Let’s start today’s post with a bit of gushing over Michael W. Kaluta’s incredible cover for its primary subject, OK?

Back around the first half of 1973, DC Comics editor Joe Orlando seemed to have settled on a preferred “house dress” for the titles in his charge that included a solid color banner that ran behind the title logo (as well as the DC emblem, price, etc.) and took up the top third of the cover area (more or less).  Not every single issue of every Orlando title during this period followed this design model (see Jim Aparo’s cover for Phantom Stranger #24 [Mar.-Apr., 1973] for one conspicuous outlier)… but most did.  And frankly, sometimes — maybe most times — you really wished he’d let his talented cover artists (a roster that, at the time, included Bernie Wrightson, Bob Oksner, Luis Dominguez, and Nick Cardy, in addition to Kaluta and others) have the entire area of the cover to work with, instead of limiting then to the bottom two thirds or so, 

But then, every so often, you’d get a cover like this one, where the artist has leaned into the design challenge by embracing the negative space that’s already there via a relatively simple, but still dramatic and eye-catching composition that uses even more such space; a cover which then adds further focus to that space with exceedingly bold color choices.  Seriously — who’d have dreamed that you could have so much pink on a “mystery” cover, and have it turn out so well?

Sigh.

OK, enough about the cover.  Let’s move on to… well, actually, before proceeding to have a look at the interiors of Phantom Stranger #26, we need to back up a ways to review how we left things at the end of the last issue of the series we covered on the blog, the aforementioned #24.  As you will hopefully recall, that issue saw quite a few matters brought to a close; not only did it feature our hero’s ultimate victory over the sinister Dark Circle, but it also included the (apparent) deaths of his two most important recurring foes, Tala and Tannarak; and, to top it all off, it wrote finis to the Stranger’s tentative romance (if that’s even the right word) with the beautiful blind psychic, Cassandra Craft.  If you didn’t know better, you might think that writer Len Wein and artist Jim Aparo had decided to wrap up their two-year run on the series with one big blowout.

As it turned out, that wouldn’t be too far off the mark; Wein and Aparo did each have one foot out the door at this point, or so at least it seems in hindsight.  But there were still two issues left to go before they’d both bid farewell to Phantom Stranger.

The first of those issues, PS #25, led with a Luis Dominguez cover (his first for the title) fronting a standalone Stranger story drawn by Aparo and scripted by Wein, but plotted by Michael Pellowski; not a bad yarn, but one that might have run in any issue over the last couple of years, and not one that seemed to build on, or even follow on from, recent events in the series.  On the other hand, the issue’s installment of the title’s ongoing backup feature, “The Spawn of Frankenstein” — which, depending on your point of view, could be considered either a revamping of the previous such feature, “Doctor 13”, or its full-fledged replacement — was less disposable, continuing as it did the ongoing storyline that writer Marv Wolfman and artist Michael Kaluta had inaugurated with the serial’s first chapter back in PS #23.

We’re going to spend a bit of time reviewing the “Spawn” story in PS #25, for a couple of reasons: first, because it sets up the “main event” of our post, i.e., issue #26’s book-length crossover between the title’s lead and supporting features; and second, because it represents Kaluta’s last work on the strip (not counting his cover for #26, naturally), and I love this stuff too much to pass up the chance to share more of it with you (I mean, why else do I have my own blog in the first place?).  So, without further preamble…

After knocking out Rachel Adams (who, you’ll remember, is the widow of Victor Adams, the semi-mad scientist who resurrected the Frankenstein Monster in the present day, then died in his lab when his laser equipment subsequently overloaded), the bizarrely-dressed strongman dumps her into her own car, and then drives them both to a solitary, creepy old tower-adorned house… after which, he picks up the now empty car and tosses it off a cliff.  Yeah, this guy’s really strong… maybe even as strong as our tale’s true protagonist…

Having exhumed the corpse of his re-animator, the Monster carries him away in search of shelter…

But why have they chosen her for their sacrifice, Rachel Adams wants to know.  The elderly Satan cultist explains:  “You called for the devil, Mrs. Adams — so I sent Mammon to fetch you here –”  Seeing as how Mammon (that’s the name of the big strong guy, obviously) showed up at Victor Adams’ grave just a couple of seconds after Rachel mentioned Ol’ Nick, he must be really, really quick on his feet.  Or maybe he and his master have powers of instantaneous teleportation, as well as long-range surveillance capabilities that allowed them to scry out somebody relatively nearby who just happened to be invoking the Devil?  Yeah, it’s all rather contrived and random.

