Frankenstein

Giant-Size Avengers #3 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Avengers #131, which ended with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes being transported against their wills to the realm of Limbo, where they were set to face off against a Legion of the Unliving assembled by their long-time foe, Kang the Conqueror.  This month, we’ll be discussing the “two-part triple-length triumph” which that comic’s final page promised as a follow-up… a story which, following a pattern that had been set the last time that an issue of the quarterly Giant-Size Avengers rolled around, doesn’t actually begin in the book whose Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover graces the top of this post; but, rather, in the one whose cover by Ron Wilson and Giacoia is shown at right: the latest (as of fifty years ago) issue of our assembled heroes’ regular monthly title, Avengers #132 (Feb., 1975).  Read More

Tomb of Dracula #18 (March, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I suppose we should probably begin today’s post by acknowledging that the battle between two of Marvel Comics’ biggest horror stars — the vampiric Count Dracula and the lycanthropic Jack Russell — that ran through that duo’s respective titles in November and December of 1973 wasn’t quite the first time that two of Marvel Comics’ monstrous headliners faced off with one another.  That distinction belongs instead to Frankenstein #8, which beat ToD #18 to the stands by just one month. Even so, while that comics’ Gary Friedrich-John Buscema tale certainly had its charms, it was set in the 19th century, and didn’t cross over from one monster’s title to the other’s; instead, the dust-up between Drac and the Frankenstein Monster concluded in the following bi-monthly issue of Frankenstein itself, which came out in December.  For those two reasons, it didn’t feel quite as special as the almost-concurrent Tomb of Dracula/Werewolf by Night crossover — at least, it didn’t to your humble blogger, either then or now.  (Naturally, your own mileage may vary, but for better or worse, the Dracula/Werewolf event is the one I’ve opted to write about.)  Read More

Frankenstein #5 (September, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last October, we took a look at Marvel Comics’ Frankenstein #1 (Jan., 1973), the first issue of an ongoing series that kicked off with an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel of the same name.  This adaptation, written by Gary Friedrich and drawn by Mike Ploog, would run for three issues, and probably still ranks as one of the most faithful takes on Shelley’s classic work ever attempted in comic books (even if Ploog’s design for the Monster owed at least as much to Universal Studios’ Frankenstein movies of the 1930s and ’40s as it did to Shelley’s text).

As you may recall, Friedrich and Ploog retold Shelley’s story within a narrative framework set a hundred year’s after its events, as an Arctic expedition led by Captain Robert Walton IV — the namesake and great-grandson of a character from the novel — discovered the body of Victor Frankenstein’s Monster frozen in a wall of ice.  The expedition not only retrieved the Monster, but inadvertently resuscitated him, setting off a chain of events which ultimately caused the wreck of Walton’s ship and the deaths of most of his crew.  Read More

Phantom Stranger #26 (Aug.-Sep., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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,  Read More

Phantom Stranger #24 (Mar.-Apr., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In recent months, we’ve followed the Phantom Stranger’s crusade against the secret society of sinister sorcerers called the Dark Circle, as chronicled by writer Len Wein and artist Jim Aparo.  That crusade finally comes to an end in the 24th issue — so after pausing just long enough to admire Aparo’s typically fine, mood-setting cover, let’s turn to the first page and get right to it, shall we?  Read More

Phantom Stranger #23 (Jan.-Feb., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Artist Jim Aparo’s dramatic cover for Phantom Stranger #23 depicts a scene that unmistakably calls back to Gaston Leroux’s 1909-10 novel Phantom of the Opera, or one of its several film adaptations; meanwhile, a blurb at the top plugs the opening installment of a new back-up series, “Frankenstein”.  A prospective buyer eyeing this one in the spinner rack back in November, 1972, might well have wondered:  didn’t the comic’s publisher, DC Comics, know that Halloween was last month?  Why were they releasing this kind of Double Creature Feature now, after the spooky season had already passed?

On the other hand, this was the latest issue of Phantom Stranger — and “spooky” was what this comic book title was all about, not just in October, but all year long.  So I suspect most fans probably didn’t think twice about the double dose of classic horror stars, half a century ago; in any event, I’m pretty sure I didn’t, either when I first eyed the cover, or when, after buying the book and taking it home, I finally turned to the first page…  Read More

Frankenstein #1 (January, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In October, 1972, the debut of Marvel Comics’ new title Frankenstein — or, if you prefer, The Monster of Frankenstein, as it says on the cover — is unlikely to have come as a surprise to anyone.  Given the recent relaxing of the Comics Code Authority’s rules regarding the depiction of horror, as well as the subsequent launch by Marvel of two series featuring (or at least inspired by) the other members of Universal Pictures’ classic trinity of monsters — i.e., Dracula and the Wolfman — the four-color advent of a Marvel version of Victor Frankenstein’s famous creation must have seemed all but inevitable to most observers.  Read More

Eerie #40 (June, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last summer I wrote a couple of blog posts detailing how I first started buying and reading Warren Publishing’s black-and-white magazine-sized horror comics, beginning with the 1972 Eerie and Vampirella Annuals and the 36th “regular” issue of Eerie, all of which came out in July, 1971.  As I noted at the time, I was fated never to become a consistent, regular reader of Warren’s titles, their ultimately serving as but an occasional snack within my overall comic-book diet during the next ten years.  Having said that, I’m still a little surprised that after getting off to such a strong start, it ended up taking me a whole seven months to get around to buying my fourth Warren.  Possibly I was anxious about getting in trouble should my parents catch me with such “mature” reading material (which did happen, in fact, on at least one occasion).  Assuming that was indeed the case, however (and even if it wasn’t), what was it that finally compelled me to go ahead and buy this issue of Eerie, after passing on the last three?  I can’t claim to actually remember for sure, but I feel pretty confident that, as with so many other impulse purchases I’ve made over the more than half a century I’ve been buying comic books, I was sold by the cover.   Read More