Mort Todd's Monsters Attack!

Mort Todd was an editor for Cracked Magazine, MAD's longtime rival during the 80's. A fan of monsters, he incorporated them into Cracked with great success as born out by the Cracked companion magazine Cracked's Monster Party. Then Todd went one step further and created Monsters Attack. According to Todd, he did this without the okay of his publishers and pushed out a few issues before they even knew. They put a halt to the magazine until they saw the sales numbers and then gave it the thumbs up after a half year layoff. 

Todd wanted to create a magazine which was a synthesis of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Creepy. He succeeded, especially in the early issues. He tapped proven pros such as Steve Ditko, Gray Morrow, Pat Boyette, Gene Colan and even the reluctant Alex Toth. The latter didn't draw a new story for the magazine, but did offer up one he'd done for Charlton, but withheld due to the meager pay. (That story titled "Bookworm" was written by Nick Cuti and was given to Nicholas Alascia to draw. That story too is included in this collection for those who want to compare.) Todd took advantage of his position to ink a Ditko story, much to the story's detriment. Todd recognized his error thankfully and most of the Ditko stories are pure. 

But things grew difficult as the final issues began to be produced. Todd eventually left after purchasing stories for the fifth and final issue, but he had little control of the magazine after that. Given that these two collections are titled "Mort Todd's Monsters Attack!", he does not include any work he didn't commission or played a key role in obtaining. Strangely that seemed to also apply to a Poe adaptation by Walter Brogan from issue two. 

In addition to great horror tales by proven masters, we are treated to articles on movies, books, ranging from classic reviews of Universal's Frankenstein films to an exhaustive examination of the Godzilla movies. One of the stranger things in the collections is a detailed chart documenting Jason's kills over the course of several of the Friday the Thirteenth series. Even if like me you already own all five of the Monsters Attack! series, there is still some new-old goodness with "Transformation Flying", a Todd-John Severin effort which for some reason was never used and is delivered here for the first time. 

Here are the covers. 

(Debut cover inspired by the first issue of Creepy.)

(Severin cover meant to evoke that Famous Monsters of Filmland vibe.)

(Another solid John Severin offering of a splitting headache.)

(Severin again, this time it's Godzilla based on an Aurora model.)

(A George Bush --not that one--painting of Karloff's monster.)

These are fun comics produced by an editor who was rich with youth and energy, tapping veterans who were in need of a place to create. 

One great detail I never noticed is that the "Attack!" part of the title was copied from the vintage Charlton classic Fantastic Giants which celebrated the work of Steve Ditko. 

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Red Circle Sorcery!

Above is a wonderful run of comics produced under the watchful eye of the late great Gray Morrow. Every now and again Archie Comics wants to try out something under their "Red Circle" logo. Morrow was the kahuna of this experiment by Archie to capture a bit of another aspect of the comics market in the early 70's. Sorcery and Madhouse are filled with really outstanding artwork by Morrow and others like Doug Wildey, Vicente Alcazar, and Frank Thorne. Then we are treated to three more covers by Gray Morrow for the Archie run of Chilling Tales of Sorcery. This title became Red Circle Sorcery with its sixth issue. The first two issues are in Archie style and feature Sabrina.

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Edge Of Chaos Day!

Gray Morrow was born on this date in 1934. Morrow was a stalwart artist who showed up everywhere -- Marvel, DC, Warren, and more. He became a force in the Indy market. His covers really make us remember a great Indy Pacific Comics item - the focus of today's Dojo celebration -- Edge of Chaos.  

Pacific Comics was one of the more interesting Indy publishers in the early days of the direct-sales market. One title the Pacific crew came up with was a potential opus by Gray Morrow called Edge of Chaos which has a pretty dandy high concept.

A man named Eric Cleese ("Hercules" of course) is lost in the Bermuda Triangle and is whisked away into the ancient past (vague timeframe) by aliens who have been stranded on Earth and have become the basis for our mythological gods. He meets a beauty named Diona and accepts a mission to undo the harm the alien-gods have done so that the aliens can go home at long last. He must battle a renegade alien named Moloch who mourns for his dead mate, and he does this with a couple of buddies he picks up in a local bar named Flan (a drunken fellow with a baboon face) and Slag (a neanderthal looking chap). As the first issue ends the trio ride off to complete their mission riding prehistoric beasts.

The final two issues of the run though fail to really follow through on the excellent set-up. In the second issue Eric and his buds fight the "Hill Hag" a sorceress and her monsters. They overcome her fairly readily, then in the next issue we have to see all this great landscape wrapped up as characters are eliminated and the status quo is transformed because the three-issue series is coming to an end. It's a pretty random and confusing conclusion with characters popping up faster than the reader can process them, though given the space crunch Morrow does okay I suppose.

