Balzan Of The Cat People #3: The Lights Of Zetar

Balzan Of The Cat People #3: The Lights Of Zetar, by Wallace Moore
September, 1975  Pyramid Books

Well friends I hate to break it to you, but this was the last volume of Balzan Of The Cat People. Somehow the “Tarzan of Outer Space” was unable to garner a sufficient readership…no doubt because the previous two exploits were dull, overwritten yawnfests in which Balzan came off like a bufoonish lout prone to random acts of anthropology, and practically everyone he met shamed him for being a violent jerk.

It’s some time after the previous volume, which even Conway must’ve hated because he doesn’t even refer to it this time. In fact, The Lights Of Zetar is more a sequel to the first volume than The Caves Of Madness was, seemingly picking up on the events of that first installment. (And yes it stole its title from an episode of Star Trek!) Balzan often thinks of the Kharnites, the villains of The Blood Stones, pondering how the villains of this volume are “exactly like them.” This actually comes off more like Conway ripping himself off due to his own boredom with the series. But at least Balzan isn’t shamed as much this time around…and, uh, doesn’t knock up a demon-winged chick who lives underground, either. 

We meet Balzan as he’s battling a monster. Balzan fights a lot of monsters this time around, usually using his poison-tipped whip (ie his “therb”) or the Kharnite sword he appropriated in the first volume. The Lights Of Zetar has a slightly more pronounced “sci-fantasy” vibe than previous books, with more flying craft and whatnot, but Balzan has yet to get his hands on a raygun or anything. Most of his killing is done by blade, as is his offing of this particular monster which has abruptly attacked Balzan as he was casually walking along and minding his own business. 

Unfortunately the beast is owned by the Krells, a despotic race of humans who look just like Balzan save for their jutting foreheads. These are the guys Balzan keeps comparing to the similarly-despotic Karnites in The Blood Stones. (And I will just assume that Marvel Comics writer Conway conflated the names of Marvel alien races the Krees and the Skrulls for “Krells.”)  One of the many goofy things about this series is that the (unnamed?) planet on which it takes place is so massive that entire empires can exist without ever hearing of one another. Thus while the Krells proclaim themselves as the mightiest race on the planet, their name known far and wide, Balzan shrugs and says he’s never heard of them.

He gets in a quick fight, killing off the Krell war party in bloodless prose. Balzan soon finds himself among another race, the Orathians, who also look just like him but with normal foreheads. They are completely subjugated by the Krells, to the extent that the metal staffs the Krells wield don’t even have any power behind them; the Oranthians shrink at the sight of them, believing the staffs are capable of dispensing incredible pain. Balzan saves a group of Oranthians from these Krells, and thus is greeted like a hero when he enters their camp. Here he meets the lovely Tarlene, and “Balzan the Anthropologist” briefly returns as he ponders over the girl’s total mental domination by the Krells. 

Meanwhile the two shack up; Conway seems to have understood by now that Balzan’s supposed to get busy with some busty native gals each volume, which I’m sure was a stipulation from book producer Lyle Kenyon Engel. But there’s zero in the way of salacious details. Honestly the series is almost G rated, and the vintage planetary romances it was inspired by were even more risque. Also here Balzan meets Taya, the Chronicler of the Oranthians; he’s old and wizened and a revolutionary at heart, plotting an underground resistance against the Krells.

Conway has this strange tendency early in the book of setting up characters, making them seem important, and then promptly killing them off. This first happens with a much-ballyhooed Krell commander who vows to get this new “Oranthian” (aka Balzan) who’s causing so much trouble; our hero kills this guy so casually that I had to re-read the paragraph to confirm he was dead. The same holds true for the Krell ruler of the Oranthians, who is here due to being married to Lenor, daughter of Amdroth, the king of the Krells. This Oranthian outpost is his “gift” for being married to the princess, and while this initially promises some sort of royal subplot about the Krells, this guy too is perfunctorily killed by Balzan, who decides to just press his advantage and marches right into the local Krell fortress, killing the guy where he stands!

Balzan does a lot of killing this time, and luckily there’s none of the violence-shaming of the previous books. Or at least not so much of it. He is though still a complete moron, and just like last time is twice knocked unconscious, at the mercy of his enemies, within the first forty pages. Here it’s Lenor, who offers Balzan a drink mere moments after he’s killed her husband, and Balzan like a fool drinks it…and passes out. Instead of putting a knife in his throat, Lenor tells some underlings to round him up and put him aboard her ship, which she flies to the main Krell fortress to show off her prisoner to her dad. Balzan wakes up just long enough to get knocked out again.

