Back in April, 2023, towards the end of my post on Tales of the Zombie #1, I wrote that while I fully expected to cover another issue of the series — more specifically, an issue within writer Steve Gerber and artist Pablo Marcos’ run on the titular lead feature — it was “likely to be a minute or two” before that would happen.

Well, in the end it took 745,000 minutes (give or take a couple of thousand), but we’re here at last.  And just in time, too, as TotZ #8 features the last story of Simon Garth, Zombie, produced by the Gerber-Marcos team.

Over the seventeen-month stretch between the first and eighth issues of this black-and-white magazine (which, as you may remember, was one of four such horror-oriented titles launched by Marvel Comics over an equal number of months in the first half of ’73), the format had been tweaked somewhat — old stories reprinted from 1950s Atlas horror comics had been pretty much phased out, for one thing — but the mix between comics stories and illustrated text features remained about the same, with the continuing, 20-plus-pages-long exploits (for lack of a better word) of the Zombie consistently dominating the proceedings. 

This latest issue kicks off with a quite effective, and even innovative, painted cover by Earl Norem (who was presumably responsible for the choice to show our undead protagonist only from the back) which is immediately followed (on the inside front cover) by a one-page strip written by Tony Isabella (also the magazine’s editor) and drawn by Michael W. Kaluta:

This page represents some of the earliest work done by Kaluta for Marvel, whose art had mostly appeared at DC Comics up to this point; it also represents some of the only work done by Kaluta for Marvel, at least until the advent of the company’s color Epic Illustrated magazine in the early 1980s.  Having recently been parted from his regular gig at DC drawing The Shadow, Kaluta was now picking up some small assignments from DC’s biggest rival, mostly in the form of covers and spot illustrations (this very issue would in fact include several of the latter).

Beyond this piece lies the issue’s table of contents page, after which we arrive at our main attraction:

And at this point, it naturally behooves us to take a little time to let you all know just what’s going on here (though if you already have the plots of the first seven Simon Garth stories committed to memory, you should feel free to skip the next few paragraphs).

Hopefully, regular readers of this blog will at least recall the basic premise of the feature, which was inspired by (and even incorporated) a Stan Lee-Bill Everett horror short story originally published in Menace #5 (Jul., 1953),  As chronicled by Gerber (with artists John Buscema, Tom Palmer, and Syd Shores) in Tales of the Zombie #1, Simon Garth, a ruthless and arrogant New Orleans businessman, fell victim to a disgruntled ex-employee, Gyps, who kidnapped him and sold him to a group of “red sect” voodooists to be used in a human sacrifice.  The nighttime, bayou-set ritual was interrupted, however, when the priestess, a young Creole woman named Layla, recognized her intended victim, for whom she worked as a secretary (and also bore an unrequited love) during the daylight hours.  Attempting to free Garth, Layla was stymied by Gyps, who stabbed his ex-boss to death with a pair of gardening shears, and then coerced Layla into bringing the murdered man back to life as a zombie — an undead creature bound to do the will of his master, Gyps, as long as the latter held one of two matching amulets, the other one of which hung on a cord around Garth’s neck (see panel at left; art by Buscema and Palmer).  Gyps’ mastery over the Zombie was ended relatively quickly, however, when the former groundskeeper overreached by directing his slave to abduct Simon Garth’s daughter, Donna; the Zombie successfully resisted the amulet’s magic, leaving Donna unharmed and returning to Gyps’ shack to slay him.  This action set the status quo for the remainder of the series, as the Zombie retained more of his previous self’s memories and personality than did his fellow mute, shambling, swamp-favoring protagonist of a Gerber-written comics feature (i.e., the Man-Thing), allowing him to act of his own volition (vague and barely conscious though it might be) — except, of course, whenever the controlling amulet once held by Gyps happened to fall into someone else’s hands… which, as you might imagine, happened with some regularity over the course of the next several issues.

