'Ghost Rider' reprint book ablaze with quality

Essential Ghost Rider, Vol. 2 (Marvel Comics, 2007)
Writers: Michael Fleisher, Roger MacKenzie, Don Glut, Jim Shooter, and Gerry Conway
Atists: Don Perlin, Carmine Infantino, Tom Sutton, et.al.
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

The adventures of Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist cursed by Satan to be the vessel of a mysterious vengeance demon continue. At the start of this collection, Johnny's (relatively) peaceful life as a stuntman at Zelazny Studios is destroyed as he once again finds himself losing control of his transformation from human to fiery demon. As time progresses, the demonic spirit within him grows wilder and wilder, and Johnny finds himself constantly on the move, with no opportunity to ever settle down.

"Essential Ghost Rider, Vol. 2" reprints issues 21-50 of the original "Ghost Rider" comics from the late 1970s and early 1980s. As I mentioned in my review of "Essential Ghost Rider, Vol 1", this is a series that followed a curve opposite of what most comic books do... it got better as time wore on.

While this volume doesn't contain the best of "Ghost Rider"--that doesn't come until the tales that originally appeared starting with the issues in the mid-60s and running through the series end with #81--the stories steadily improve, moving from an almost straight superhero phase, into a pulp-action horror phase, and then drifting back in the direction of superhero-flavored horror, as the Ghost Rider crosses paths with Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, and other Marvel heroes.

A great contributing factor to the "Ghost Rider" stories getting better is that the creative teams stabilized--with Don Perlin serving as the artist on most of the tales collected here, and Michael Fleisher writing more than half of them. Another is that a pair of editors who turned everything they touched to gold took turns at the book's helm--Archie Goodwin and Denny O'Neil.

To move the title in the right direction, the creators tore down the world that had been built up around Johnny Blaze--having a confrontation with Dr. Druid (the goofiest of Marvel's mystical characters) force him to unleash his demon in front of everyone, and then have his on-again, off-again true love Roxy Simpson be brainwashed into forgetting him by a shadowy figure (in a subplot that isn't resolved in this volume), stripping him of his Stunt Cycling World Championship title, and ultimately starting to morph his curse again, preventing him from ever feeling secure enough to settle down.

While the constant changing of Johnny Blaze's curse and his relationship with the demon inside him was a detriment to the first 20 or so issues of "Ghost Rider", here the shift takes place over many issues and it becomes an asset to the title. Rather than seeming like the product of editors and creators who has no clue what to do with a character, here it seems like the subplot is moving along toward a planned point. (And, as we discover a little later in the title--beyond what is reprinted here--it was.)

The art throughout the book is serviceable--with the two-part tale where a mad wizard separates Johnny and the demon he is host to pencilled by Carmine Infantino being the strongest--and competent, but it is nothing to rave about. The stories are another matter--the writing is top-notch and the tales are mostly timeless action/horror stories that carry very little of the painful "hipness" that caused so many of the tales in the first volume to be embarrassingly stuck in the decade that produced them.

The only complaint I have with the writing in this book is that when the creators are pushing Ghost Rider hard in the direction of ever-increasing quality, they don't take time to look back--the book is almost entirely continuity free for the final ten or so reprinted tales, except for the growing strength of Johnny's demon. The book closes out with Johnny once again become embroiled with Native American mysticism and curses... I would have loved to see a return of the Witch Woman (hot-pants and all) for those tales.

'Werewolf by Night' goes out howling

Essential Werewolf by Night, Vol. 2 (Marvel Comics, 2007)
Writer: Doug Moench
Artists: Don Perlin, et. al.
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

"Werewolf By Night" was one of several titles published by Marvel Comics that played off a mixture of classic movie monsters and 1970s exploitation movie fare. Following the exploits of reluctant werewolf Jack Russell, it was perhaps the most successful of the titles from a pure story-telling point of view, with a direction and tone set in the first few tales in "Marvel Spotlight" that continued with only a minor adjustment up to the title's cancellation with issue #42.