It's a disappointment because this series had great potential. The greatest strength is the artwork of Morrow, a man who was unusually gifted at drawing lovely women in all manner of undress. A weakness is his writing. Many of the pages are overwritten, with words overcoming the pace of the story. There are instances where captions get lost on the page and the text almost contradicts what we're seeing on the page. This series seems to have fallen victim to some scheduling or contractual problem that made its conclusion rushed and ironically chaotic. It's a pity.

Gray Morrow's artwork continues to shine through the years. He was a singular talent who seemed unusually capable of rendering lovely, sexy, realistic women. (Not like the sex doll fantasies which pass for women in so many comics in recent years.)  His heroes were grounded in a base reality which added to the fantasy which always seemed to erupt.

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IT Happens!

One of the most original and influential stories was created by science fiction master Theodore Sturgeon. Marvel adapted the long short story "It" in its debut issue of Supernatural Thrillers which sported this iconic Jim Steranko cover.

(An It of a different color. It is eye-popping!)

The granddaddy of all swamp monsters likely dripped from the pen of Theodore Sturgeon in the pages of the August 1940 issue of Unknown magazine. A book with little regard for covers to begin with, this title didn't even feature the short story by Sturgeon on its lackluster green cover.

The story is an atmospheric masterpiece and tells of a weirdly animated being which doesn't seem to understand its own genesis which comes to "life" in the remote mountains and encounters a family already torn by some degree of mistrust. The creature kills a dog and potentially many others but in the end comes to an ignominious demise, its origins suggested but never stated directly. The creature was a strange blend of human remains and plant life blended into a synthesis which suggested a brute intelligence and life.

Thanks Mr. Sturgeon. If you'd like to read the story for yourself check out this intriguing PDF presentation of the original Unknown pages.

The story was later reprinted in 1975 in the black and white pages of Masters of Terror with the somewhat misleading but still evocative Jim Steranko cover for Supernatural Thrillers reinterpreted by Gray Morrow for the cover of this presentation. I wish either Steranko or Morrow, preferably the latter had been tapped to do the artwork on this story. It would have been more successful. But that said, this story's reach is still amazing as it clearly seems to have inspired the creation of The Heap in various pages of Hillman Comics and the Heap gave rise indirectly to both the Swamp Thing at DC and the Man-Thing at Marvel. Without "It" none of these mucky swamp critters would likely exist.

Here is more on how this offbeat tale adapted by Roy Thomas, Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia fits into the larger Marvel mythology. And below is a look at Severin's and Giacoia's original artwork up close.

A Dojo Monster Classic. More slippery monsters tomorrow. 

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Where Sorcery Lives!

This Creepy cover is an amazing cover by Gray Morrow. He's offering up a splendid sword and sorcery image, which evokes the spirit of the story within if not having much if anything to do with the detail. But the great Gray Morrow is not our subject for today. 

One name that doesn't necessarily come to mind when you mention Sword and Sorcery is Steve Ditko. But it should. Along with writer Archie Goodwin, Ditko created some potent early comics S&S tales for the pages of both Creepy and Eerie magazines. The first from Creepy fourteen was titled "Where Sorcery Lives" and presents a hero of sorts named Garth who must battle a pretty strange looking wizard by the name of Salamand. To save a pretty damsel he uses his brawn and his wits to wind the day.

Next, we have one from Eerie eight called "Demon Sword". This one is set in the modern day but deals with a series of mysterious murders which cause our hero to find out that the cause is an ancient sword and only sorcery can solve the problem.

This story too rates a cover, one of the most famous published by Warren by the late great Frank Frazetta. I think the title of this bit of art by Frazetta is dubbed "The Brain".

Back in the pages of Creepy fifteen we get "City of Doom" starring a hero named Thane who is left to die by his supposed allies but then gets free and finds a girl who takes him to a deadly city which makes the vultures seen above to meager threats indeed. There is of course more to the girl and the city than at first meets the eye.

No cover mention this time, but another iconic Frazetta cover, nonetheless.

And finally, we have "Warrior of Death" from the tenth issue of Eerie and here we find our protagonist named Zahran who is a powerful warrior and makes a bargain with Death itself to deliver fresh product as long as he lives, which proves to be a very long time indeed. Eventually he learns the deal had a few caveats he was unaware of.

Gray Morrow is back and supplies a cover for this one which actually seems to relate pretty well to the contents of this Goodwin/Ditko classic yarn.

Steve Ditko went on to work in the sword and sorcery category a few more times, most notably perhaps his four-issue tenure on Stalker which was part of DC's short-lived adventure line-up. Under some handsome Wally Wood inks this was a good-looking comic, but at that stage of his career Ditko seemed to have lost just a mote of the potent magic evident in these earlier Warren masterpieces. (More on Stalker and the DC line-up in November.)

You can find them all plus more of the great Ditko's Warren work in this collection from Dark Horse. 

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The Essential Punisher!

With the exception of Wolverine, there's little doubt that of all the great Marvel Bronze Age creations, the Punisher has been the most successful. Erupting onto the scene in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, the Punisher was a quasi-villain of sorts, then a reluctant ally, before becoming a new kind of Marvel "hero". 

