Creepshow by Stephen King & a RANT about an OOP Book

Creepshow by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my 2014 opinion of my first re-read of this since the original. I bought this when it first came out and am sure I read it multiple times then but haven't read it since. I have seen the movie though about 3 or 4 times. This is horror "cheese" and an homage to the old EC comic books such as "Tales of the Crypt". There are 5 short stories here and they are all enjoyable for the artform they represent. A great book that was written to coincide with the movie and a wonderful, unique addition to King's work at this stage of his career. I'd give the book 5 stars if it was in print.

I am currently (re)reading King's books in chronological order and I had just planned on purchasing this book for my shelves as a bit of fun, expecting an old backlist title to be about $12-$14.99. What a surprise to find that it is out of print! I thought the only title King had put a moratorium on was "Rage"; I thought *all* his book were in print and with the popularity of graphic novels today was shocked to find this not in print. So then I thought I'd just download the digital edition but, nope!, no digital edition either. Huh? So now I'm wondering is King ashamed of this book; did he have some shlock artist illustrate it and didn't want it on the shelves with all his new fancy graphic novels now? But again, nope! The legendary Bernie Wrightson illustrated this book, the co-creator of "Swamp Thing".

So now I'm going the used route and having been a used book dealer for ten years in the past myself found to no great surprise that the book was priced as a "collectible". $40 plus bucks, yeah, right. I want to read it not collect and preserve it. An inter-library loan request at my library came back negative. I live in SW Ontario, the most populated area of Canada, and there are no library copies of this book? Probably because they've all been stolen and are now for sale online at $40 plus! So now I'm looking for an illegal scan online, not something I do and not proud, but I want to read the damn book. Again nothing except one thing that looked fishy and was going to infect my computer with malware or something. So I gave up and knowing I'd have to skip it and move on to the next book certainly ticked me off but occasionally I'd plug in a search now and then. Then, finally I came across something on youtube which is a digitized, sound effect enhanced video adaptation of the original book. Not my ideal way to read a book but it contains the real book 100% so I read it. Now I don't know if there are enough changes to the original format for it to be "legal" or if King knows about it and lets it be or what. But I am just thankful that I was able to read the book. I'm going to post the link even though I'm afraid the extra traffic will get it removed from youtube but this guy could do like anybody else and find somewhere else to upload it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

But the whole problem would be solved if they would just REPRINT THE BOOK! C'mon if the less than stellar "Firestarter" and "Tommyknockers" are in print, why not "Creepshow" which is a fine entry in King's canon.

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