The Pulse-Pounding Monsters of Amazing Fantasy!

Amazing Fantasy is of course famous for one thing - being the birthplace of the Amazing Spider-Man.

But, before that, it was the home of monsters.

And, before that, it was called Amazing Adventures.

Well, being the fearless monster-hunter I am, that's all the excuse I need to see what kind of dread menaces that title had to offer in the days before Marvel discovered the selling power of super-heroes.

Remember; however fearful you are, you MUST look at these images - as a warning of the nightmare terror that awaits those who seek answers that man must never have.

I don't know what it is but it respects my intelligence, and that's all I ask of any monster.

The Krills! I love the Krills! They're my favourite lo-fi indie duo!

What's that you're shouting at me?

"That's the Kills, you buffoon!"

Oh. I thought Alison Mosshart was looking a bit peeky on the cover.

You have to hand it to him, there's not many monsters could get away with being called, "Tim."

I don't know who he is but it seems he's one who's changed.

Didn't I once see him in Quatermass and the Pit?

Hooray! It's Torr!

I've loved Torr ever since I read this story reprinted in Strange Tales #175.

Manoo!

This is definitely my favourite of today's monsters.

Nothing can stop a monster with a girder! Nothing!

You have to love any monster that decides to knock over the United Nations building.

I can't help myself. I can't see that cover without thinking of Serpico.

If only Serpico had been about a giant monster out to crush the world, it would've been a much better film - and Al Pacino's greatest ever role.

Killraven - Only The Computer Shows Me Any Respect. Amazing Adventures #32.

 As I stand in the middle of Argos - studying its catalogue, for high-end tripods to support my state-of-the art single megapixel camera - people often say to me, "Steve, I know you're a very busy man and don't like to be interrupted by those you view as beneath your contempt but what's your favourite ever literary depiction of tripods for sinister effect?"

I of course reply, "Well there was John Christopher's The Tripods, famously reimagined by the BBC as a show about wine production in Southern France but, when it comes to three-legged terror, I have to go for War of the Worlds, HG Wells' reminder of the dangers of getting too big for your boots."

"But Steve," they say, "you're too big for your boots and it doesn't seem to have done you any harm. After all, here you are in Argos, where only the top people shop."

"Pshaw!" I declare. "My toes are so tough that, when footwear proves too small to contain them, they merely burst out of my shoes, giving me the stylish look you see before you today."

Not only that but, as I roam the corridors of Sheffield's hi-tech virtual reality enormo-dome, otherwise known as the Flat Street Odeon, people often say to me, "Steve, pretty impressive, isn't it? But did you know this used to be the Fiesta Club, once the haunt of stars like Bobby Knutt and the Black Abbots but not necessarily those actual stars?"

All such talk of tripods and virtual reality inevitably forces my mind onto the subject of what has always been my favourite ever Killraven story, Amazing Adventures #32, which is low on tripods but high on virtual shenanigans.

Doing their usual meanderings, Killraven and his band of freemen come across an abandoned virtual reality entertainment complex that gives your fantasies - and nightmares - physical form.

Needless to say, it's not long before they're all philosophising and getting into trouble.

Thanks to Old Skull and his fantasies, Killraven finds himself up against a fire-breathing dragon; a conflict which forms the issue's "A" plot.

But the tale's most memorable sequence is its "B" plot, a flashback to Hawk's youth which finds him arguing with his father and leads to the appearance of Hodiah Twist, a Sherlock Holmes figure so self-assured he refuses to believe the Hound of the Baskervilles is real even when it's killing him.

In a lot of ways, the sequence now seems spiritually hackneyed. Hawk is an American Indian and, this being a 1970s Marvel comic, that means he has to be a bitter and sullen man, brooding on broken treaties and the grimness of the Reservation.

Still, if the theme is over-familiar in a 1970s comic book, the flashback's sudden diversion into an Arthur Conan Doyle parody makes it oddly charming and memorable, the English moors allowing a drastic change in the strip's visual palette.

Don McGregor's script is as verbose as ever but doesn't seem as intrusive or deadening as it sometimes can - possibly because there's very little plot for his words to get in the way of, allowing them plenty of space to expand into and to make it clear that he sees a comic book as a legitimate form of short story writing.

But, ultimately, whatever its literary pretensions, it's a comic, and a comic's nothing without pictures. As always Craig Russell plays a blinder. Given a chance to fling in the psychedelic, the archaic, the futuristic, the industrial and the cute, he seems to be having a ball drawing it all.

It's not a comic I love as much as I did when I was young - frankly, there'd be something wrong me me if I did; I must confess to having been quite obsessed with it at the time - but it'd still go on my list of 1970s issues you have to have read in order for your Bronze Age comics education to be complete.

Killraven's War of the Worlds: Amazing Adventures #35, the 24-Hour Man.

In Amazing Adventures #35, Killraven encounters the 24-Hour Man - and, just his luck, it turns out not to be an emergency plumber. Instead it's a bright green man who only lives for 24 hours but whose mind contains the memories of his entire race, a race which is seemingly never composed of more than two beings at a time; the latest 24-Hour Man and his more long-lasting father, G'Rath, a huge green, death-dealing monster.