In this massive, low-cost black-and-white reprint book, Marvel Comics presents the second half of one of their greatest horror series, "Werewolf By Night", with the 20 issues of the regular comic benefiting from the presence of a single creative team of writer Doug Moench and artist Don Perlin, and a steadiness of story focus almost unmatched in Marvel's horror titles. Although the title passed through the hands of three different editors, Moench and Perlin seemed to be holding steadily to the same path the series had been following all along, avoiding the numerous re-inventions that kept causing Ghost Rider's motorcycle to sputter, as well as avoiding getting tangled up in too many subplots as Marv Wolfman did on "Tomb of Dracula". There are a number of story threads running through the book--including some that started in the previous volume, one or two of which were unceremoniously dropped by previous writers--and Moench and Perlin keep them all flowing and tie them up very neatly at exactly the right moment every time. They even managed to almost successfully usher the Werewolf into a position of viable superhero as Marvel's horror wave crashed, creating in the process a character that would go onto become one of the more interesting Batman knock-offs comicdom has ever seen, Moon Knight. Moench and Perlin may not have been the original creative team on the title, but they were certainly the greatest.

In addition to the 20 issues of the regular series, the book collects four issues of "Giant-Sized Werewolf" and an issue of "Marvel Premiere". The one thing these additions have in common is that they are the weakest points of the book, not only disrupting the flow of the main story as you read the collection, with forced meetings between the Werewolf and other Marvel horror characters (like Frankenstein's Monster and Mobius the Living Vampire) and stories that just aren't as interesting as the ones in the main title. The exception is the tale from "Giant-Sized Werewolf #3" which reintroduces characters and story elements last seen around the middle of "Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol. 1" and starts a ball rolling that eventually brings us to some of the most effective of Marvel's horror tales.

Basically, as was the case with most of Marvel's horror characters, "Werewolf By Night" was at its best when it stood apart from the greater Marvel Universe. Most cross-overs simply didn't work, including those featuring other horror characters, such as Frankenstein's Monster.

Superhero flair and classic/exploitation horror aren't easy to mix--as my comments regarding the "Giant-Sized Werewolf" reprints implies--but Moench and Perlin tried it with "Werewolf By Night" as the last dozen or so issues of the title moved steadily in a more traditional Marvel direction, with Jack Russell gaining control of his transformations and even coming up against Iron Man in the final issue. But, as Moench and Perlin worked to transition the title, they gave us some of the most effective horror stories Marvel ever published.

In their efforts to tie up Jack Russell's horror past, the werewolf first savagely mauled Jack's best friend, Jack's sister is transformed into a hideous monster when a villain triggers the dormant werewolf within her; long-time supporting cast members Taboo and Topaz return during a show-down with the downright Lovecraftian villain Glitternight; Brother Voodoo shows up to help put Jack's legal problems behind him in one of the most effective appearances of that inherently goofy character ever, a final showdown takes place against the downright Lovecraftian villain Glitternight; and Jack and friends are trapped in a haunted house where the title manages to surpass even the horrific Tom Sutton-illustrated Tatterdaemallion stories of Volume One.

But, as excellent as these stories were, the Marvel Age of Monsters was over. As the 1970s came to a close, so did Werewolf By Night. However, it ended on a very strong note, and the two volumes collecting all the early stories of Marvel Comics' reluctant werewolf are worthy of attention from comics and horror fans alike.

'Werewolf By Night' is one of Marvel's best

Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol 1 (Marvel Comics, 2005)
Writers: Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, et.al.
Artists: Mike Ploog, Don Perlin, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, et.al.
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

"Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol 1" presents 500 pages from a series that ranks among Marvel's finest output during the 1970s, and that presented some of the best chillers from the House of Idea's horror wave. It also happens to be one of the best bit of pulp-style werewolf fiction ever produced, be it in movies, books, or comics.

The star of the stories is Jack Russell, a typical, upper-middle class 18-year-old who doesn't like his apparently over-judgemental step-father, but otherwise gets along with this family, namely his mother and his sister Lissa. On his 18th birthday, Jack discovers a problem bigger than his step-father... a family curse manifests itself, and Jack turns into a werewolf. From then on, for at least three nights a month, under the full moon, Jack turns into a beast-man and stalks the hills and streets of Southern California.

