Celebrating Dracula, Part Three

Here's a third and final collection of line drawing of the King of Vampires, offered in observation of the month when Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" was first published.

By Mike Hoffman

By Dick Giordano

By Mike Ploog

By Gene Colan and Dave Gutierrez

'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.)

'Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1' is interestingif inconsistent superheroic horror

Essential Ghost Rider, Vol. 1 (Marvel Comics, 2005)
Writers: Gary Friedrich, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, et.al.
Artists: Mike Ploog, Jim Mooney, Tom Sutton, Herb Trimpe, Frank Robbins, John Byrne, et.al
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

"Essential Ghost Rider Vol 1" reprints 500+ pages of the earliest tales of one of most bizarre Marvel horror characters. The series focuses on Johnny Blaze, a young motorcycle daredevil who sold his soul to the devil so that his adopted father wouldn't of a deadly disease. Johnny didn't think of the saying "the devil is in the details," so when his adopted father died anyway (just not of the disease), he tried to renege on his deal with Satan. Only the love of his pure-hearted stepsister saved him from being carried off to Hell. She couldn't prevent him from being cursed, and when the sun goes down (or when there is evil afoot, or when he is in danger... the curse keeps changing), Johnny is transformed into the Ghost Rider--a being with a flaming skull who rides a bike made from pure Hellfire.

Some things should remain childhood memories. The stories in "Essential Ghost Rider Vol 1", a book I look with great anticipation because I had such fond memories. In particularly, I remembered Ghost Rider fighting a WW I ghost biplane, and I remembered him fighting an Indian witch who had sold her soul to Satan like he had.

In some respects, the stories here match my childhood recollection. If taken on their own, each of Ghost Rider's adventures--most of which spanned two or three individual issues when first published--feature a curious mix of mystical gobbledygook, horror tropes, and superheroics. Out of all of Marvel's horror characters, the Ghost Rider is the most superhero-like, with Son of Satan--whose debut is also featured in this volume--coming in a close second.


However, when the stories are collected like they are here, a fatal editorial sloppiness becomes apparent, most obviously in the constant redefining of Johnny Blaze's curse and the repeated lapses in continuity as writers come and go on the series. The number of contradictions and "reinventions" that we see in the series are inexcusable over a mere 30 or so individual issues.

There's also an issue with the stories not aging well. They were products of the 1970s, and this is painfully evident in some of the stories, many of the characters, and much of the art. (The heavy 1970s feel is a blessing when it comes to the Witch Woman, though... she fills a pair of hotpants like no minon of Satan ever will again ).

Speaking of the art, it is the exceptional quality of the work produced by Ploog, Mooney and Sutton (the latter of which make for a surprisingly effective team) who save the book from getting a Four Tomato rating. Ploog's work is particularly excellent--not quite up to the level of his "Monster of Frankenstein" run but it's still very good. Mooney's run on the book brings out the superhero aspects of the title clearly, while Sutton helps bring out the macabre as he does on virtually every title he ever worked on.

My mild disappointment with this book may be that I approached the book with an attitude tainted by fond childhood memories instead of a neutral eye. However, the "Ghost Rider" series actually got better as it wore on, something which future volumes of this series have borne out, so maybe my negativity isn't all nostalgia. So far, Marvel Comics has released three volumes in this series, and I hope they will collect them all with the release of a fourth. (I hope to eventually post reviews of them all.)

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.)

'Essential Monster of Frankenstein' ranges from excellent to excrement

The Essential Monster of Frankenstein (Marvel Comics, 2005)
Writers: Gary Friedrich, Doug Moench and Bill Mantlo
Artists: Mike Ploog, John Buscema, Val Mayerik, et.al.
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

I suspect that most people reading this first came to Frankenstein's Monster through the movies, be they the Hammer films or the ones from Universal Pictures. Myself, my first exposure to Frankenstein's Monster was in the pages of a comic books where in one issue I read about him fighting a giant spider while looking for the man who created him, and then later fought vampires and ultimately did come face-to-face with his maker.

These two issues helped fuel my love of comics, as random as they were in the overall placement of the Marvel Comics' version of Frankenstein's Monster, so when I saw Marvel was collection ALL the stories in one big fat book, I had to have it, so I could read the rest of the story, even if it was three decades later.

This mammoth black-and-white reprint volume features some of very best comics published by Marvel... and some of the very worst. It collects all the early of Frankenstein's Monster as seen through the prism of the House of Ideas, presenting material that original appeared in "Monster of Frankenstein," "The Frankenstein Monster," Legion of Monsters," and "Monsters Unleashed."


The tales within its pages that have Gary Friedrich credited as writer are true gems of comic story-telling. From the fabulous adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, to the inevitable battle between gothic horror titans Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster, through the tragic conclusion of the monster's quest to find the Last Frankenstein, the first 11 issues of the Monster of Frankenstein comic book are indeed "essential" reading. Friedrich's stories are well-crafted, the 19th century setting refreshing, the characters all interesting, and the illustrations for those tales, primarily by Mike Ploog and John Buscema, are also among some of the finest work those artists ever did.

The same is true of the first few reprints featuring Frankenstein's Monster from the pages of Monsters Unleashed. The saga of Frankenstien's Monster is moved into the modern day as an obsessive mad scientist discovers the inert creature in a traveling sideshow and revives him with bizarre and tragic consequences. The first few of these stories were written by Gary Friedrich and illustrated by John Buscema, and these, again, are true comic-book classics. But once Friedrich leaves as writer, the quality goes down the drain.

With the exception of the final story in the collection, the episodes penned by Doug Moench are just plain awful, with Frankenstien's Monster facing off against a silly secret criminal organization and even sillier by-products of the efforts of modern-day monster-builders. I hate to say that Moench turned in bad work for the series, as he has written some of my favorite comics ("Master of Kung-Fu," "Six From Sirius," his run on "Catwoman"), but there is just nothing redeeming about his efforts on the Frankenstien series. (Except the very last story reprinted from "Legion of Monsters". Moench and the artist he was teamed with on the strip, Val Mayerik, do their only decent work for the entire series on that one.)

In the final anaylsis, about 1/3rd of this book is trash, but the good parts are really good and this makes "Essential Monster of Frankenstein" a worthy addition to any fan of horror comics' bookshelf. Just skip the material that originally appeared in The Frankenstein Monster issues 12-18 and Monsters Unleashed issues 6-9.

Unfortunately, Marvel Comics has chosen not to keep the book in print. It's too bad, because, although flawed, It's worth seeking out, and I recommend getting a copy from some source before "collector prices" truly start kicking in.