Jay Disbrow's Monster Invasion (Chilling Archives of Horror Comics) Hardcover – Import, 10 Jan 2017

JAY DISBROW'S MONSTER INVASION is the latest addition in Craig Yoe's astonishing color hardback glossy beautiful Chilling Archives of Horror Comics!!! #19, in fact. It is difficult to think of hyperbole too big for how much I love these books. They are amazing works of art and the range of artists featured run the widest gamut, from Dick Briefer's FRANKENSTEIN to Bob Powell, Howard Nostrand. Don Heck! Tom Sutton! On and on. Once you actually hold one of these books in your greedy little hands, you will understand that the price is right!

This is one ENTERTAINING book. I went into it without knowing one iota about Jay Disbrow, except what is provided on Amazon's Main Page, and this may be the most important book I've bought on a whim, ever.Why? Because I love monsters, that's why. And previously unbeknownst to me, I now travel forth with the enlightenment that I love the way Jay Disbrow envisioned and illustrated his monsters. He didn't just draw them, he created them, he nurtured them, his love for what he was doing shows and grows on every page.As much as I loved the "Four Color Fear" book, I think "Monster Invasion" (besides working as an introduction to Mr. Disbrow's talents) provides us with an encapsulation of what people who just wanted a down and dirty low brow fix of inky delight in a horror comic had access to. Also loved the interview with Jay and have to say that I am impressed with Craig Yoe and the layout style of these collections (I also own the Eerie Publications volume).Misspelled words can drive me crazy in a novel or a glossy magazine, but I relished the times when words were distorted here; the over-saturated ink and color schemes bringing basic plots alive with gaudy glee, coming at me like a drug inducement, a miracle drug that reduced my intellect and with it my cares to a prehistoric era when the worst monster was having to go to school the next day and to be separated from my comic books that relayed solace to a horror-fascinated, escape-from-what-appeared-to-be-boring-reality youth.Comic books heralded (or de-heralded) in a different mindset in those days, and I willfully surrendered to the ones chosen for this compilation. For the record, I look to comics as an anti-intellectual pursuit of eye-buldging, drool-producing fun. I refuse to ever read a "graphic novel" and find it offensive that they even exist.Oh Yeah, a special tip of the top hat must be presented to Jay Disbrow for the monster's nose in the story "The Thing From The Void". If they gave away awards for best monster-nose, and he didn't win that prize in 1954, I would protest with everything I had, to correct the injustice. I have never seen a finer nose on a monster, and I hope to never see a more grotesque one (especially if it's hiding underneath my bed).

These stories offer a view into much more innocent times when the publishing world was ruled by money people who didn’t care much about the actual contents of their magazines. As long as the books sold, the owners were more than satisfied.This fact allowed for contents beyond any borders of good taste, and we are lucky that these stories were published in the first place. Moreover we are lucky that they are now made accessible to us again. The stories in this volume contain evil curses, encounters with the devil, ghosts of all sorts, voodoo curses, and many more appalling and yummy things!The stories are testament to much more innocuous times concerning editorial stringency, as a plethora of factual and grammatical slip-ups appear throughout these stories. We are witnesses to a.o. Eskimos looking like American prairie indians, a German shepherd looking like a cross between a leopard and a horse, an author of sounds (?), an Alaskan plaque written in arabic looking script, and while being in that part of the world, another story mentioning an Alaskan city named Ankerage … oh God! We are presented to linguistic gems like “weather or not” and “reprocussions” (repercussions), and a story (“Creeping Death”) that contains a clumsy female, an old negro janitor and almost any other cliché that you can think of. On the other side, that same story is definitely anti-war … a bold move in 1953 USA.You could as a reader choose to be annoyed by all the misspellings, factual gaffes and clichéd writing … or you can take a “devil may care” attitude (which might literally be very much in place regarding stories like these) and regard all of it as a charming indication of times gone by that will never ever come again. I think that I’ll prefer that last option …

COOL

High quality stories in this collection and a great interview with Mr. Disbrow. Highly recommended this book!