"Werewolf By Night" is a series that has weathered the passage of time well. While we have some references to swingin' singles and the occasional hippy finds his way into the series, most of the stories draw upon traditional sources of horror stories (like the aforementioned werewolves, ancient curses, psychics, demons, mad scientists, and even legendary creatures like the Wendigo). Two of the very interesting aspects of the stories in the book is Jack's flirtation with the movie industry--it is set in Southern California, so how could he not find a job with a movie studio?--and the shadowy Committee, which is pops up every now and then to threaten Jack's family and his furry alter-ego. The series pulls off a great mix of horror, adventure, and pulp-fiction sensibility.

Another reason for the book's timelessness is that it is brimming with top-notch stories where the creators are at their finest. Mike Ploog does some of his best work ever during the first six tales in the book, and his art continues to be top-notch on every story he illustrates. Similarly, Tom Sutton and Gil Kane turn in excellent work on the stories they illustrate, with Sutton doing some of the very creepiest work of his illustrious career. (Only one or two of his "I, Vampire" stories a decade later would even come close to the terrifying atmosphere he brought to the "Terror Beneath the Earth" story.)

Similarly, the writers on the strip do some of their best work, with Len Wein and Gerry Conway bringing Jack and the supporting cast around him to fully realized, three-dimensional life. Even many of the villains that Jack fights are intriguing because they have depth to them. The series also manages to maintain a tight control of its direction and continuity, something that the contemporaneous book "Ghost Rider" failed to do. In fact, the only time the sense of internal consistency and believability of the series falters is during its cross-over with "Tomb of Dracula." (There are just a few too many coincidences in the story, and the background for Jack's curse doesn't seem to quite fit with what we've learned previously.) This misstep is minor, however, and it hardly detracts from the over all excellence of the work that everyone did on these comics. Heck, even the team-up between the Werewolf and Spider-Man is a great read, something which I wouldn't have thought likely!

"Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol.1" is a high watermark for comics in general. I recommend it highly for all comics fans. (Sadly, it appears to have gone out of print.)

The two Man-Thing collections truly are essential

Some twenty years before DC Comics and Warner Bros. tumbled to the idea of marketing comics for mature readers ("mature" here meaning adults, interested in reading about adult subject matters that might be treated in serious literature, not porn), writer Steve Gerber was creating comic book tales that in many ways were more mature than the later material labled as such.

Those adults who discovered Gerber's work loved it. His stories featured three dimensional characters who battled real-world issues and real-world problems in addition to super-villains, demons, and nameless horrors from dimensions that would have scared the heck out of Lovecraft and Howard. His stories dealt timeless social and emotional issues and most of them are as relevant and fresh today as they were when they were penned 35-40 years ago.

Unfortunately, comic book readers don't really WANT to read stories that are truly written for adults, so time and again, Gerber's titles were cancelled... a fate that would follow his comics career right up until the bitter end when his truly excellent books for DC Comics, "Nevada" and "Hard Time" failed to find a large enough audience to warrant their continued publication.

Steve Gerber passed away two years ago, but his work is still here for us to enjoy. Over the past three or so years, Marvel Comics has most of Gerber's best work easily acessesible in the low-cost, massive volumes that are part of their "Essential" series. In fact, his work is easier to read not just because you'll have it collected in one spot, but because the printing quality is better and you'll actually be able to read the text-heavy pages in some of the issues. (It's still on news-print, and the ink is still prone to smearing, but it's still clearer.

It's interesting to me that Gerber wrote horror so well, as he has stated that didn't particularly care for horror stories and that he liked monsters even less. Perhaps his is why his horror stories deal with real horrors more than supernatural ones. bigotry, racism, religious extremism, broken dreams, unrealistic expectations, the ugliest manifestations of addiction, poverty, sexual abuse, censorship, politics, depression, suicide, environmentalism... all of these thing are explored in the "Man-Thing" stories that Gerber wrote, oftentimes explored with such thoughtfulness and presented through such well-done characters that almost feel as if what you're reading is too good to be mere comic books.