The overarching storyline, such as it was, took a decisive turn in issue #6, as the Zombie once again encountered the voodooists who’d attempted to sacrifice Simon Garth back in #1.  Interrupting their ritual, he slaughtered all of them with the exception of their priestess, Layla — who, feeling deep remorse for what had been done to Simon, swore to help him.  She began to lead him out of the swamp, back into the city (see panel at right; art by Pablo Marcos) — and after a few mishaps along the way (one of which led to a brief detour into a fill-in story in issue #7, written by Doug Moench and drawn by Alfredo Alcala), that’s where we find then at the beginning of #8’s “A Death Made Out of Ticky-Tacky!”, as the regular team of Gerber and Marcos (the latter of whom had, with the exception of the aforementioned fill-in, drawn every Zombie story from issue #2 forward) pick up the threads of their ongoing plotline

Before we rejoin that narrative, however, we should note that the story’s title references the lyrics of the 1962 song “Little Boxes” — a satire of suburbia written by Malvina Reynolds, and recorded by Pete Seeger and others)…

Layla hastens on until she reaches the house of “old Doc Kabel”; after calling his name, she doesn’t wait for a reply before throwing open his unlocked door…

Gerber pretty clearly wants us to see Layla as a sympathetic character here… which makes one wonder if he’s forgotten that he’d established in issue #1 that the undeniably beautiful secretary-cum-priestess was generally just fine with human sacrifice, and had only hesitated in this one instance because she knew and loved the prospective victim.  (A reader could also have reasonably inferred that she’d conducted similar sacrifices in the past without qualm.)   But, she’s at least attempting to balance her ledger in regards to poor Simon Garth, so I guess we’ll just have to go with it…

I doubt that anyone reading this post needs an explanation of the term “swinging” as it’s used here, regardless of whether or not they came of age in the 1970s, the era in which it probably had its greatest degree of pop-cultural currency.  Though it seems rather odd that, given that the practice of partner-swapping (as distinguished from simple sexual promiscuity) is generally considered to be central to the concept, Gerber’s script gives us no clue, either here or on later pages, as to the established personal relationships between the various attendees at Fred Miller’s party.

Realizing that the strange intruder has indeed frozen still at his command, Fred correctly guesses that he has successfully called forth a specimen of the walking dead; though, desiring empirical proof, he calls on one of the party’s female guests, Joyce, who happens to be a nurse…

Along with being unsure of just what to do with the Zombie, Fred also still wonders if they can be sure he’ll always do what he’s told.  Joyce assures him that he will, having worked out that what controls the revenant isn’t the fake voodoo ritual that Fred was playing at earlier, but his amulet — which she’s noticed has its exact match in the one hanging around the Zombie’s neck…

As indicated by the above footnote, the controlling amulet had last been seen in Tales of the Zombie #5, where it had been briefly possessed by the sinister voodoo practitioner Papa Shorty — who did indeed have “no legs“, but was able to levitate his body through his magic… or at least he could before he carelessly dropped the amulet, allowing the now-freed Zombie to kill him, and then to overturn a ceremonial brazier, setting Papa’s warehouse-based “palace” aflame.

Pablo Marcos makes very effective use of wash tones throughout this story — but nowhere more so than in the panel shown above at left, where he appears to have rendered the abject figure of the Zombie completely in wash.

These “super-straight neighbors” are Ray Jordan and his family, whom we meet as they’re looking forward to a backyard barbecue.  But before Ray can finish grilling the steaks for his wife and parents, the serenity of their stereotypical suburban idyll is threatened by an unwelcome aural interruption…

Once Ray has gone, Fred’s friends spill out from hiding to gloat about how great their prank worked.  “His eyes almost popped out of his head when Bozo grabbed him,” crows Joyce, “and he even cried when Bozo wouldn’t stop hitting him!”  But now it’s time for someone else to have a turn, and the first one up is one of Fred’s fellow males, Harvey…

(Just so that you all know as much as a regular reader of Tales of the Zombie in 1974 would have: “Garwood” is the name of the coffee distribution company once co-owned by Simon Garth.)