Amdroth, ruler of the Krells, is gifted with precognition thanks to the strange shining lights of Zetar, the god that lives within the mountains above the fortress. The “Feast of Zetar” is coming up and we learn that people are sacrificed to the god every several years. Balzan’s freed by underground resistance Oranthians led by Jem, who happens to be the brother of Tarlene. Soon Balzan’s with the whole group of them, plotting the takedown of Amdroth. Our hero isn’t all just poisoned therbs and Kharnite swords, though – he’s also pretty handy with a computer, as he quickly discovers the “secret weapon” Taya has discovered beneath the Krell capital. It’s one of those Star Trek computers, too, just a massive construct that’s activated by speech. Here Balzan learns that “Zetar” was actually the name of the planet these ancient aliens came from, millennia ago, leaving behind their technology; technology Amdroth now abuses so as to subjugate the Oranthians.

We do get a little of the courtroom intrigue promised in the opening section, but it concerns Amdroth’s top warrior, Emdor, and some other dude whose name I forgot to note vying for dominance. And also Emdor is sleeping with Lenor, but Conway leaves this too off-page. We do get a lot more action, though, which is nice given the plot-heavy boredom of the previous book. The sci-fantasy sweep continues when Balzan uses that ancient computer to fire a plasma cannon sort of thing, blasting apart a Krell war party. Conway even appropriates a Weird Tales vibe when Amdroth, who is also a necromancer, reanimates some dead Krell warriors to fight Balzan, Jem, and Taya. This sub-Conan vibe continues when Balzan challenges Amdroth but is confronted by a host of visions.

The back cover copy implies that sexy (but big foreheaded?) Lenor will in some way tempt or sway Balzan, but Conway is unwilling to deliver this scene. Balzan sneaks into the palace, comes upon Lenor, and she offers herself to him. Balzan my friends turns her down, sickened by her evilness. After this Lenor falls to her death in the courtyard below…and Balzan questions his manhood for turning her down, blaming himself for her death! Not that this slows him down much. He’s here to kill Amdroth, so ventures into the caves where the evil ruler gets his power.

The beast on the cover is not a true indication of the guardian of the cave in which Zetar “lives.” In the actual novel it’s a massive spider – and humorously it’s dispatched by Balzan in a few sentences. In fact, the novel seems to end thirty pages early. Balzan takes out the monster, confronts Amdroth, and then discovers that Zetar is, “surprisingly,” a computer. Another that the ancient aliens left behind, but it needs energy or something to run, and Amdroth has been using sacrifices to power it. Along with his own body, as he’s gotten into a symbiotic relationship with the computer, which has granted him eternal youth; in reality Amdroth is incredibly ancient.

But once that’s done it seems the novel should end, but instead it’s about Jem and the Oranthians (sounds like an ‘80s cartoon) battling Emor and his still-loyal Krell warriors. In the climax Balzan gets another reminder of “man’s inhumanity to man” when a victorious Jem proves to be more merciless than even the Krells were. Even Tarlene is transformed from meek to bloodthirsty, sitting beside her brother and calling for Krell blood. This sickens Balzan, who loses all feelings for her (perfect so he could hop in the sack with whatever babe he’d meet in the next volume). After a violent disagreement with Jem, Balzan cuts Jem’s arm off(!) and then goes on his merry way.

And that was it for Balzan Of The Cat People. Even though only 140-some pages, The Lights Of Zetar is ponderously slow-going; not as slow as the previous volumes but close. It would seem clear why the series failed to take hold with readers. It’s too bad Manning Lee Stokes didn’t have a go at the series; his offerings would’ve been padded and ponderous as well, but they’d burn with that weird fire so typical of Stokes’s work, particularly in the eight volumes of Richard Blade he wrote for Engel. One can only imagine what sort of weirdness he could’ve brought to this similar series.

