Colouring Book Theatre: Monsters - 2008

I followed up my first "Guest Blogger" piece for Plaid Stallions fairly quickly with another installment of Colouring Book Theatre. I was still a bit shaky about doing these--as you can see from the ultra-spare text--but in a weird way it gave me the confidence to try my hand at longer pieces for other people.


Will Eisner's The Spirit Coloring Book wasn't the only odd coloring book offered for sale in the back of Warren mags:

Always solicited alongside Eisner's effort was a coloring book from another comics master, this one at the very eve of his career: Berni Wrightson.

Berni Wrightson, with his intricate line work and obsessive cross-hatching, seems like an odd choice to headline a coloring book, but again, like Eisner's, this book was clearly aimed at the older, comics collector audience. And if the cover didn't tell you this book wasn't made for kids, maybe the opening page would:

"...Mommy, what color is the inside of someone's skull?"

The book is made up of fifteen "plates"--single-sided, page-size illustrations highlighting a particular gruesome character. There's a Ghoul:

A, ahem, "Swamp Creature":

As well as a vampire, a glob, a mummy, a werewolf, a cyclops, Frankenstein, a plant monster, a zombie, goblins, the creeping dead, an axe-murderer(fun!), a witch, and my favorite, a gun-totin' alien:

Each piece also comes with a little goofy poem describing each creature. Since the opening page says the text is copyright comics pioneer Phil Seuling, I have to assume he wrote these wonderful, EC-style ditties:

The book measures a whopping 11x17", which is a perfect size to enjoy all of the detail Wrightson put in his work. It makes me long for a classic Swamp Thing treasury comic--that would've been a sight to behold!

A very fun book, and I guess perfect for a kid who loves monsters and horror. Though at the prices this book commands on eBay, I don't think anyone would hand this treasure over to some crayola-mad tyke.