Dora’s supposed nemesis at Garwood lives in a building on the other side of town; once the gang arrives at their destination, Dora, Fred, and “Bozo” exit the car…

The revelation that the Zombie’s last victim was none other than his would-be savior, Layla, was a complete shocker to me in 1974.  Yet Gerber had provided a strong, even blatant clue by identifying Dora’s nameless target as a secretary at Garth’s business; and why wouldn’t the voodoo priestess have gone on home and gone to bed after the Zombie bailed on her, leaving no hint of where to look for him?

The ending of the story seems rather abrupt, to my mind — but it’s certainly effective in its stark, after-the-fact depiction of the carnage wrought by “Bozo” on those who’ve humiliated him, and used him as a tool for acting on their own worst impulses.

It’s also clearly not the conclusion to the overall continuing storyline, as the ultimate fate of Layla — and, by extension, of Simon Garth, as well — remains unresolved.  Indeed, in the “Mails to the Zombie” letters section that follows directly after “A Death Made of Ticky-Tacky!” on this issue, editor Tony Isabella goes so far as to frame the 22-page tale we’ve just read as “the prelude to the strangest episode yet in Garth’s eerie unlife (“A Day in the Life of a Dead Man”, to be presented next issue)” — and then goes on to mention “Ticky-Tacky”‘s “rather provocative theme”, just before turning the floor over to writer Steve Gerber to “explain” what he was trying to get across in this story:

Technology has given us the freedom to love without fear… of pregnancy, that is.  But every innovation has its price, and it’s my contention that the new sexual freedom has been acquired with a corresponding less of depth in emotional contact between human beings.

 

Thus, the “swingers” in “A Death Made of Ticky-Tacky” can relate only on a physical level toward one another, toward their enemies… and toward Simon Garth.  They never stop to consider his plight, only how they can use him.

 

No, I don’t oppose the change in the moral climate.  I welcome it.  But at the same time, I see it as another case of technology progressing more rapidly than man’s perception of himself.  And in that, I see danger.

Whatever you make of Gerber’s underlying thesis, the fact that this direct message from author to reader exists at all is worth taking note of, I believe… as is the follow-up it received two issues later, in the “Mails” pages of Tales of the Zombie #10, where frequent letterhack (and future professional comics researcher and historian) Peter Sanderson offered a thoughtful, thorough critique.  It began thusly:

Dear Marvel,

 

If you have to explain a joke them it couldn’t have been very good in the first place; similarly, if a story is written to demonstrate an idea, then it should be able to stand by itself without additional and overly-explicit explanations by the author.  But lo and behold, here in TALES OF THE ZOMBIE #8’s letter column, we have a set of program notes for the lead story.  The thesis, Steve Gerber claims, is that “the new sexual freedom has been acquired with a corresponding loss of depth in emotional contact between human beings.”

 

But “A Death Made of Ticky-Tacky” doesn’t really have anything to do with its proclaimed theme.  If not for the program notes, we wouldn’t have any idea what he was trying to get at.

Sanderson’s lengthy missive, which tales up a couple of columns of closely-printed text in TotZ #10’s two-page letters section, accurately points out that all we ever really see the “swingers” do, “sexual freedom”-wise, is drink, dance, and make a few suggestive comments; he then goes on to say (in part):

…”Ticky-Tacky” fails to explore the personal relationships among the “swingers” im any detail.  We can agree that they treat Simon and their “enemies” in cruel, manipulative, merely “physical” ways.  But you have not proved that they don’t care about one another.

 

The whole Marvel line, color and non-color, could benefit from more detailed delving into male-female relationships, whether explicitly detailing sexual goings-on or not…   If, as the program notes state, you welcome the “new sexual freedom,” then why not do a few stories showing its good effects as well as stories demonstrating its bad ones?

