Well I'm still on the hunt for that comic cover. Due to how this blog lines up, if you want the clues leading to, well, nowhere so far, then you need to go to yesterday's posts (press "control + F" and type in "December 26") and not look at the pieces in this post today. Why? Because I'm surely going to find that damned cover today if it kills me!

Here are some cool Frank Frazetta covers from Creepy that caught my attention. Saving comic covers one at a time here on this blog. ;)

And this Creepy cover I just love. Not sure who did the art, but I'm betting Frazetta, too. That guy is a giant, eh? You know I really don't know much about the comics, I just love the art and am discovering or rediscovering the art as I browse the internet. So he's a giant, Asian-looking,... or for the time maybe you'd say Oriental or Mongolian-ish (OK I made up that last one, but since Mongoloid turned into some weird racial[?] slur I'll avoid it)... and he looks like a badass with his crazy helmet and giant snake, I think that is a snake. The little humanoid guys down there don't stand a chance... they must be food. 

I should mention I found this other site that sort of kicks major butt on browsing covers. Logically enough, it is named Coverbrowser.com ... for example:

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/creepy

I notice some erotic ones starting around Creepy #45... so I doubt my  cover is going to be on this magazine/comic. Some are really good, but I guess I'm not going to post them here since I'm marking this blog as kid-friendly. Probably a mistake... we'll see if I can keep it as such. Anyhow, I do enjoy the dinosaur, ape-man, Tarzan/Conan type stuff. Very King Kong vs. the T-Rex type influence I would think. This cover below reminds me well of that:

Oh, and this next one, the wing-arms. I'm pretty sure I had a fascination with them back as a kid. pterodactyls being the coolest and all. These guys below remind me of the bat creatures from that 80s movie The Beast Master. What I must know is... why is one skeletal and the other muscular with horns?!

Next we have what I like to call "Hips and Lizard". I approve of both:

Update: So via Pencilink's blog, I see the Frazetta above is a reprint from an older Vampirella (#11?) comic cover. I sort of figured these got reused, so there you go.

And then we come to insect and snake-like dragon type creature. Where are all the monstrous insects in art nowadays? This guy has a reptilian/mammalian mouth, which adds another dimension, and perhaps realism since giant insects couldn't really just be over-sized bugs and physically function. I love those things. And reptiles never ever get old, just ask Godzilla. That's why I'm going back to these classics; good stuff. The red-head isn't bad, but I did have one bad experience in college with one so....

From this blog, https://pencilink.blogspot.com/2017/09/creepy-142-al-williamson-reprint.html#comment-form, I found this nice high quality image of Creepy #142. I'm a fan of the realism style, and the dinos of course. Thanks pencilink!!!:

And so this site isn't bad for browsing either. If the covers were just 50% bigger it'd be great... but since it is by YEAR that helps a ton! Strangely I can't find through their menu how to get to each section, but if you just replace that last part of the URL with the name of the comic it'll work, for instance:

http://core.collectorz.com/comics/eerie
and
http://core.collectorz.com/comics/creepy

So I thought for a minute I might find the elusive cover via http://core.collectorz.com/comics/ghosts , but alas, no luck. I did see this cover which reminded me of a crazy "vision" let's call it that somebody I know had after a pretty bad solo car wreck. Dude fell asleep driving late past midnight and hit a stationary object, then basically went in and out of consciousness. He swears to this day the flipping grim reaper (although he never called him such) was sitting in the vehicle with him after the wreck. Much unlike that tame cover below, it went something like this...

He woke at the last second to hit the brakes, but it was too late and he plowed into a tree on the side of a rural road. He woke up with severe pain in his belly and ankle. For a while he faded out then back to consciousness, till something started to disturb him. The summer air turned extremely chill inside the truck and the windows fogged up and he could see his breath in front of his face as he exhaled. From the corner of his eye he saw someone dressed in black sitting in the passenger seat, oddly still but alert... for a moment he thought his friend from earlier in the night found him and was about to help him out. As he began to glance that way he was horrified to see an extremely pale, smooth/semi-featureless face... white and grey and black swirls with black pits for eyes. Immediately he wanted the hell out of the truck and was going to walk the last mile or so home. As he opened the door he winced in pain, and kept the stranger in the corner of his eye. The stranger turned toward him, black pits for eyes stared at him hard as he moved to get out... a hand reached out as to touch him on the shoulder shortly. As he touched his right foot down on the floorboard near the door to put weight on it and slide out, the pain was too much for him... a broken foot or ankle. He looked back and that spectre was just waiting for him to step out, hand out, reaching but not touching. Well the pain took hold and he slumped back into his seat before he passed out again. Upon waking, the ghostly figure was again sitting calmly, PATIENTLY, next to him. My brother felt he knew then that if that guy had touched him, that would have been all she wrote. He went in and out of consciousness a few more times before headlights woke him to his actual friend showing up and pulling him from the wreck. No creepy figure to be found.

So I did't hear this story for weeks or months after the wreck. My brother finally decides to tell me, embarrassed though he was because be damned if he isn't convinced he "saw" this thing. Also, to add to the freakishness, the main doctor let him know that if he had walked home that night he 100% would have died from internal bleeding (he had had surgery shortly after arriving at the hospital). How weird is that? I imagine what he thought he saw was slightly like this:

...
...
As we continue on... I ran across this

Which reminds me very much of the Shang Tsung guy in the original Mortal Kombat, played by actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Always loved that angry yet relaxed menacing look he gives:

And... here we have it... after many many long hours of searching, I have found the cover that has been haunting me for nearly 40 years!~! 

Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #87, from Dec 1978. Holy cow, I was about to give up! So how far off is my memory? Greenish and purple monster, yeah. Six fingers, count 'em, yep. I remember it's mouth being small at the top and bigger at the bottom... missed the weird red part and teeth. The dude was on the bed with some mad scientist wires attached to his head. I vaguely was thinking there was another guy there, but wasn't sure where. I'm pretty sure the monster does scratch him in the actual comic when it appears, I guess just not on the cover. I do remember this circular swirling motion with it's hand(s)... so that turned out to be the right hand and the general swirl shape of it coming out of his mind/dream/nightmare. Wooo, finally!!! 

EDIT IN 2024: more pages from #87

I'm going to put some filler her for that theoretical person who actually plays my game and wants to read all the nonsense before reading the solution (which comic cover was the 6 fingered dream monster?!?). So let's see... first off I want to thank my family... no wrong speech. Anyway, I'm just happy I found this thing, I can finally start enjoying the art again instead of rushing through it... but I will say it taught me / forced me to find a bunch of good resources for this sort of thing. 

Random - The Hildebrandt brothers did some Star Wars stuff, I recently found out:

And like... this super duper famous original poster, a copy of which is on my wall. These guys are awesome... all the Tolkien stuff, fantasy, and Star Wars. Gotta love 'em. =]