Balzan Of The Cat People #2: The Caves Of Madness

Balzan Of The Cat People #2: The Caves Of Madness, by Wallace Moore
July, 1975  Pyramid Books

The “Tarzan of outer space” returns in the second volume of Balzan, with comics scribe Gerry Conway again serving as “Wallace Moore.” One suspects though that series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel must’ve figured he hired the wrong author for this particular series, as it soon becomes clear that Conway isn’t really into it – and certainly doesn’t like his protagonist. Reading The Caves Of Madness also makes it clear why there was only one more volume in the series.

Picking up some short but unspecified time after the first volume, this installment takes place entirely in the titular caves, with Balzan desperately trying to find a family with either of the two winged races that live here beneath the ground. For here is the big, big problem with Balzan: rather than the Tarzan/Conan-esque badass we might want, a rebel loner blitzing his way through an alien landscape, our hero is more of a needy type, lonely and feeling like an outcast, given that he’s the only human on this planet. Poor Balzan just wants to be loved, folks. While it’s all endearing and precious and etc, it sure as hell isn’t what I want when the cover shows a wildman sporting a knife, with the proclamation “the Tarzan of outer space” emblazoned above him.

So I’m betting Engel wanted one thing and Conway delivered another. He tries to have his cake and eat it, too, for despite being a maudlin, melancholy sad sack, Balzan is also a primo asskicker, so good at fighting and killing that he fears he enjoys it too much. (Despite which the dude is knocked out four times within the first 77 pages.) Indeed, practically the entirety of The Caves Of Madness is given over to various characters shaming Balzan for his brashness, for how prone he is to make violence his first and only recourse. It gets to be tedious after a while, particularly when the novel is much too long…only 150-some pages, but some of the smallest, densest copy you’ll ever see in an old paperback…almost as tiny and dense as the print in that Bantam edition of Gravity’s Rainbow.

Displaying his brashness posthaste, Balzan’s out wandering along the beach one day when he sees a pair of winged humanoid creatures fighting a tentacled blob that’s surfaced. He rushes to the fray, his dagger and therb (ie poisoned whip) at the ready. For his heroism he’s knocked cold, and awakens in the caverns of these distrustful “wingmen” (as Conway constantly refers to them). They have wings, ruddy skin, and hooves, yet otherwise look human enough, I guess. They call themselves the Aeri, and keep Balzan a sort of guest-prisoner, in an alcove high above the rocky ground.

His meals are brought to him by a lovely gal – other than the wings, hooves, and demonic look, that is – named Ryla. Balzan is basically an anthropologist this time around. He – and unfortunately we – learns all about Aeri culture and customs; page-filling at its worst. It’s also goofy as hell. For, just after being with the Aeri for a month, Balzan is able to say things like “protective stasis cube” and the like in their language. This is of course while he’s expositing on his back story, which we already read in the previous book.

Things like this would be easier to digest in the Marvel comics work Conway’s more known for…I could see it all illustrated in Curtis Magazines black and white by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala (my favorite pairing – though Rudy Nebres was always my favorite artist of all those black & white Marvel mags). But in novel form it comes off as silly and unbelievable. There are even goofy blunders Conway misses; early on, Balzan learns that the term “month” cannot be translated into the Aeri language, as they have no concept of it, given the two moons of the planet or somesuch. Yet several pages later, during a tribal meeting in which the ancient Aeri leader takes questions from his people, one of the women states that she has not yet waited “the thirteen months of mourning” after the death of a loved one. So do the Aeri know what a month is or not?

But the novel really is Balzan the Anthropologist; the dude is just way too interested in the people he meets, so that the violent revenge angle of the previous book is lost. I mean, I liked the first book way better than this one, and the first one was kind of a chore to get through at times. And things that should be exploited are left to the reader’s imagination – like the little tidbit of Balzan finally getting laid. As we’ll recall, he was prudish and standoffish to “hmmmm” levels in the the previous book; this time he can’t get lucky quick enough with Ryla (she of the red skin, wings, and friggin hooves, let’s recall). So is this Balzan’s first time or what? Conway doesn’t say. He also doesn’t get more descriptive than, “This time, when they kissed, they didn’t break apart.” Hot stuff!

There’s a bit of action to liven up the anthropological tedium. Another group of winged peoples attacks the Aeri, and Balzan leaps into the fray with therb and dagger, killing with glee. The Aeri are almost massacred, including women and children, and Balzan fights hard, which makes the following scene so WTF? Balzan mopes and sulks and tells a consoling Ryla to beat it. Why? Because Balzan worries that he “enjoys killing too much.” Uh, didn’t you just kill off a bunch of murderers, Balzan? It’s not like you were out thrill-killing in the caves of madness.