 

“Ticky-Tacky was, nevertheless, a good story…  You see, all of the above criticisms resulted from your insistence that the story was about something that it wasn’t. Actually. “Ticky-Tacky” seemed a skillful reworking of an old theme of horror stories, that of the people who go too far in defying moral conventions, thus exposing themselves to a terrible vengeance…

 

“Ticky-Tacky” is ultimately a latter-day Faust story. the characters wittingly and unwittingly sink deeper and deeper into evil. At times they are shocked by what they have done and are given the opportunity to call a halt, but instead they go on, until with their deaths they have made a literal descent into utter insensitivity and, if you like, hell…

Sanderson concludes his critique with a couple of paragraphs complimenting Gerber for his handling of the scenes between the Zombie and Layla, which he calls “one of the more touching man/woman relationships in Marvel magazines”, concluding:

You have a very effective metaphor in the image of Simon and Layla wandering through New Orleans, somehow never getting anywhere, the suburbs, slums and swamps all looking equally desolate and forbidding and Simon’s case remaining as hopeless as ever.

Steve Gerber’s reply, though only half as long as Sanderson’s letter, still accounts for a whole column of issue #10’s “Mails”; again, I’m only sharing the highlights, here:

Pete, you are absolutely correct.  “A Death Made of Ticky-Tacky” had little or nothing to do with the theme discussed in the letters section of ZOMBIE #8.

 

It was SUPPOSED to, but it didn’t work out that way. The reason: not prudery, but cowardice.  Mine and no one else’s.

 

…When I originally hit on the idea of Simon crashing a wife-swapping party, I was fully prepared to go as far as necessary for the sake of realism.  Unfortunately, two factors intervened lack of space and the recent Supreme Court ruling on obscenity and pornography. the one which stated that “contemporary community standards” are the test for obscenity.

 

The first factor is self-explanatory.  I had only so many pages in which to: get Simon and Layla back to New Orleans, introduce Doc Kabel, introduce the “swingers,” get Simon out to the suburbs, get the murders committed, and have the Zombie revolt against his new masters… with all the characterization and mood necessary to make the thing work as a story.  So the “orgy” was reduced to foreplay.

 

The foreplay was reduced to mild, almost INNOCUOUS foreplay by the latter factor.  It suddenly occurred to me that somebody in, say, Cobbler’s Roost Vermont,* might find the scene offensive, especially if that somebody were a parent who bought the book for his child.  Extrapolating further, that person might have taken the thing to court, caused the magazine to be yanked off the stands, and on and on… and I just didn’t feel I had the right to get Marvel involved in a mess like that.

 

So I chickened out.  Pure and simple.

 

…But that still doesn’t explain why I wrote that little minitreastise in the letters section, does it?

 

I’m a chicken who reneged at the last moment!   Despite the fact that the story worked out to be something totally different, I was damn near obsessed with getting that theme stated somewhere, somehow, print, for all our readers to see and consider.  So I did it.  There weren’t any pictures, so I figured it was probably okay.

 

And I’ve just taken up most of the space on this page.

 

Without further ado, I hand you back to our trained armadillo and to your letters.  Thanks for listening.

I’ve indulged in sharing as much of this exchange as I have (and I dearly hope that my rather severe editing of the original texts hasn’t made a mess of things) for several reasons.  One is that I agree with Sanderson’s review on virtually all its points; another is my sense that both the length and the apologetic nature of Gerber’s response to said review make the piece (much like Gerber’s original “program notes” in TotZ #8), rather remarkable, if not wholly unique.  Still another is the fascinating window if offers into the concerns that one of Marvel’s most innovative (and provocative) writers of this era had in regards to potential government censorship, and how those concerns affected his work.  And, finally, it’s simply a great example of how rich a source of insightful commentary the letters pages in the comics of this era often were, thanks to the contributions of fans as well as pros — an aspect of the fifty-years-ago comics reading experience that I worry gets short shrift on this blog, sometimes.

