Staff Picks (October): Tom Sutton's Creepy Things: Chilling Archives of Horror HC

Publisher: IDW Publishing

In comics, when you think horror, depending on your age, you will think EC Comics, Warren’s Creepy and Eerie, DC’s House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and The Witching Hour. More recently it would be The Walking Dead or Afterlife with Archie.

In the days before comic shops, you checked your local drug store, newsstand or local 7-11 spinner racks for whatever comics were out. In those days you might find Tales to Astonish or Tales of the Unexpected, but in my area you were more likely to find Timmy the Timid Ghost and other Charlton’s such as Ghostly Tales, Ghost Manor, Ghostly Haunts, and The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves.

While many comic book readers may not have collected the Charlton titles, but there was talent of those books from the legendary Steve Ditko to Pat Boyette, Warren Sattler, Joe Staton, Jim Aparo, and Tom Sutton.

In Tom Sutton’s Creepy Things: Chilling Archives of Horror the best of Tom’s work for Charlton is presented in full color. While an assistant for Wally Wood, Tom’s art went beyond his mentor’s style into something wholly Tom’s, which was a mix of expressionism as if channeled through H.P. Lovecraft. Sutton’s work was especially creepy, eerie and foreboding.

With stories by Joe Gill and Nick Cuti, both of whom knew how to play to Sutton’s strengths, Tom Sutton in the seventies became synonymous with Charlton.  

Craig Yoe and IDW with editor Michael Ambrose have a book that is a welcome addition to your book shelves; it belongs on the shelf right besides PS Artbooks’ The Thing and Titan Books' The Simon and Kirby Horror Library.

~ Steve Leaf