Anyway, these other winged people are the Mandagarr, ancient enemies of the Aeri. Conway isn’t much for description, which is humorous given how overwritten the book is, but apparently they look just like the Aeri, only with grayish skin. Balzan is eventually kidnapped by these freaks, and as if in defiance of all reader expectations, Conway writes practically the exact same stuff again – Balzan’s kept a sort of prisoner-guest and taught all about the customs of these winged people, including their language, living among them for a few months.

As if displaying the paucity of imagination rampant throughout the book, not only is Balzan again hooked up with a lovely lady (other that is than the wings, gray skin, and friggin hooves), but this lady, Cho, has a brother who distrusts Balzan – exactly the same setup as in the Aeri section of the novel. The brothers are even named similarly: Hiro and Kimo! This part too drags on, with Balzan first scoring (again nondescriptively) with Cho, who is like the town whore for the month. In what would easily trigger the sensitive types of today, we are informed that every woman in the Mandagarr community serves as a communal whore for a month or so, loving all men equally, so that there are no feelings of possession or love or what have you…and when she gets pregnant, the man responsible (if they know who it be) only helps to take care of the child, he does not act as her husband.

It’s just kinda…stupid. By this time in the previous book, Balzan would’ve fought in a few gladiatorial matches and killed some monsters. Seriously, folks, this time he sits around in these goddamn caves with their glowing fungi and listens to lots of exposition about various customs and beliefs, and then later is chastized by these same freaks for his brashness. The Aeri and Mandagarr sequences are so similar that I was kind of impressed with Conway for ripping himself off in the same book. Anyway, Balzan falls in love with Cho for some reason, and the only thing to differentiate her from Ryla is that she’s more caring or somesuch.

Balzan’s also an idiot. He can’t make up his mind if he wants to stay with the Mandagarr, if he trusts them or not, and occasionally makes breakout attempts, killing guards – something for which he’s never punished, mysteriously enough. He also has periodic run-ins with the ancient man who sits in passages beneath the living area, guarding a massive metal door – behind this is the Sl’yth, an almost mythical monster of unimaginable horror. As if again displaying that paucity of imagination, when Conway gets around to describing the creature, all he tells us is it’s a “slime-encrusted demon.” Again, you can clearly see how this guy made his living writing comics, where the visual stuff was filled in by artists. 

Balzan sulks again when he learns the Mandagarr have been hoping he’d impregnate Cho, as it develops their race is dying – as are the Aeri – and it was hoped Balzan’s seed would start new life. Uh, you all are different species, but what the hell. Cho does get pregnant…and Balzan stays with the Mandagarr…then three months later Cho loses the child. The Tarzan of Outer Space!! Seriously, what the hell kind of book was Conway writing?? But Balzan sulks some more and, after killing Hiro (not to be confused with Kimo) in a long-delayed grudge match, he makes his escape.

We’re in the homestretch now. Balzan returns to the Aeri, where Ryla first welcomes him, then gets pissed when she figures Balzan fell in love with some Mandagarr girl. Balzan sulks some more, and uses this to feed his desire for revenge. He leads a war party on the Mandagarr, unleashing the Sl’yth, which practically destroys everyone. Our hero, who massacres entire peoples. Too late he decides to stop the “slime-encrusted demon,” which, you know, he just released. Somehow along the way he finds time to kill Kimo (not to be confused with Hiro) in a long-delayed grudge match. Then Cho reveals herself to be Balzan’s true love, sacrificing herself in what Conway hopes will be an emotional moment but isn’t, because you could give two shits about any of these lifeless characters. 

The book ends with Balzan finally getting out of those damned caves and back to the surface world of whatever the hell planet he’s on. The entire novel was like a waystation between wherever Balzan was headed after the previous book, which as mentioned was vastly superior, despite also being kind of terrible. One can only hope that the next volume, ie the last one, does something to salvage this series. But boy, you sure can see why Balzan Of The Cat People only lasted three volume while Engel’s similar Richard Blade lasted for 30+ (or a couple hundred more, if you count the French editions). 

