Merlin

Eerie #67 (August, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

At the time I originally purchased the subject of today’s blog post, way back in June, 1975, it had been over two years since I’d bought an issue of any of Warren Publishing’s black-and-white comics magazines (with one exception, which I’ll get to in a moment).  Half a century later, I’m not entirely sure how or why I’d grown so cold so quickly to Warren’s fare, given that I had been reading both Vampirella and Eerie quasi-regularly for some time prior to that (for whatever reason, I never bought more than a single issue of Creepy, at least not in this particular era).  I do recall that I’d lost interest in Vampirella after its ongoing Dracula plotline got spun off into its own series in Eerie, and that I was subsequently disappointed when that series petered out inconclusively after a mere three episodes.  Perhaps that was all it took to turn me off, especially since by mid-1973, I had other options for reading “mature” comic-book stories about Dracula — as well as other horror-oriented subjects — thanks to Marvel Comics’ new black-and-white line.  As for the fourth comics title that Warren would add to its line in early 1974 —The Spirit  — my younger self wasn’t sure what to make of it at all (though I do remember flipping through an early issue or two and being bemused by the discovery that one of my favorite contemporary comics artists, Mike Ploog, seemed to have copped a good bit of his style from this Will Eisner fellow.)
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Demon #7 (March, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last summer, we took a look at the first two issues of The Demon — a series created by writer-artist-editor Jack Kirby as a response to DC Comics’ request for him to come up with something in the “horror hero” vein.  Although this new feature hadn’t originally been intended to replace Kirby’s beloved “Fourth World” titles on his production schedule — at least, that hadn’t been Kirby’s intent — following the cancellations of both Forever People and New Gods, and the mandated retooling of Mister Miracle, that’s effectively what happened, as both Demon and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth (another series dreamed up by Kirby at DC’s direction) had their publishing frequencies increased from bi-monthly to monthly status within their first three issues, so that by the beginning of 1973, they, along with the still bi-monthly Mister Miracle, effectively absorbed most if not all of the creator’s time and effort.  Read More

Demon #1 (Aug.-Sep., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I’ll be honest with you — it feels a little strange to be writing about the first issue of Jack Kirby’s The Demon in June, at a time when I still have my final posts about Forever People and New Gods coming up in August.  That’s because for the better part of the past half-century, I’ve tended to categorize the bulk of Kirby’s work at DC Comics in the 1970’s as being either “the Fourth World” or “everything after the Fourth World”.  But the fact of the matter is that those categories overlap chronologically, even if only by a couple of months.  And that’s significant, I believe, as it reflects the fact that when the writer-artist came up with the series concepts for both The Demon and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth fifty years ago, he thought of them as complementary — and probably secondary — to his ongoing Fourth World epic, rather than as the replacement for that ambitious project that they inevitably became.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean that Kirby would have approached the development of Demon and Kamandi differently, had he known that these two series were what he was going to be spending the majority of his working hours dealing with for the next year or more.  But it’s something to think about,  at least.  Read More

Avengers #84 (January, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As the year 1970 wound down, it seemed that mainstream American comic books had, at last, embraced the “sword and sorcery” fantasy subgenre in all its pulpy glory.  After some tentative moves in that direction — courtesy of DC Comics’ three “Nightmaster” issues of Showcase in 1969, which were followed in 1970 by Marvel’s publication of several S&S short tales in its new horror anthology titles like Chamber of Darkness and Tower of Shadows — Marvel finally jumped into the deep-end of the pool in July, 1970, with a licensed adaptation of the field’s most prototypical character, Robert E. Howard’s Conan:  Read More

World’s Finest Comics #162 (November, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

People who’ve known me for a while are likely to know that as much as I love comic books, they’re not the only thing I geek out over.  Another of my abiding passions, going back more than forty years, is the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, in all its cultural manifestations — classic literature, modern prose fiction, art, films, music, and — of course — comics.  Over the last few decades I’ve been fortunate enough to have had several opportunities to combine my interests in Arthuriana and comics in ways I can share with others — beginning with an article in the late, lamented fanzine Amazing Heroes in 1984, continuing with contributions to academic (!) works such as The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, and more-or-less culminating in my web site, “Camelot in Four Colors:  A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics” — est. 2000, and looking every day of its age (still, you should check it out, OK?).

I got the Arthurian bug in a big way around 1973 or thereabouts.  It was sparked by a number of factors, among the most significant being T. H. White’s novel The Once and Future King (as well as its stage and movie musical adaptation, Camelot), Mary Stewart’s Merlin novels, and C. S. Lewis’ contemporary science fantasy That Hideous Strength.  Those were all manifestations of the Arthurian legend that I encountered as an adolescent in the early Seventies — but, of course, like many if not most other English-speaking people of the modern world, I was first exposed to King Arthur and his mythos during the earlier period of my childhood.  And what was probably one of the first truly significant exposures came along in September, 1966, in the form of World’s Finest #162 — in which the ranks of the Round Table knights were joined by none other than my two favorite heroes, Superman and Batman.     Read More