Creepy Worlds #128

When an Eskimo's discovery of an enormous bone buried in the Arctic ice sparks intrigue at the American Museum of Paleontology, investigator Bill Matthews is dispatched north for a preliminary survey—but he's not alone in the frozen wasteland. A mysterious force from space, present on Earth since the planet's young days, threatens to complicate the expedition and pit nations against each other in a race for answers buried beneath the ice.

Ed Vandine and his wife Kathie raise their son Dexter with love, but a cruel world rejects the boy for his limitations; as Dexter grows, he clings to his father's tale of a magical "gravy train" that rewards the brave and good. Decades later, broken and friendless, Dexter finds unexpected acceptance among hobos by the railroad tracks—until a group of drifters manipulate his simple heart into flagging down a train for what he believes is a celebration, setting in motion a desperate act of courage that changes everything.

In "Clem Never Does Anything Big!", a quiet young man from Hog Hollow finds himself at the center of an interplanetary test when two alien visitors, fleeing worlds they deemed too hostile, land on Earth to assess whether humanity poses a threat. Mistaking the aliens for government inspectors, Clem unwittingly subjects them to a crash course in Kentucky Lightning, skunks, and a swarm of angry hornets—each encounter proving more than they bargained for.

When museum curator Dave Towner receives the legendary Opal of Ali Khar for his collection, he and his colleague Joyce discover something impossible trapped within the ancient stone—a monstrous creature named Oshtii, imprisoned there for three centuries by a sorcerer. When the opal's light-based magnification system accidentally releases the creature, Oshtii unleashes elemental fury on the world to exact revenge on all mortals, and Towner realizes the only way to stop the devastation may lie in the very artifact that set the monster free.

In the Canadian wilderness, renowned hunter and tall-tale teller Pierre Gordin witnesses the crash of an otherworldly spacecraft and encounters a massive, indestructible creature from the depths of space—the Rankar—that has escaped from alien captors. When telepathic visitors from Syrtis IV explain that only their special nets can contain the beast, Gordin must use all his hunting skills and cunning to lure the sky monster into a trap before it destroys everything in its path. Written by Zev Zimmer with art by Ogden Whitney, this blend of frontier adventure and science fiction asks whether the greatest hunter can outwit an enemy made of living metal.

When Gordon Barry becomes entranced by a mysterious young woman he encounters on the English moors, his companion Owen David recognizes her as something far more dangerous—the ghost of Celia Crane, a woman who died twenty-five years ago searching for a road to London. Despite Owen's warnings about the supernatural peril that follows the specter wherever she appears, Gordon becomes obsessed with the beautiful apparition and ventures onto the moors repeatedly, determined to help her find her way. Written by Kurato Osaki with art by Pete Costanza, "A Journey into Oblivion!" is a ghostly tale of obsession and the price of curiosity set against the desolate English landscape.