 76 (August 1976). The cover the aforementioned Sanjulián, who has quite the talent for painting extremely realistic textures, as demonstrated by this rather unsettling cover.

One understands the guy’s desperate attempts to get free, but why is the woman so placid, serenely exposing herself to the creature’s grasp? I guess Tentacle Tuesday doesn’t have the same effect on everyone. Interestingly, Sanjulián seems to have tweaked his art  for the cover – here’s his original painting, in which the girl’s face is clearly visible.

Eerie#76-Sanjuliar-paintedart

Let’s visit good old Vampi and see what sort of cephalopod encounters she’s had.

Vampirella101-NolyPanaligan
Vampirella no. 101 (December 1981); art by Noly Panaligan (who, by the way, is another Filipino artist).

The tentacled creature in question is the “star-beast” advertised on the cover – an alien (suspiciously similar to an octopus) who, as usual, tries to take over the earth by breeding (which for some reason involves a lot of nude & nubile college students as sacrifices) and is killed when Vampirella crashes a car into it. Starting on an epic, inter-planetary scale and ending it all with a banal road accident is a bit of an anti-climax.

Is this Vampirella’s last encounter with tentacles, you ask? Don’t be silly – of course not. As the Russians say, « and yet again the little hare will go out for a walk. »

Vampirella95-KenKelly
Vampirella no. 95 (April 1981), cover by Ken Kelly. “O Mr. Walrus-with-tentacles, please don’t hurt little old me!”

More? Well, okay, one last cover.

Creepy67
Creepy no. 67 (December 1974), cover by Ken Kelly (not one of his better efforts, to be honest). We’ll return to sweet ol’ Bowser on another occasion.

Could I continue? Yes, absolutely… so expect Tentacle Tuesday: Warren part 2 at some point.

~ ds

9 thoughts on “Tentacle Tuesday: Warren and Its Many Tentacles

  1. billdubayii July 23, 2018 / 22:41

    I love Nestor Redondo’s artwork. He painted the cover for an issue of Eerie Magazine that featured a story my dad wrote where the boy superhero was based on me. Check out this article, you might get a kick out of it:

    View at Medium.com

    Liked by 1 person

    • redscraper July 23, 2018 / 23:31

      Wow, what an amazing story! Thanks so much for sharing. You had one cool childhood, you lucky so-and-so! 😉

      Like

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