The Punisher was created by Gerry Conway and designed by John Romita, inspired doubtlessly by Don Pendleton's The Executioner, a paperback avenger who was popular in those days of Dirty Harry and Death Wish. 

When we first meet Frank Castle, he's a large and powerful man dressed in black with an enormous skull emblazoned on his chest. He's presented as a modern agent of death for those who commit crimes. He works in concert with Spidey's enemy the Jackal at first, convinced that the Web-Slinger is a criminal, just as J. Jonah Jameson had been preaching for years. By the end of the story the Punisher doubts that and ends his alliance with the Jackal. 

When he next returns, he teams up with Spidey (sort of) to stop the Tarantula, a pirate of sorts who has taken it on himself to waylay a tour boat. Ross Andru does a superlative job of rendering the Punisher, making him imposing and threatening, yet retaining that nobility which elevates (sometimes only slightly) him above the thugs he chases. 

The Punisher next shows up in Giant-Size Spider-Man and once again works with Peter Parker's alias to bring down slaver Moses Magnum, who operates a concentration camp of sorts in the jungles of South America. 

Frank Castle gets his own feature in Marvel Preview which sports a stunning cover by Gray Morrow. In the comfort of the black and white magazine world, the Punisher is free to be even more aggressive than the Comics Code will allow in the four-color environment.  In a grim story by Conway and artist Tony DeZuniga we learn at long last what motivated the Punisher's war on crime as we see in flashback the murders of his family. 

The same team returns to tell another rough and tumble Punisher tale with the assistance of Rico Rival in the pages of Marvel Super Action. Sharing the book with The Huntress (eventually to become Mockingbird) and Howie Chaykin's Dominic Fortune, it seems clear Marvel is testing the waters for a possible Punisher magazine. Bob Larkin's cover is powerful stuff. 

But that was not to be, and the Punisher returns to his role as an occasional guest-star in the Spider-Man books. In one notable two-parter he contends with both Spidey and Nightcrawler, the member of the recently minted New X-Men. For the first time a writer other than Conway handled the character as Len Wein handled the chores. Reliable Ross Andru was still the artist. 

That same talented duo brought out another two-parter sometime later when Punisher and Spidey work together to save J. Jonah Jameson from the clutches of the Hitman. Turns out the Hitman was a felllow soldier from Frank Castle's past. 

Frank Miller gets his first chance to draw the Punisher on the cover of an issue of Captain America in which the enemy of crime comes up against the Living Legend. Needless to say, that Cap and Castle don't get along and his approach to fighting crime even reminds some of the Nazis. When he almost kills a cop, the Punisher allows himself to be arrested. This comic was written by Mike Barr and drawn by Frank Springer and Pablo Marcos. 

But that doesn't last as he's out and about when he joins Spidey yet again to battle drug pushers and the mob that supports them. Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard are the talents who bring this team-up to the masses. 

In Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 Frank Miller draws a script by Denny O'Neil which pits the two heroes against Doctor Octopus who is scheming to ransom the city by killing five million citizens using the pages of the Daily Bugle itself. Once again the Punisher is arrested at the end of the story. 

That arrest seems to take as we find Frank Castle in prison when his team-up with Daredevil begins. This is another rugged tale by Frank Miller which focuses on the drug PCP and its pernicious effects. Matt Murdock struggles to save the innocent while the Punisher works overtime to bring down the guilty. At the end of this intense tale, the Punisher is again captured. 

The next time we see Frank Castle he's escaping jail yet again and goes on a rampage against drug dealers. This time he has to contend with not only Spider-Man but the mysterious Cloak and Dagger as well. The Punisher seems to lose control of himself in this story which pits him against the Kingpin, punishing with extreme prejudice people who commit the most innocuous of crimes such as littering and jaywalking. He is finally brought down in this trilogy by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Al Milgrom with help from the always reliable Jim Mooney. By the end of this story like so many before he's headed back to prison. 

This collection wraps up with the very first Punisher color comic book limited series. The five issues are written by Steven Grant and the first four are drawn in magnificent form by Mike Zeck and John Beatty. Mike Vosburg steps in to wrap things up in the fifth and final installment. The story is a wild one with many twists and turns as Castle battles his way out of prison, gets recruited by a secret cabal to fight crime and discovers the terrible truth about his supposed allies. Allowed to be the focus of the story, this limited has a real potency, and proved to this comic book fanboy that The Punisher could carry his own comic. Soon he would, in fact, he'd become the star of two. 

(Romita's original design)

This impressive Essentials tome brings together over a decade of Punisher stories and allows the reader to see how the character was developed over the years. At first, a character with the mission of the Punisher was a hard sell for a Comics Code world, but as the years passed and the audience for comics became more sophisticated (according to some) the true nature of the character could be explored more fully and robustly. 

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