Vampire Tales #11 - Legion Of Blood!

Vampire Tales #11 is dated June, 1975. Sporting another handsome though more subdued Richard Hescox cover this is the last regular issue of Vampire Tales. Preceded in its demised by Monsters Unleashed and Tales of the Zombie the end of the series well and truly marks the end of the great monster trend of the early 1970's in comics.

Following a Bullpen Bulletins page called "Fearsome Features, Far-Out Fabrications and Fictional Configurations" which announces the end of the aforementioned monster titles the editors are not savvy enough to see the handwriting on the wall for Vampire Tales itself.

Morbius stars in a sprawling tale titled "Death Kiss" written by Doug Moench and drawn by Sonny Trinidad. In this one he finds himself on the cruise liner Muritania but soon is pitted against a cult of vampires who call themselves "The Brotherhood of Judas". He is directed in his mission of sorts by a beautiful woman named Morgana St.Clair who has secrets of her own. A host of coincidences make this one work, but it does feature some typically lush and evocative art by Trinidad. For a close look at most of the story in its original art format go here.

The second and final story in the issue is "Hobo's Lullaby" by John Warner and artist Yong Montano. This is a weird little short story about a legion of bums who aspire to get power by becoming vampires. One of their number objects and his story is the focus of our attention as the hobos battle the cops. It's a strange one and I suspect Warner was trying to say something about the predatory economic nature of society, but I'm not sure. Check it out for yourself here.

And after two blood-spilling years that's a wrap for the regular Vampire Tales series.

There is one more Vampire Tales magazine to come, an annual but more on that later today.

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Modred The Mystic!

Marvel's attempt to extract some supernatural horror from the Arthurian saga was somewhat less successful than Jack Kirby's The Demon for DC. Modred the Mystic debuted in the first issue of Marvel Chillers, one of the many short-lived titles Marvel launched onto the stands in the Bronze Age. Marvel Chillers is most famous for the debut of Tigra's series which kicked off in the third installment, but the first two issues featured a time-lost magician who seemed to have some trouble figuring out his motivation.

Modred was an apprentice magician who gets orders to attend Merlin in Camelot. But since this means he'll have to forever renounce the girl he loves, he defies King Arthur's order and instead seeks out the Darkhold, a dangerous tower filled with deadly magic. The Darkhold seizes him and he spends centuries in a trance until he is released by two 20th Century archaeologists.

The trio head to London where Modred seems somewhat delusional and attacks the local police who seeks to corral him. It seems he is under the influence the dark powers of the Darkhold and despite his efforts to defeat them, by the end of the second issue his destiny seems really unsettled.

Created by Marv Wolfman and scripted by Bill Mantlo, this series lacks the punch of most Marvel efforts of the time. The first issue was drawn by Yong Montano and the second by Sonny Trinidad, both highly skilled professionals in Marvel's Filipino Bullpen. But  both issues have that unfinished look which afflicted so many of Marvel's efforts in the Bronze Age as the professionalism in the New York offices was suspect as editorial control shifted from hand to hand.

The story gets picked up a few years later, as did so many, in an issue of Marvel Two-In-One but this too is an exceedingly weak outing. Part of a four-issue tour of England, this story co-stars the newly minted Spider-Woman who by the story's end has formed a partnership with Modred.

That seemed largely forgotten by the time his next appearance in the pages of The Avengers where his connection to the Darkhold makes him more of a villain than a hero. He will suffer mightily in these pages and becomes just one more of Marvel's vast array of mostly forgotten background characters.

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The Zoom Patrol!

The Guardians of the Galaxy are getting a lot of attention these days, what with a projected movie in the works. Of course it's a whole other team, not the team with Major Astro, Charlie-27, Martinex, and Yondu above created by Arnold Drake and Gene Colan for that long ago issue of Marvel Super-Heroes #18. This 1968 story was mostly reprinted in Astonishing Tales #29 in 1975.


Arnold Drake, the creator and longtime writer of The Doom Patrol for DC Comics had been shown the door at the prestigious publishing house after years of faithful and reliable service because he dared join some of his colleagues to press their bosses for some health insurance.

Fortunately Marvel was around to give him work, and he produced some dandy scripts. But as far as I can remember, Guardians of the Galaxy was the only comic book he created alongside Colan, another former DC talent who had to use the alias of "Adam Austin" when he first started producing art for Marvel. Ironically this story was inked by "Mickey Demeo", the alias of Mike Esposito, another DC talent working on the side in secret for Marvel at the time.


Here Steve Rude re-imagines the classic image of the Guardians, adding a lot of hectic action to the straightforward scene concocted by Gene Colan of the Guardians ambling toward to the reader.



And here's a much later cover by Jim Valentino and Yong Montano featuring an homage to Gene Colan's classic image, with a looming Starhawk added for good measure.

When the Guardians finally made a second appearance many years after their debut, a lot was changed, but I've always preferred this original classic space opera look they sported in their first outing.

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