But that’s enough with the “all words, no pictures” stuff, at least for now, as we return to the pages of Tales of the Zombie #8.  We’ll pause briefly at the next feature — a text short story written by David Anthony Kraft, with illustrations by Mike Kaluta, called “Jimmy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” — just long enough to note that it represents some of the earliest work for Marvel done by the then-twenty-two-year-old Kraft; and then we’ll move on to our next comics story: “Night of the Hunted!”, which features a script by Larry Lieber, and art by Ron Wilson, Mike Esposito, and Frank Giacoia…

For those who might be interested in such things, the only real-world Swainsville I’ve found that might be the model for the one named in this story is a neighborhood (not even an actual town) of that name in Cleveland County, North Carolina — though given that that Swainsville is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it’s unlikely to have any swamps in its immediately vicinity.  I’m inclined, then, to assume that Lieber came up with the name all on his own.

Sam would indeed be “a dead man”, were the cruel Captain Jason Fiske actually interested in killing him — but since he’s much more keen on making him suffer, the captain fires a shot that merely nicks Sam in the thigh; bringing him down, but leaving him able to be marched back to the prison under his own power…

Upon arriving in Swainsville, the houngan named Nago-Ramal quickly gets himself arrested by the expedient of creating a disturbance in a bar in the white section of town, and is soon thereafter sent to the county prison.  There, he quickly rouses the ire of Fiske and the other guards by such signs of defiance as complaining about the food.  The next day, Nago-Ramal discovers that, like Sam before him, the guards have “forgotten” to lock his leg shackle, and so he too takes the opportunity to flee into the swamp.  Naturally, Capt. Fiske soon catches up with him — but then the houngan springs his surprise:

Um… maybe Nago-Ramal should have given a little more thought to this plan…

The version of the “n”-word used by Fiske on the page above is one that I can recall being told, during my youth in Jackson, Mississippi, might not be quite as polite a word as “Negro”, but was still somehow “better” than the version of the slur ending in “r”.  Yeah, right.  I confess that it’s somewhat disturbing to read the word here, even in the dialogue of a clearly evil racist — and even given the opinion I’ve previously expressed on this blog (in the comments section, if not in an actual post) that the general standards for using such words in popular media were different in the 1970s than they are today.

I’m confused by more than one aspect of this story’s resolution.  For one thing, where did all the other zombies that follow Nago-Ramal out of the swamp come from?  I guess we’re supposed to assume that they’re the remains of earlier convicts who were shot while “trying to escape”, but if so, why was Sam treated differently?  Also, did the zombies actually kill Fiske, or just hang him out to dry, a la Sam?  It’s not clear from either the text or the artwork — at least, not to me.

Following “Night of the Hunted!” comes another text feature — a non-fiction article about voodoo, this time, entitled “Tales of the Happy Humfo”.  It’s written by Chris Claremont (who was responsible for a lot of these kinds of pieces when he was first starting out as an editorial staffer at Marvel), with illustrations by the seemingly ubiquitous Mike Kaluta.

This brings us to the magazine’s third and last comics story, and final feature overall: “Makao’s Vengeance”, which was scripted by the aforementioned David A. Kraft, and drawn by Alfredo Alcala…

The old man, Makao, explains to his visitor that there’s no need to worry:  “Bees friend of Makao… not sting.”  The visitor, Ricardo, goes on to explain that he wants to hire men for a trip into the jungle, and as Makao is the only English-speaker in the village, he needs his help.  Makao amiably agrees to be the go-between — but once the men are hired, Ricardo shows his racist colors, ordering one of the men to pick up and carry his (Ricardo’s) gun, since the jungle’s heat and humidity “are not fit conditions for a white man”.  When the man balks, Ricardo strikes him, knocking him to the ground; and when Makao attempts to intervene, he gets the same treatment.