Because of this, each new 24-Hour Man has to find his father a new mate before he croaks and takes his entire race's memories with him In the absence of any other females, he decides Carmilla Frost is just the woman to be the mother to the next generation.

As this involves being impregnated by a giant green monster, Carmilla Frost thinks otherwise and Killraven and his never-merry men set out to save the day - although in truth they don't seem all that concerned for her welfare. I don't see any words along the lines of, "We must save Carmilla!" anywhere. But then, when you're busy philosophising about things, what space is there in your heart for urgency?

I must admit this has always been one of my favourite Killraven tales and may have been the one that first got me into the strip when I was a kid, after my having been unimpressed with my first exposure to it in issue #31. When you get down to it, it's as nonsensical, sometimes bathetic, and futile as all other McGregor Killraven stories, although McGregor's verbosity doesn't in this case detract from the story as much as it might. Somehow his style perfectly suits the subject matter.

So, what's the appeal?

Well, the thing takes place in a cemetery, and it rains a lot, so it's got atmosphere on its side. There's also the fact that the 24-Hour Man's life-cycle and nature are not exactly straightforward, so you have to pay attention to work out what's going on. Sadly, it's not drawn by regular penciller Craig Russell but it is drawn by Keith Giffin, an artist I've always had a lot of time for.

But the truth is that in this case the work looks nothing like I expect Keith Griffin to look, partly because it's inked by Jack Abel who totally disguises Giffin's usual Jack Kirby tendencies but also because the layouts are provided by Craig Russell himself - though the Steve Ditko-ness of certain figures and faces, suggests Russell may have supplied more than just the layouts in places.

In the end, you don't really care about any of the characters, being there as they are to spout speeches and comment on the nature of the world, life, death and anything else that entered McGregor's mind while he was writing, but a mixture of atmosphere and imagery win over to make it a tale you're never likely to forget.

Killraven. Amazing Adventures #31

I was an undemanding child. Generally speaking, as long as a comic didn't star Nick Fury I was happy, which means a mag had to work really hard for me to hate it.

Clearly the snappily titled Amazing Adventures featuring Killraven Warrior of the Worlds, worked incredibly hard because, when I first got my hands on it, I instantly decided it was the worst comic I'd ever read; pretentious, dull and meaningless. Not only that but it bore a noticeable resemblance to the distinctly lame Apeslayer in Marvel UK's weekly Planet of the Apes title.

A quick check made it clear that, in those tales, some crafty personage had redrawn ape heads onto mutants and robots to make Killraven look like a Planet of the Apes series. At the time, such an act seemed a con but looking back on it, I greatly admire the ingenuity concerned and wish they'd continued with the policy after they finished the Apeslayer run. I'd have loved to have seen the adventures of the Apetastic Four or Tomb of Ape-ula.

But Killraven himself was another matter. For those who don't know, the series was based on the idea that, having failed to invade the Earth last time around, in HG Wells' War of the Worlds, the Martians who'd stayed at home had developed a cure for Earth's diseases and, in the early years of the 21st century, had re-invaded, this time succeeding. Now Killraven and his motley band of Freemen were battling to liberate their world from the Martians.

Having decided Killraven was a total dud, I then changed my mind and went on to buy practically the whole run of Don McGregor and Craig Russell's series. After just two issues I was convinced it was the greatest comic ever, full of wisdom, insight and profundity, raising the American comic book to the status of genuine art form.

But Amazing Adventures #31, The Day The Monuments Shattered, was where my Killraven experience began. Reading it now as an adult, I find my opinion's swung completely back the other way. The story's just an unfocused mess. The Freemen hang around a bit, fight a monster for no noticeable reason, other than that it's there, and then kill the bad guys. What the monster's tossed into the mix for, I don't know. It just seems to be there for the sake of throwing yet another element into a story that already has two bad guys for our heroes to fight.

What never occurred to me as a kid was that the golden arches that feature so prominently in this tale are meant to be the McDonalds logo. Therefore, this tale's making a point about McDonalds, or fast food, or the consumer society, or something.

Isn't it?

The only problem is I can't figure out what that point is. And that's the trouble I have with Killraven these days which is that it seems to me that, ultimately, Don McGregor didn't actually have an awful lot to say but insisted on saying it in as many words as he possibly could.

I also wonder how Craig Russell felt about the whole thing. He was producing some of the finest art you'll ever see in a comic book, only to see McGregor plastering captions and speech balloons all over every single millimetre of it.

On top of so many words being used to say so little, there's the problem that the people in Killraven don't speak like people. They speak like poets would if poets spoke like people imagine poets speak. Even this issue's derelict sailor speaks like he majored in philosophy before becoming a booze-befuddled drunk.

And so we get the odd dichotomy, because, if anyone asked me was Killraven any good, in all honesty, I'd have to tell them no. If anyone asked me should they buy McGregor and Russell's entire run on the series, I'd have to tell them yes. Not just because it's a beautiful looking strip but because, although the thing didn't work, at least it tried to raise the American comic book to another level. And because not many comics of that time even tried to do that, it at least deserves some love for that.