Here’s a fun review of The Caves Of Madness at Schlock Value, from whence I lifted the cover scan above.

Balzan Of The Cat People #1: The Blood Stones

Balzan Of The Cat People #1: The Blood Stones, by Wallace Moore
May, 1975  Pyramid Books

Yet another series produced by book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, Balzan Of The Cat People is along the same lines of an earlier Engel production, Richard Blade. But whereas that series took inspiration from the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard, Balzan takes its inspiration from Edgar Rice Burroughs, particularly John Carter of Mars and Tarzan (who is even referenced on the cover). 

Another difference is that Richard Blade lasted a whole lot longer; Balzan only amounted to three volumes, and whether that was due to the series being a bomb with readers or the fact that Pyramid Books folded in 1976 is unknown. I’m betting it was a combination of the two, because The Blood Stones, the first novel in the series, really doesn’t have much to recommend it. It’s fair for what it is, just an average piece of mid-‘70s sci-fantasy, but it’s nothing remarkable.

According to the internet, “Wallace Moore” was really comics writer Gerry Conway. It was interesting knowing this, as Conway’s tale would be perfectly at home in a Marvel comic of the time. The story is heavily plotted with a lot of melodrama and action but zero sex. Conway wrote mainstream comics and he brings that same sensibility to The Blood Stones, as the novel has none of the softcore nature of the Richard Blade novels. And yet Conway’s writing, due to that too-heavy plotting, is in a way similar to that of Manning Lee Stokes.

Balzan is around 22 years old and is the lone human on an alien planet; in capably-dispensed backstory, we learn he had a Superman-esque origin story. His parents, Doctors Weldon and Katherine Rice, grew frustrated with the short attention spans of the American people of the year 2500; we’re informed this short attention problem began in the 1970s, but by the 26th Century nothing lasts, all is ephemeral, everything is just a flash in the pan. It’s interesting that Conway the optimist gave us a few centuries; rather, a mere 40 years after Balzan was published and we already live in a Twitter/Facebook world of impermanence.

But as their spacecraft neared Mars the couple ran into a black hole or something, zipping through space to a weird new galaxy. The couple died immediately, but their baby, Paul Brian Rice, was still alive in stasis. The ship crashed and the baby was discovered by biped cat people who lived on this part of the strange new world; the cat people were called Endorians, and one of them, Lomar, raised the baby as his own child, naming him Balzan. Lomar raised Balzan alongside his other child, a girl named Kitta; Lomar’s wife died while giving birth to her.

A big failing with The Blood Stones is we don’t really get to understand how Balzan works in this world, which is populated by biped cat people, biped lizard people, and another group of people who apparently are a combination of the two. There’s also mention of winged people, unseen this volume. But Balzan is the only human and his knowledge of earth comes from “The Teacher,” ie the computer in his crashed spacecraft, which has told Balzan all about history and who he is and whatnot. That Balzan, raised on an alien planet, is able to understand the computer’s English is a mystery we shouldn’t try to solve.

What is puzzling though is the question of who Balzan identifies with. He’s been raised by the Endorians but he doesn’t have their subservient nature. He thinks of Lomar as his father and Kitta as his sister, but I ask in all seriousness, has Balzan ever gotten laid? And if so, by what?? This doesn’t really matter in Conway’s PG world; Balzan for what it’s worth is, in the end, exactly like any other generic hero of a sci-fi fantasy, a studly monstrosity of manly muscle, described exactly as he is depicted on the cover painting, with the headband and everything.

At any rate, Balzan is so generic that you have a hard time identifying with him. It makes it worse then that the novel opens with the Endorian community he’s grown up in being destroyed by lizard-like bipeds called Albs; thus, there’s no part where we see how Balzan interracts with his “people.”   Anyway, Balzan’s out hunting with his therb (a whip with a poison barb that causes death in seconds) and comes back in time to find his home destroyed, Lomar dying, and Kitta and several other Endorians captured, taken away by the Albs. Lomar buys the farm and Balzan swears vengeance.

Balzan does what any other revenge-seeker would do: he tracks the captured Endorians to the sprawling city of Kharn, where he first hooks up with a group of thieves and then becomes a gladiator in the Kharnite arena! Seriously, Conway is very similar to Manning Lee Stokes in how he seems to be writing one book before veering course midway through and writing another. (He’s also like Stokes in his blocks and blocks of description; the book runs 190 pages of super-small and dense print.) But what starts out one way gradually turns into another tale entirely.