But, moving on… even as Mammon begins to chant the spell that will summon Satan, the Monster quietly ascends to the top of the tower…

Determined to let no harm befall “the mate of Victor Adams”, the Monster begins to fight with Mammon, only to find that the two are almost evenly matched.  Fearing that Rachel may be hurt or killed as a result of their struggle, he allows his opponent to knock him flat…

And on that grim note, Marv Wolfman and Michael Kaluta wrapped up their all-too-brief run on “The Spawn of Frankenstein”… sort of.  As we’ve already noted, Kaluta had a cover still to contribute.  And Wolfman’s role in issue #26’s crossover between the Stranger and the Spawn would be even more significant, as he’d be co-writing the story with Len Wein:

Len Wein and Marv Wolfman had been friends since the mid-1960s, when as fans they’d take the scheduled weekly tour of DC’s Manhattan offices on a regular, ongoing basis.  Their first collaborations as professional comics writers appeared in Adventures of Jerry Lewis #109 and Teen Titans #18, both of which came out in September, 1968.  Soon after that, a second Titans tale by the pair was spiked at the last minute; since then, their divergent career paths had only allowed the two men to write as a team a couple more times (although one of those stories, Detective Comics #408‘s “The House That Haunted Batman!”, was a near-instant classic).

As you can see, the first half of the second page of the present story essentially reprises the final page of Wolfman and Kaluta’s “Spawn of Frankenstein” installment in Phantom Stranger #25 (and actually revises it a bit, as the Monster’s parting words to Rachel Adams recorded here are different than those in the original version).  As for the second half of the page, it’s interesting that while the Wein-Wolfman narration refers to the “black cult’s satanic spark” in the singular, the Aparo visuals show us what appear to be two ethereal, but vaguely humanoid, presences rising from the ashes of the burned tower room.  Should these be taken for the ghosts of the recently departed Mordecai and Mammon?  That would certainly seem to be a logical guess — though, as we’ll soon discover, the reality will turn out to be somewhat different.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, when DC revived the “Phantom Stranger” property in 1968, it was primarily as a vehicle for reprints, as 1950s-vintage tales of the Stranger as well as Dr. 13 were presented in the context of a brand-new framing sequence featuring both characters.  While the reprints were eventually phased out, the new stories continued to feature the two heroes interacting within the same adventure, until Dr. 13 was ultimately shunted off into his own separate back-up strip.  Prior to PS #26, the Stranger and the Ghost-Breaker hadn’t appeared on-panel together since issue #10 (Nov.-Dec., 1970).

Seizing Marie Thirteen up in his arms at the command of the voices in his head, the Monster batters away the hospital staff who attempt to impede his path; he then proceeds to carry the unconscious woman, on foot, all the way out of town and back to that creepy old house, somehow without attracting any further notice (or any that we’re shown, at least).

While Rachel Adams was indeed unconscious when the Monster left her back on page 2, we readers of the previous issue’s “Spawn of Frankenstein” story know that, after he left, she’d woken up and, seeing her dead husband’s corpse lying on the floor, “screamed long through the night and into the morning.”  I guess the poor woman must have worn herself out with all that screaming, and then fallen back into unconsciousness… yeah, that’ll probably work…

And now, the true identities of our story’s antagonists are revealed — they’re a couple of malevolent spirits named Flagermot and Pornipus, in need of a couple of fleshly bodies to inhabit.  Were these entities previously housed within the physical forms of Mordecai and Mammon, the bad guys of the prior “Spawn” installment?  It seems likely, though the story never actually tells us that.

A more important question, however, is why the two spirits sent the Monster after the laser device, and Marie Thirteen, in the first place.  If all they needed to restore themselves were a couple of vacant human bodies (living or otherwise), why wouldn’t the two Adamses serve their purpose?  Again, the story never attempts to provide an explanation.