Ricardo and his group then head into the jungle, though almost as soon as the trip has begun, some of the hired men begin slipping away into the brush.  Meanwhile…

Deep in the jungle, Ricardo finally notices that his support staff has drastically dwindled; he angrily threatens to shoot the next man who tries to desert, but nevertheless…

This story’s plot feels underbaked, as though Kraft had several decent ideas that he couldn’t quite manage to develop into a satisfying, unified whole.  Among its other problems, the ironic twist of having Ricardo’s long-lost brother turn out to be the king of Makao’s people loses a fair amount of its punch, since Ricardo himself never comes anywhere close to learning the truth.  At least the artwork by Alcala is, as you’d expect, gruesomely gorgeous (or should that be gorgeously gruesome?), saving the yarn from being a total loss.

It probably means something that, although I’m sure I read both of the back-up stories in this issue when I first bought it, fifty years ago (I’ve always been a cover-to-cover kind of guy), I had no memory whatsoever of either one before I sat down to re-read them as preparation for this post.  But, in any event, we’ve just about reached the end of Tales of the Zonbie #8, with nothing left to look at but the “coming attractions” page promoting issue #9…

That looks like a pretty enticing pair of features — though, as often seemed to be the case with Marvel’s black-and-white magazines of this period, things went somewhat sideways between the paste-up of this page and the actual release of Tales of the Zombie #9 in November.

To begin with, there would be no “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans” story, either in this or in any later issue of TotZ.  (The Marvel Universe version of Marie Laveau, who had indeed made her debut in a story in Dracula Lives #2, wouldn’t actually show up again until Marvel Team-Up #76, some four years hence.)  Rather, the majority of the pages in issue #9 that were available for comics content would be taken up with the lead Zombie story — a 36-page, 3-chapter epic that wasn’t, as #8’s “Next Issue” page had indicated, by Steve Gerber and Alfredo Alcala (for the record, Pablo Marcos’s departure from the feature had been formally announced in an issue #8 editorial by Tony Isabella, which explained that he was moving over to draw the “Satana” strip in The Haunt of Horror) — but rather had been produced by an appreciably larger roster of creators, including Isabella and Chris Claremont (writers); Virgilio Redondo, Yong Montaño, and Ron Wilson (pencillers); and, finally, Alcala and Marcos (inkers).

More than three decades later, in the Nov. 14, 2006 edition of his “Tony’s Online Tips” column, Isabella offered the following account of what had gone down:

TALES OF THE ZOMBIE #9 [January, 1975] was intended to be the final issue. Thinking the Simon Garth character wouldn’t be of any use in our color comics, I went to publisher/co-creator Stan Lee for permission to “kill” the Zombie in that issue. Stan thought it was a great idea.

 

With Gerber having moved on to other assignments, and since it was my idea to give the Zombie series a definite ending, I decided to write the finale myself with assistant editor, Chris Claremont.  I plotted the story and wrote full scripts for its first and third chapters. Claremont wrote the middle chapter, the one which had to cover the most ground…

 

Shortly thereafter, I decided to leave my editorial position at Marvel to go freelance.  Among the last duties I performed were editing Chris’ script, having him edit my scripts, and sending our scripts to the Philippines to be drawn.  Once the art arrived, it would be up to editors Don McGregor and David Anthony Kraft to see the issue through production.

 

Imagine my surprise, some weeks later, when McGregor called me wondering where the final chapter of the story was.  He’d received the art for the other parts from the Philippines, but there was no record of their getting the script for or drawing the end chapter.  Worse, with the deadline for the issue mere days away, I couldn’t find my copy of the script.

 

With Don’s blessing, I called in a crew of weekend warriors to come to the Marvel offices and finish that chapter.  I rewrote my script, handing the pages to artists Ron Wilson and Pablo Marcos as I finished them…  I can’t recall exactly how many hours we worked, but, come Monday morning, we had killed the Zombie for the second time.

There seem to be a few minor details missing in this account; since (as we’re about to discuss), the plot of issue #9’s story of Simon Garth’s “second death” follows the basic outline of the description given on #8’s “Next Issue” page for “A Day in the Life of a Dead Man”, announced there (as well as in #8’s editorial) as being written by Steve Gerber.  (Even that title remains, appearing as the name of the second chapter of the story as published.)  My best guess is that Gerber came up with the basic premise of Simon Garth being returned to life for one day, if nothing else (though of course that’s just speculation on my part).

