After the ninth issue, the title changed to Creatures on the Loose, and the comic became a mix of reprints and occasional sword and sorcery/SF series.

Lee had rejected Steranko's cover, and the two clashed over panel design, dialog, and the story title, initially "The Lurking Fear at Shadow House".

According to Steranko at a 2006 panel[3] and elsewhere, Lee disliked or did not understand the homage to horror author H. P. Lovecraft, and devised his own title for the story.

In a contemporaneous interview, conducted November 14, 1969, Steranko reflected on the tiff: The reason I had a little altercation with them is because they edited some of my work.

[4]A Lovecraft story, "The Terrible Old Man", appeared two issues later, adapted by writer Roy Thomas and penciler Windsor-Smith.

Additionally, Thomas and Tom Palmer – a renowned inker in a rare example of his penciling and inking – adapted the Lovecraft story "Pickman's Model" in issue #9 (Jan.

[5] Retitled Creatures on the Loose with issue #10 (March 1971), this version led off with a seven-page King Kull sword-and-sorcery story by Thomas and artist Bernie Wrightson.

The book included new stories by artists Herb Trimpe in #11, Syd Shores in #12, and Reed Crandall in #13, then became all-reprint until issue #16 (March 1972).

There, writer Thomas and the art team of Gil Kane and Bill Everett introduced the feature "Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars", starring an interplanetary Earthman created by author Edwin L. Arnold in his 1905 book Lieut.

[6] Following another issue by Thomas and one by Gerry Conway, science fiction novelist George Alec Effinger wrote the final three installments.