Shouting “I will be free!“, the Monster hurls the animated armor away from him; as the suits clatter to the floor, he waits for his “unholy foemen” to attack him once again…

As a number of readers have noted over the years, the problem with teaming the Phantom Stranger and Terrence Thirteen in the same story is that the latter character’s skepticism — which makes all the sense in the world in his solo adventures, where he inevitably goes up against outright frauds, or otherwise deduces the truth behind some faux supernatural phenomena — comes off simply as stubborn foolishness.  Such is the case in this story, I’m afraid.

Freed from his chains, the Monster leaps from the pit, delivering a feet-first blow directly to the face of “Victor Adams”…

It’s a nice touch by Wein and/or Wolfman to have the Phantom Stranger address the Monster as “child of Frankenstein”, rather than as “spawn”, “folly”, or, well, “monster” — a choice that subtly reinforces the idea that the Stranger sees the other being not just as innocent, but as human.

P.S. goes on to appeal to Dr. Thirteen’s reason, asking him to consider how his comatose wife and dead friend could possibly perform the acts they’ve just witnessed.  But Terrence continues to be a little slow on the uptake, as he calls out to “Marie” by name…

“Then you can dream just as well outside, Terrence!”  On the one hand, I hate how Dr. 13 is characterized as a boob through pretty much this whole story; on the other hand, that’s a pretty funny line.

“From Dust Thou Art…” is one of those stories that I remember with great fondness from when I first read it fifty years ago, but which, upon revisiting after several decades away, doesn’t hold up quite as well as I’d hoped.  Half a century ago, I was so jazzed to see the Phantom Stranger, the Frankenstein Monster, and even good ol’ Terry Thirteen interacting in the same book-length story that I may not have actually cared that much about the actual plot, as long as the action was well-drawn (which of course it was, being by Jim Aparo).  Today, I’m more inclined to be irked by the general unsatisfactoriness of the story’s main villains, the demons Flagermot and Pornipus, whose origins are never really explained and whose actions don’t make very much sense.  (From the way that they basically subsume and then displace the whole “resurrection of Victor Adams” plotline that Wolfman had been developing in the “Spawn” solo back-up feature, I suspect that Wein and Wolfman may have whipped up the demonic duo rather quickly once it was understood that Phantom Stranger #26 was going to be both writers’ swan song on the title.)  I’m also rankled by an element of the story that I probably didn’t even notice as a fifteen-year-old reader, which is that the tale’s only two female characters (the only human ones, anyway) are both unconscious through the whole damn thing.

And yet… at the end of the day, it is still fun to see the Phantom Stranger meet the Spawn of Frankenstein.  And even if Jim Aparo doesn’t grace us here with a spectacular splash panel on the order of issue #17’s rising phoenix, or #24’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he still goes out at the top of his game with another typically fine job of graphic storytelling.

Plus, y’know, there’s that cover.  Sigh.

To sum up: just because a fifty-year-old comic book isn’t quite as great as you remember, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad fifty-year-old comic book.

---

One reason that Phantom Stranger #26 has stood out so positively in my memory over the decades is, I’m sure, the contrast between it and the issues that followed immediately after.

The letters column of #26 ends with this intriguing, but rather cryptic message from editor Joe Orlando:

In retrospect, the phrase “new directions” can be seen as something of an understatement.  Certainly when my younger self picked up the next issue of Phantom Stranger in July, 1973, the cover (by Nick Cardy) offered no clue as to how drastically things had changed within two months’ time.   Once I’d looked within the book’s pages, however, I was stunned to discover that — with the exception of Orlando, whose role as editor I only dimly understood — everyone was gone.  Both Len Wein and Jim Aparo had departed the lead feature, their places taken by Arnold Drake and Gerry Talaoc, respectively.  And while the Spawn of Frankenstein continued to hold down the back third of the book, the Monster’s doings were no longer being chronicled by Marv Wolfman and Mike Kaluta, but by Steve Skeates and Bernard Bailey.

