This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at one of Warren Publishing’s most neglected 1970s characters from Eerie magazine – the disfigured, gun-wielding vigilante priest called the Butcher.
EERIE #62 (Jan 1975)
Title: Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Hero: The Butcher
Villains: The New Orleans Mafia
NOTE: Along with Eerie‘s recurring characters the Spook (a big, black zombie in the 1840s American South who slaughters slave owners, evil Voodoo practitioners and their zombie armies) and Coffin (an undead and disfigured gunslinger in the late 1800s West who suffers under an Indian curse), I consider the Butcher to have tragically wasted potential.
Written by Bill DuBay and drawn by iconic artist Richard Corben, the Butcher combined Marvel’s the Punisher with its horror characters and paperback novel antiheroes like the Executioner and the Destroyer.
Synopsis: In June of 1932, New Orleans Mafia Don Carlo Gambino (no relation to the real-life New York Mafia boss of the same name) is on his deathbed. He has an unnamed priest brought to him to hear his last Confession. Continue reading
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