Tie-Dyed Creepy Comics – HappiMess Media

When my maternal grandmother died, she left behind a pretty decent-sized collection of vintage comics that included Creepy, Eerie, MAD, and Cracked. These, paired with my dad’s Conan the Barbarian comics, made for some pretty educational reading material for Third-Grade Me in the mid-’90s.

I gravitated more toward the MADs and Crackeds. They helped shape my sense of humor and introduced me to bits of pop culture that happened decades before I was born. Though I did enjoy scary stories, the horror comics didn’t do much for me. I found them too heavily inked to be visually enjoyable and cluttered with too much text. The stories also starred boring, indistinguishable men getting into trouble I didn’t care about. Give me a shrieking banshee or a sultry vampiress already!

Cut to the late twenty-teens when I lived in Portland and spotted heavy tomes of Creepy comics on the library shelf. I decided to check them out to see if I still felt the same way about them, and yep, I do. I by and large skimmed the hell out of these collections.

But every now and then, a panel caught my eye, and I sensed I’d need to do very little to make it funny, even ludicrous. Just a little text update would take the out-of-context scene from horror to humor. So I started reading (er, skimming) with my phone beside me, taking pics of the panels that had the greatest potential.

The Tie-Dye Creepy Comics Collection

The Creepy comics project didn’t fully come to fruition until 2021. I had pre-flight anxiety before going on my honeymoon to Greece and I’d run out of things to clean and tidy, so I finally started in on this thing to distract myself. My approach: Bring the panel into Adobe Photoshop, mask the text in the speech bubble(s), and replace it with fresh conversation in the font WebLetterer. I’d also do a little housekeeping, cropping, and straightening. But it was all looking pretty plain. Then I remembered this image I’d come across once upon a time on the internet:

That’s what was missing from my project: rainbow tie dye! I used some grungy, splotchy, painterly Photoshop brushes and futzed with the colors and transparencies. And soon, I had a whole thirty-piece set of thirty of whatever you want to consider these:

I’ve been there before, and it’s quite the conundrum (1 – “Contact”)

What happens when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed (4 – “Sigh”)

Ah, well—can’t do nothin’ ‘bout it now! (5 – “On”)

They’re getting so creative at IKEA anymore (6 – “Chandelier”)

I’ll never remember to post this on February 14th (7 – “Valentine”)

This one is brought to you by Williams Sonoma, except not really, because they had no idea I made this (8 – “Dip”)

My honey despises the whole Magnolia empire so I dedicate this one to him (9 – “Gaines”)

There’s a $100 cleaning fee too (10 – “Airbnb”)

This celebrates the majesty that is modern-day, well, plumbing 🪠 What will they think of next! (12 – “Plumbing”)

Speak quickly now, it’s an emergency (13 – “Loo”)

Mickey is positively crushing it in lane 6 tonight (14 – “Strike”)

I think my fear of the phone first developed in college when I would call the pizza place to order a bakewich (a Stromboli) with bacon and green peppers and a side of ranch, and it wasn’t one of the bakewich choices on their menu so they always sounded really pissed (15 – “Phone”)

I don’t have a cast-iron anything because I’m avoiding these horrifying thoughts (17 – “Nightmare”)

Remember that story from More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark where everyone plays hide and seek at the wedding reception (who does this?) and the bride hides in the attic trunk and her skeleton isn’t found until a billion years later? That’s a fun one (18 – “Game”)

TFW when you make the evil abyss shadow monster giggle (19 – “Tickle”)

I’ve never used Tinder but it sounds wild (20 – “Tinder”)

This is what I imagine being a parent to look like. How close am I to the truth? (21 – “Bathroom”)

No one likes being catcalled, people—not even by hot ghouls (22 – “Stems”)

Would you say the pillow is properly fluffed now? (23 – “Turndown”)

This guy is clearly living his best life (25 – “Drugs”)

It was supposed to be the ultimate retreat (26 – “Alone”)

Our drafty castle dungeon’s 72 flights of stairs will firm your glutes in no time (27 – “Buns”)

What will Versace think of next (28 – “Belt”)

…although what fun will life be then (29 – “Gum”)

I didn’t even have to change the text for this one. I believe this is what they call “found art” (30 – “Gas”)

So now that I had a month’s worth of updated, bizarre Creepy comic panels, what should I do with them? Obviously, make a notebook and take photos of it with your dog!

Appreciate this project and want a notebook for yourself or the horror aficionado in your life? Snag your copy from the HappiMess Media Etsy shop!

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