Armed with his therb and a Kharnite “neutron sword,”Balzan wastes a bunch of Albs on his way to the city of Kharn. While there’s no sex, Conway doesn’t shy from the gore, though again there’s nothing in the book that would’ve been unpublishable in the ‘30s. Balzan eviscerates and decapitates slews of the lizard men, the green gore gushing. He finds himself though overwhelmed by Kharn itself, which is a sprawling kingdom of wretched poverty living beneath untold wealth. He soon meets a young Kharnite (apparently lizard-like people, but not full on lizard men, or something) named Lio.

The middle half of the novel is where all the heavy plotting comes in. We’ve got Balzan trying to push Lio and the theives into full-blown rebellion, we’ve got the plotting and counterplotting of Kharnite notables. Among the latter is the master of the gladiator games, who lusts for wealth; then there’s Lord Sha, who has placed Kitta in his own personal harem (though he doesn’t have sex with her, nor any of the other female creatures in his harem); and finally there are King Dragus and Queen Myrane, rulers of Kharn and the reason for which Balzan’s people have been enslaved – the royal couple put on monthly arena games, and the rabble want to see fresh blood spilled.

Myrane seems to have stepped out of a Richard Blade novel; she’s a raven-haired beauty with an insatiable drive for sex and bloodshed, usually at the same time. She’s also an immortal beauty, ageless, which is another hallmark of that earlier (and superior) series. But when Balzan, captured at this point and training to become a yarrotite (ie gladiator), is taken as expected into the ravenous queen’s presence, he does something Richard Blade would never do: he spurns her advances. (Indeed the closest we get to adult stuff in the novel is a fade-to-black sex scene between Lord Sha and Myrane.)

Through the dense plotting and scene-setting Conway does deliver several fights, usually featuring Balzan taking down hordes of opponents, including one memorable scene where he fights a three-headed creature called a huulat. He’s busting his ass to save Kitta, and unfortunately, when we finally meet the girl, we wonder why the dude even bothers. Kitta as presented is such a cipher, so clueless and, well, stupid, that you have a hard time understanding why Balzan puts himself through the wringer for her. At first I wondered if Conway was developing a romance between the “brother and sister,” but nope – as mentioned, Balzan is as generic as can be. He’s saving Kitta because she must be saved, and that’s that.

Unfortunately we also get many sequences from Kitta’s point of view (Conway is damn excellent in how he never POV-hops…and when he does change perspectives, he actually gives us some white space!), and she does nothing to gain our interest or empathy. She’s eternally confused, frightened, or docile, and the only bright spot comes when she falls into the clutches of two sadistic members of Sha’s harem, each of whom bear her ill will due to jealousy. Kitta’s strapped to a table and tortured, but Conway leaves it all vague; despite which, you still could give a shit about her.

After a fight to the death with yarrotite trainer Kalak, hired by Sha to dispose of Balzan (due to Sha’s jealousy that Queen Myrane has the hots for Balzan), our hero is again summoned to Queen Myrane…and again turns down her sexual advances. (I honestly wanted the book to end with Balzan going back to his crashed spaceship and asking it, “Teacher, am I gay?”) Instead Balzan wants to know about “the blood stones,” which he’s heard vague mention of since this whole business started; they turn out to be ancient stones which, Myrane declares, needs the blood of the pure to keep giving out their power. Through the stones Myrane has gained control of Kharn, as well as another kingdom centuries before.

The finale is appropriately apocalyptic if overlong, with Balzan taking on a hairy demon that lives in the pool of blood in which the blood stones reside and then smashing the stones, which causes the immediate “implosion” of Kharn itself. But despite the chaos and confusion Balzan still finds the time to kill more Kharnite soldiers, another huulat, and even Lord Sha himself. By the time it’s all over you’re ready for a nap. Balzan meanwhile sees Kitta to safety, shakes Lio’s hand, and says “so long;” he’s going on a journey to find out what it means to be a “man.”

Two more volumes were to follow, both apparently also by Conway. I’ve got them both and will read the second one eventually, but long story short, The Blood Stones, while not terrible, is really just standard science-fantasy fare of the era, and the entire thing would’ve been more at home in the pages of Marvel Premiere.