Gerber was writing comics that were ahead of their time, and he was writing about timeless subjects. Some of the trappings of the tales are a little dated--such as typical early 1970s hippies and biker-types--but the stories and the characters themselves are as relevant and vital as they now as they were when they were first published. If you enjoy intelligent, well-written horror tales, particularly ones that easily mixes straight-forward social commentary with satire and allegory.




Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 (Marvel Comics)
Writers: Steve Gerber, Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas and Tony Isabella
Artists: Mike Ploog, Val Mayerik, John Buscema, Gray Morrow, Frank Chiaramonte, Tom Sutton, et.al.
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

"Essential Man-Thing" Vol. 1 opens with the Man-Thing earliest appearances, chroniclally the events that lead to chemist Ted Sallis being transformed into a mindless creature made of mud and vegetation from a patch of the Everglades. After a couple of adventures that teamed Man-Thing with S.H.E.I.L.D and Marvel's answer to Tarzan, Ka-Zar, against the sinister criminal organization A.I.M, we get the first glimpse of the greatness that is to come.

In a story written by Man-Thing's co-creator Gerry Conway, we learn that Man-Thing has a very strong empathic sense and that he is drawn to emotional and physical pain and misery. We also learn that fear and anger cause him pain and cause him to lash out at the source of that pain, attempting to destroy it with a supernatural ability that causes anything that feels fear to burst into flames when he touches it.(And, as probably goes without saying, most people who come face-to-face with a 7-foot-tall mud-encrusted monster with huge red eyes will fear plenty of fear... so there plenty of people who suffer lethal third-degree burns as a result of an encounter with Man-Thing.)

Although Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway created Man-Thing, it is Steve Gerber who will use the creation to its fullest potential, using Man-Thing's empathic sense to have him drawn to all sorts of situations charged with negative human emotion, thus making him a vehicle for telling stories dealing with topics as diverse as bigotry, jealousy, greed, depression and suicide.


Gerber also added the Kale family, a family of sorcerers living at the edge of the swamp in Citrusville... and in doing so, he set the stage to reveal that Man-Thing and his swamp are guardians of the Nexus of All Realities, thus giving him a free hand to include all sorts of cosmic and extestial elements to his Man-Thing yarns. Finally, he added the character of Richard Rory, a down-on-his-luck Everyman who sort of serves as a stand-in for the reader as the takes unfold; he's a kindhearted, decent and completely normal guy--well, except for having a giant swamp creature as a friend.

The mix of tales in "Essential Man-Thing" Vol. 1 move from small-scale, stories of personal horror to cosmos-spanning, reality-shattering dark fantasy adventures--one often leading to the other and back again--and each is more fascinating than the one before.

There are three main plot threads that run through the book, so, although it's very obvious the 500+ pages were originallty published in chunks of 12 or 22 pages because each presents a finite episode, you'll still feel as if you're reading something that was intended to read as a coherent whole.

The first thread deals with Jennifer Kale's maturation into a sorceress and inheriting her family's duty to help protect the Nexus of All Realities. Jennifer and her extra-dimensional teacher, Dakhim the Enchanter, become the wellspring of all sorts of cosmic nightmares for Man-Thing and those who enter his swamp.

The second thread deals with construction baron and real estate tycoon F.A. Schist (not one of Gerber's most subtley named characters) and his efforts to first drain the swamp to build an airport and later gain revenge upon the Man-Thing for ruining his business. After Schist comes to a very bad and very final end, his family picks up the revenge quest. The Schist storyline is used to explore such diverse topics as environmentalism, bigotry, the dangers of excessive greed, and the self-destructive nature of obsession. Although Schist more often than not comes across as a cartoonish villain, most characters around him are quite three dimensional and even Schist has a few moments of depth.

The third thread deals with Richard Rory's ongoing attempts to make a new life for himself in Citrusville while trying to deal with all the crazy and nightmarish situations he is drawn into. He is a recurring secondary character for most of this book, but his important grows as it wears on, and in Volume 2, he takes center stage for real.