In “Simon Garth Lives Again”, the Zombie carries the badly-injured body of Layla to the home of Papa Doc Kabel; unfortunately, it’s too late for her to be saved (“De loa say it is her time“); but at her request, Papa Doc performs one last ritual which allows her departing life force to restore Simon Garth to living, breathing humanity — although just for 24 hours.

Simon wisely decides to make the most of the time he’s been given, and so spends most of the rest of the story trying to make amends with his daughter, ex-wife, and business partner, along with tying up loose ends from previous issues; as one of those loose ends involves him gunning down a mob boss named Mr. Six (who’d been allied with the late Papa Shorty, back in issue #5), he unfortunately spends the last hour or so of his expiring lease on life running from the police.  His flight continues even after he transforms back into the Zombie — although, in the end, he eludes them long enough to secure the gris-gris that Doc Kabel had given Layla in issue #8, and use it to end his curse forever.  In the story’s final panels, his inert, soulless corpse — no longer a zombie (or so we’re led to understand) — is buried by Kabel, with the help of Anton Cartier, an old friend of Simon Garth’s who’d learned his secret back in issue #2…

When I first read this story back in November, 1974, I took the finale to mean that Tales of the Zombie had been cancelled with this issue; and I appreciated the fact that Marvel had actually provided an ending to the Zombie feature, bringing satisfying closure to the saga of Simon Garth.  Of course, that turned out not to be true, in either case… though the revival of the Zombie would come along a few years later than that of the magazine that bore his name.

We’ll let Tony Isabella pick up the story…

Imagine my surprise when TALES OF THE ZOMBIE was subsequently un-canceled and it was decided Simon Garth should be un-canceled as well.** Gerry Conway wrote the 30-page “The Partial Resurrection of Simon Garth,” but the Rico Rival art took a very wrong turn on its way to the Marvel offices and wouldn’t be arriving in time for the next and, ironically, last issue of the magazine.  Simon would stay dead…for at least a little longer.

Tales of the Zombie #10 arrived on magazine racks in January, 1975; and though Simon Garth was seemingly back to his old walking-dead self on its Earl Norem-painted cover, there was no corresponding Zombie story to be found within.  The lead feature slot was instead taken up by Brother Voodoo — Marvel’s voodoo-themed superhero who, having lost his headlining slot in Strange Tales a year earlier, had since turned up in one issue of Tales of the Zombie, #6, and was as reasonable a substitute as could have been found.  An editorial by Don McGregor explained how the last 20 pages of Gerry Conway and Rico Rival”s 30-page Zombie story had somehow been diverted in the mail to Guam, but that “The Partial Resurrection of Simon Garth” should make it into the following issue, #11; there was even one panel of Rival’s art excerpted from the ten pages that had made it to Marvel’s offices that was shared on the magazine’s “Next Issue” page as a teaser:

As things turned out, however, that panel was the only one from the story that Marvel would ever print; there never would be a Tales of the Zombie #11, and though all the finished pages do appear to have eventually been recovered (scans of the first sixteen can be found on the Heritage Auctions website,should you be curious), Marvel never published the full story anywhere.  Rather, when Simon Garth was brought back, it was in a different story, by different creators, in a different venue… and almost six year later, as Bizarre Adventures #33 (Dec., 1982) offered a yarn, written by Doug Moench and drawn by Dave Simons, that recounted how the corpse of Simon Garth was resurrected once again, this time by the owner of an occult shop in New York who’d come into possession of the amulet controlling the Zombie.  After that, it’d be more than a decade before Simon showed up again, this time in Daredevil Annual #9 (Jul., 1993); with that appearance, he was at last fully integrated into Marvel’s full-color, mainstream, superhero-centric continuity, going on from there to have encounters with such characters as Spider-Man, Deadpool, and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; and also, perhaps inevitably, to make an appearance in one of Marvel’s multiple Marvel Zombies miniseries (the fourth, to be precise).

