Edited by LAWRENCE SHELL (Comic Art Gallery; 1977)

This comic book anthology from the 1970s underground comix scene is a bit different from most of the others.  Big names in the field like Kim Deitch, S. Clay Wilson and Richard Corben are nowhere to be found, with this comic’s major selling point being that it features a mixture of under and overground creators.  Its subject: animal vengeance.

The major inspiration for THE BARN OF FEAR was the EC Comics brand, which explains in part why, despite some inspired entries, it doesn’t feel very fresh or unique.  Quite a few underground horror comix of the sixties and seventies were EC-inspired, and this 1977 publication turned up pretty late in the game (having been preceded by underground-oriented EC pastiches like SKULL, DEATH RATTLE and many others).

The contents, hosted by a very Crypt Keeper-esque talking corpse with pun-riddled speech patterns (“This next cold an’ calculatin’ terror-tale is guaranteed to set th’ chills standin’ in line to shimmy up and down yer spine…”), commence with the Dough Moench scripted, Dave Hunt drawn “Let’s Play Chicken.”  The book’s undoubted standout, it’s about an abusive farmer who loves killing chickens.  His put-upon wife, looking to get revenge, injects a hen with a substance that results in the laying of several eggs, one of which hatches an extremely fast growing, homicidally-inclined chicken.

At the opposite end of the quality spectrum is the second-to-last piece, Tom Sutton’s “That Damn Dog,” an overwrought, crudely drawn depiction of a vampire babe waylaid by the pet dog of a man she’s killed.  “Toro! Toro!” by Law Renz and Alfredo P. Alcala has a bull turning the tables on a bullfighter, and “Buying Uncle Barney’s Funny Farm” by writer/illustrator Patrick N. Cosgrove features a scumbag getting his just desserts after attempting to burn down a farm, with its animals inside, on a property he desires.

The Carl Macek and Scott Shaw scripted, Shaw drawn “Cold Turkey!” attempts a mock Disney-esque depiction of animal amour in the form of a noir spoof involving a penguin murdering his turkey muse.  “Night Crawling” by writer/artist J. Michael Leonard once again involves animals enacting humanity’s worst qualities, in this case a pair of warring canines.  “The Crimey Slimey Monster of Rottenberry Swamp” by DR. ATOMIC’s Larry Todd is populated by hippie rabbits who, in what is “like a scene from a 1950’s sci-fi flick,” discover an alien spaceship populated by, shockingly, humans.  Finally there’s George Erling’s one page “Let Me Axe My Wife,” in which a henpecked turtle is driven to kill his crow spouse, with the term “eating crow” coming into play in the disposal of her corpse.