Of course, Phantom Stranger had seen plenty of previous changes to its creative roster before now.  But they hadn’t tended to happen all at once before now, and not after a long period of relative stability, at least as far as the lead feature was concerned; after all, Wein had been on the book since issue #14, published two years ago, and Aparo had been around since #7, which had come out all the way back in March, 1970.  Granted, Wolfman and Kaluta’s “Spawn of Frankenstein” tenure had lasted only three episodes, which had yielded but 22 pages of material — still, coming as they did at the same time as Wein and Aparo’s leaving, those creators’ sudden departures made it seem as though there’d been a housecleaning of some sort on Orlando’s watch, even a purge.

Judging by subsequent letters pages, the changes were not, on the whole, greeted warmly by Phantom Stranger‘s readership, with multiple fans writing in to express disbelief that DC would shake up the status quo so radically when things had been going so well.  The situation became bad enough for Orlando to commandeer almost the entire lettercol in issue #31 (Jun.-Jul., 1974) to explain that, hey, it hadn’t been his idea.  Among his comments were the following:

We did not want to lose the services of the two people who had been working on The Phantom Stranger magazine — Len Wein and Jim Aparo.*  Nonetheless, we lost both their services at once!  Len was accepting more and more work: Swamp Thing, Justice League, and outside commitments,** which led to deadline problems and a mutual decision that he would leave PS.  Jim Aparo’s services were requested for Batman in Detective Comics.  Since DC’s most important characters are Superman and Batman, these assignments generally get first pick of artists.

I’d like to think that my younger self was understanding of the difficulty of Joe Orlando’s position, back in 1974.  Nevertheless, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge that I was one of the fans who felt that the quality of Phantom Stranger went down considerably after issue #26.  As far as I was concerned, the title never recovered from Wein and Aparo’s departures — though that didn’t stop me from buying it all the way through to the bitter end, which came with issue #41 in November, 1975.

Here’s the thing, though.  Just as my opinion regarding how great some comics (e.g., Phantom Stranger #26) were fifty years ago has clearly changed over time, my opinion about some comics I originally found not-so-great may be up for modification as well.  So, I’m thinking that over the next several months, I’ll continue with my re-reading of Phantom Stranger, just to see if I find any of the later issues substantially better than I remember them being.  If I do, there’s a good chance you’ll be reading about one or more of them on this blog.

And if I don’t?  Well, we’ll always have Wein and Aparo.  (And Wolfman and Kaluta.)

 

*Orlando didn’t address the departure of Wolfman and Kaluta from “The Spawn of Frankenstein” in his column, probably because their dual tenure had been so brief, and perhaps also because the feature itself had become a moot issue, having been replaced in this same issue (#31) by “Black Orchid”.  But, for the record, Wolfman was now on the editorial staff of Marvel Comics, making it difficult if not impossible for him to continue to freelance for DC; and Kaluta was gearing up to start work on The Shadow, meaning that something on the painstaking but slow-working artist’s schedule would have to give.

**Wein’s “outside commitments” were primarily to DC’s primary rival, Marvel Comics; from 1973 to 1975, Wein was virtually unique among that era’s comic book writers in having his work appear regularly in the publications of both companies.  Recalling this period in later years for a interview published in Comic Book Creator #6 (Winter, 2014), Wein explained:

I ended up at Marvel in the early ’70s sort of by accident.  Gerry [Conway] and I were roommates for a good chunk of that.  I was at DC, Gerry was at Marvel, and every time Gerry would leave a book, I would get offered the gig.  I only found out later that this sequence of events was intentional, that Gerry and [Marvel editor-in-chief] Roy Thomas planned it that way.  Gerry would say, “I’m leaving Marvel Team-Up.  You want to take it over?”  I said, “You mean like write Spider-Man?  God, sure!”  He would consistently offer me books he was leaving so that I woke up one day and realized I’m working for Marvel.  Y’see, little by little, I had to give up DC assignments to take on the Marvel stuff and it turned out to be a calculated plan on their part to get me over there.  I was never aware of it. [laughs]

Ironically, Wein’s subsequent elevation to the position of editor-in-chief of Marvel’s color comics in 1974 would incense Gerry Conway — who felt he’d been in line for that promotion — to the extent that he’d leave Marvel altogether, returning to DC after a five-year absence to become an editor as well as writer.  (See Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story [Harper, 2013].)