My 1st exposure to Richard Corben was when I was in Houston for 6 months in 1971. At a large drug store that had a magazine counter, I saw
EERIE #33, the issue with "
Starvisions" on the cover. That was my 1st Warren horror comic, and it introduced me to so many artists I'd never seen before.
Corben's story was "
THE BUG". A company puts an insecticide tower on the market, it sells like crazy, but one day a man comes to complain that his sickly wife DIED because of it. The owner of the company kills the husband in a hit-and-run, but later, hears a noise in his warehouse, and feeling guilty, runs and hides... only to find he's accidentally locked himself in a storeroom full of the towers. Overcome by the fumes, he collapses... but on waking up, finds he's been transformed into a COCKROACH. (Some things you don't forget.)
Corben was still a regular at Warren when I started buying them regular in the late 70s. And I recognized his art on "
BAT OUT OF HELL" (Corben... Jim Steinman... Meat Loaf... and Ellen Foley, who I have 6 large photos of on my wall for the last 25 years).
Corben was also the single reason I bought my first issue of "
HEAVY METAL", and got hooked on that. The 10 minutes that was adapted from his work in the 1981 animated feature film remains an all-time favorite of mine. I have so many books collecting his work they probably take up a full magazine box.
And recently, as a result of my massive
POE comics blog project, I found out he currently holds the record for most
POE comics adaptations by a single artist... BY A WIDE MARGIN that may well NEVER be surpassed. (Unless I've missed anything...
30!) He did 3 for Warren, 1 for Pacific... but then decades later, did a pile more for Marvel Max, and some years after that, a BIGGER pile more for Dark Horse. (Because of the annoying habit of publishers including "extra" stories in collections, there's still 2 MORE of his I need to track down!!!)
I once had the nerve to send him copies of my 4 "
WIERDLINGS" stories, suggesting he might be a perfect choice to illustrate more. He wrote back saying "
I don't think I'm ready to do superheroes yet." A few years later, he was doing
HULK and
LUKE CAGE for Marvel. Oh well!
I really owe it to myself to dig out his work and RE-read a pile of it. Especially the later
DENs. After the 1st story, the sequels somehow were never quite as "coherent". Not sure who was responsible for that...
He also did the cover for Steinman's follow-up, "
BAD FOR GOOD", where Steinman did a duet with Karla De Vito, who replaced Foley on tour.
