Book Review: 'Stephen King's Creepshow'

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Cover for Stephen King's Creepshow by Jack Kamen. © 1982 Plume Books, an imprint of Penguin Books 
In July of 1982, Penguin Books imprint Plume published Stephen King's Creepshow, a graphic novel based on George A. Romero's eponymous horror film, which had premiered in Cannes two months earlier but would not hit theaters for another four months. Written by King and illustrated by the late Bernie Wrightson under his professional nom de plume "Berni Wrightson," Creepshow (like the film it is derived from) is a graphic homage to the horror comics published by EC Comics in the 1950s.

The 64-page book presents the same five stories in King's screenplay for the movie, two of which (The Crate and The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill) were adaptations of prose stories the author had published in men's magazines in the 1970s; the other three segments were written specifically for Romero's film.

Creepshow's quintet of horror tales consists of:


  • Father's Day
  • The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill (based on the 1976 short story "Weeds")
  • The Crate (another adapted story that originally appeared in a 1979 issue of Gallery)
  • Something to Tide You Over
  • They're Creeping Up On You
Each story begins and ends with commentary by "The Creep," a gruesome master of ceremonies based on the creepy Cryptkeeper from EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt, one of the film's sources of inspiration. The Creep breaks the fourth wall and addresses the reader directly, saying "Heh-heh! Greetings, kiddies, and welcome to the first issue of Creepshow, the magazine that dares to answer the question, "Who goes there?"

Although King, Berni Wrightson, and Wrightson's then-wife Michele stick close to the stories told in the movie, the graphic novel eschews the prologue and epilogue in which Joe King (Stephen's son) plays a boy obsessed with the comic book. The sequence in which the stories are presented is also different, as is some of the dialogue.

Stephen King's Creepshow is, obviously, one of the author's just-for-fun projects intended not just to entertain his fans, but also to promote a then-upcoming movie which marked the first collaboration between two legends of the horror genre: King and Dawn of the Dead creator George Romero. It is not a great King opus along the lines of, say, The Shining, The Stand (which, in its 1991 reissue as The Stand: Uncut and Unabridged, features illustrations by Bernie Wrightson), or It, but it's not too bad, either. The script for the comic has the same dark humored and even moralistic vibe of Bill Gaines' old EC Comics of King's adolescence, and the art by the Wrightsons (who, sadly, are no longer with us) is excellent.

The book, which was out of print for a while, was reissued in 2017 by Gallery 13. I still have my Plume edition, which is a bit tattered but still readable.

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