Monday, September 9, 2019

Dystopian Countdown #13 - Planet Of Vampires!


I was all in on Atlas-Seboard, the little company that burst onto the comic racks in the mid 70's all ready to pick a fight with Marvel and anyone else. They got the best talent available at the time, launched a bunch of great comics and promptly folded. One of their titles was titled Phoenix and that explains the companies rise and demise pretty well. One comic they published was Planet of Vampires which postulates what it would be like when four astronauts return to Earth after a worldwide conflagration and find the populace of the planet changed into blood-seeking enemies. The creative teams on this changed up pretty much each of its three issues but they were all good with the likes of writer John Albano and artists Neal Adams, Pat Broderick, and Russ Heath in the mix. It's like spoiling a movie to talk about this comic, but know that you'd better not attached to any of the main characters all that much as the book shifts its focus with each issue, a common feature of Atlas-Seaboard comics.


I almost gave Morlock 2001 its own entry, but thought it just as well to mention this blend of George Orwell's 1984 and the classic comic The Heap here. Again after a lustrous start it transformed and transformed again lasting three issues I think. The first two issues are by Mike Fleisher and Al Milgrom with Gary Friedrich, Steve Ditko and Berni Wrightson handling the third. There was a fourth issue advertised I think.  We have a man who is not a man but a plant monster and despite the cover above, they are not opponents but aspects of the same creature. The "monster" was created to face up against a totalitarian society and hopefully bring some measure of justice to that world. It seemed a bit far-fetched even in the comic itself.

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