The three story threads weave in and out of each other and the various stand-alone episodes present in the book, giving it a unified feel, a feel that is made stronger by the fact that the final comics story presented in the book harkens back to the very first Man-Thing tale, as it resolves the fate of Ellen Brandt, the woman whose treachery led to Ted Sallis becoming the Man-Thing.

Between the two end pieces and the three running plots, readers are treated some of the most interesting stories Gerber ever wrote, such as "Night of the Laughing Dead", a tale of depression, suicide, and cosmic balance; and the two-part introduction of the Fool-Killer, a tale of religious fanaticism and vigilantism that was written partly as a spoof of the popular Marvel Comics character the Punisher.

And Gerber's Man-Thing stories continue to get better with time, with more greatness following in "Essential Man-Thing" Vol. 2.

It's not just the writing in the book that's so remarkable. We're treated to some great art from Mike Ploog (whose Will Eisner-inspired style lends itself perfectly to the water-logged Everglades swamp where most of the stories take place), Val Mayerik, and John Buscema. There are other minor contributors, but those three gentlemen produce some truly gorgeous pages. (Mayerik's art suffers a little bit due to the lack of colors in this black-and-white reprint volume, but Ploog and Buscema's art shines.)

"Essential Man-Thing" Vol. 1 is a book bursting with true classics of the comics genre. It's a must-own for affeciandos of the genre, or for anyone who loves intelligent, well-written horror tales.




Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 2 (Marvel Comics)
Writers: Steve Gerber, Chris Claremont, Mike Friedrich, Marv Wolfman, J.M. DeMattias and Dickie McKenzie
Artits: Jim Mooney, Don Perlin, Bob Wiacek, John Buscema, John Byrne, Tom Sutton, et. al
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
"Essential Man-Thing" Vol. 2 picks up where Vol 1 left off, finishing out the first "Man-Thing" series and the rest of the original Man-Thing stories penned by Steve Gerber.

Like the first volume, the tales mix episodic horror with social commentary and satire. The cosmic nature of the stories has mostly been dailed back with storylines about alienation, bigotry and censorship. The mystic Kale family has stepped into the background while hardluck case Richard Rory and some very darkhearted but seemingly-average citizens of Citrusville become the focus of the ongoing storylines. Gerber starts cranking up the cosmic madness in the tales that orginally appeared in "Man-Thing" #20 and #21, but the full scope of the story he was trying to tell, Marvel pulled the plug on the title. However, Gerber made lemonade with the lemons, and the final issue of the series summarized a story that might have spanned three or four issues within a tale that featured Gerber himself as a character and brought the series to a conclusion unlike any other that had previously been seen. Few titles that are cancelled go out on such a high note as "Man-Thing" did.

The Gerber material takes up about half the book,and once it's done, there's a very steep drop in quality.

First off, a bad editorial decision was made to include the team-up between Man-Thing, Captain America and the Thing from "Marvel Two-In-One", as it is a fragment of a much larger storyline and makes little sense on its own when they should have included "Giant-Sized Spider-Man" #5, which detailed Spider-Man's first meeting with Man-Thing and to which the story reprinted from "Marvel Team-Up" #68 is a sequel and makes frequent reference to that previous tale.

Secondly, when Marvel gave Man-Thing another shot at his own title in 1979, with Michael Fleisher and Chris Claremont handling the writing chores, the book was a pale imitation of the first Man-Thing series. Fleisher and Claremont tried to copy Gerber's style, and they failed at every turn, turning in ten issues of suspense comics that are barely above average in quality. To make matters worse, the majority of the issues were illustrated by the team of Don Perlin and Bob Wiacek, competent artists but whose styles are too streamlined and clean to effectively captaure Man-Thing and the vine-choked swamp he dwells in.

Altough not as "essential" as the first volume of "Essential Man-Thing", this book is still well-worth owning for anyone who likes intelligently written horror comics.

(For your information, another Steve Gerber horror milestone was collected two years ago in "Essential Tales of Zombie". I recommend that book as highly as I do the "Essential Man-Thing" volumes. Click here to read that review.)