I managed to avoid seeing most of those stories, though not all of them, and I’d just as soon forget they exist, to be honest; as far as I’m concerned, Simon Garth should have been allowed to rest in peace back in 1974, and it’s a shame he wasn’t.  On the Zombie’s page at The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, one of the authors has hypothesized that Garth’s immortal spirit “may have passed on after he was laid to rest by Papa Doc” — in other words, whatever force has been animating the Zombie since 1982, it ain’t the soul of Simon Garth — and that strikes my headcanon as a more than worthy solution to the problem.

But let’s turn back to 1974-75 once more, for just a couple of paragraphs, to finish out the saga of Tales of the Zombie — not in regards to its lead character, but purely as a magazine title.  I said before that there never was a Tales of the Zombie #11, and that’s true — however, there was a Tales of the Zombie Annual #1 (and only), which came out in June, 1975.  As with Tales of the Zombie #10, I have no memory of seeing it on the stands — though even if I had, I wouldn’t have bought it, since (save for the cover by the ever-reliable Earl Norem), it consisted entirely of reprints of stories I already owned.

Though my younger self might not have realized it at the time, when Tales of the Zombie finally shambled off to its eternal rest in the summer of ’75, it was a signifier of the end for for all four of the black-and-white horror comics that Marvel had launched in the winter and spring of 1973.  Dracula Lives had released its last regular issue, #13, in May. 1975; its own all-reprint Annual would follow Tales of the Zombie‘s by one month, coming out in July.  Monsters Unleashed had ended its 11-issue run in February; its Annual shared rack space with TotZ‘s in June.  The final entry in that initial wave of Marvel black-and-whites, in terms of its premiere issue’s release date, was also the last one to go; Vampire Tales ceased bi-monthly publication with its 11th issue in April, but didn’t drop its Annual until August.

The demise of this “frightful four” could — with good reason, I think — be taken as an emblem of the decline in the horror comics “fad” that had prospered in the first half of the 1970s.  What it definitely shouldn’t be seen as, however, is a sign of ebbing faith in the black-and-white comics magazine format on the part of Marvel Comics.  Since its first major push into the b&w market in early 1973, Marvel had launched a whole slew of companions to its initial, monster-friendly quartet; sure, some of these were horror titles, but most focused on other genres, including sword-and-sorcery (the second iteration of Savage Tales, as well as its follow-up, Savage Sword of Conan), humor (Crazy), martial arts (Deadly Hands of Kung Fu), jungle adventure (Savage Tales Mark III), licensed entertainment properties (Planet of the Apes), and science fiction.

Science fiction?  Yep.  Even as the horror trend was slowly (perhaps even imperceptibly, at this point) winding down in September, 1974, Marvel was gearing up to launch its first black-and-white magazine (though not its first comic) devoted to graphic adaptations of prose SF novels and stories.  Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction would be making first contact with America’s comics-buying public in October, 1974… and you’ll be able to read about that debut issue in this space, just one short month from now.

 

*For the record, “Cobbler’s Roost Vermont” isn’t a real place… except in the Marvel Universe, where it looms large in the backstory of the Valkyrie, a core member of the Defenders… a superhero group whose series Steve Gerber was, not so coincidentally, just about to begin writing.

**This decision arrived early enough for TotZ #9’s “Next Issue” page to include a blurb proclaiming “The Zombie Stalks Again!”  Your humble blogger has no memory of seeing it (despite my earlier claims to being a cover-to-cover reader), nor do I recall ever seeing Tales of the Zombie #10 on the stands… but that doesn’t mean that neither of those things happened.  Regardless of what actually transpired, I’ve spent most of the last half century secure in the (false) knowledge that Simon Garth was laid to rest in the final issue of his magazine, not becoming cognizant of the full truth of the matter until relatively recently.