Vampire Tales Annual #1 - The Year In Blood!

1975's Vampire Tales Annual #1 proved to be the final magazine with that title that Marvel published and the over-sized magazine reprinted some of the better stories from the series, most of them to be honest from the first year of the run. To see the specific contents go here.

But the annual is mostly remembered (by yours truly at least) for the awesome Bob Larkin cover image of a close up of the face of the savage and  bloodthirsty Morbius, his next victim reflected in his terrible magenta eyes. It's a keeper for certain.

And that my friends concludes the Dojo's look at the series Vampire Tales. It was a magazine which was certainly a product of its times, full of vigor and potential in its earliest days and some really outstanding storytelling. I personally liked the overstuffed early issues with articles and reprints and such, despite their questionable quality at times. The magazine had a zest and vigor which unfortunately the more organized final issues lacked somehow, thought the artwork and storytelling remained pretty much at an above average level throughout. Certainly the Morbius saga detailed in these black and white pages was superior to the exceedingly bland color comic he simultaneously occupied. For the Morbius stuff alone, these are worthy magazines to spend some time with.

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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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Vampire Tales #10 - Plague Of Blood!

Vampire Tales #10 is dated April, 1975 and features a striking Richard Hexcox cover featuring Morbius the Living Vampire in all his vile glory. It's a great cover, maybe my favorite of all the Vampire Tales covers. It speaks directly to the main story in the issue, a multi-part Morbius epic.

"A Taste of Crimson Life" by Doug Moench and Sonny Trinidad occupies most of this issue, divided in three parts throughout the magazine. The first part titled "First Phase: Fast of Blood" begins with Morbius seeking a quiet isolated place to experiment on his tortured state and hopefully find a cure. He finds and rents a room in an lonely house in Painesville, Pennsylvania and meets his landlady Alicia Twain, a forlorn and lonely woman who against her better judgment invades his privacy and discovers his secret. Morbius in an effort to not slay the woman to slake his thirst flies from the house in a frenzy. To read this story in its entirety (save for a few splash pages) in the original art for check out this link.Trinidad's work fairly shines.

Next up is another story about a house titled "A House of Pleasure, The House of Death" written by Moench with some really outstanding artwork by Mike Vosburg and Howard Nostrand. In this one a man seeks a mansion in which it is rumored a man will find erotic delights but no one speaks of it directly since no one seems to every return. He goes there, finds it filled with beautiful vampire women who seek his blood, but he is prepared and uses stakes to fend them off. He battles the vampires and finds his father, the king of the region who has succumb to the vampires and dies in his son's arms. The prince, now the king burns the mansion down killing the vampires, but at the cost of his own sanity it seems.

The second part of the Morbius story is titled "Second Phase: Temptation" and finds Morbius entering the town of Painesville and finding a victim. He returns to the house to find Alicia willing to help him. Meanwhile the miners who live there go to the lonely house and confront Alicia who defies them. They have been trying to get her to move out since the house sits on a precious vein of copper but anger rules the day and they kill her with an axe. Morbius finds her and swears vengeance. 

"Blindspot" by Gerry Conway and Virgilio Redondo and Alfredo Alcala has a vampire dealing with the consequences of losing track of time and using a blind man's glasses which obscure the sun. It turns out poorly for the blood sucker.

The final installment of the Morbius tale is titled "Third Phase: Feast of Blood" and it shows Morbius at his most vicious as he wipes out the murderous miners of Painesville, taking some mark of vengeance for the death of his friend Alicia Twain.

The Morbius story this time was extra long and different than the McGregor stories of previous issues which had become weighted down with overwritten allusions to politics and switches in narrative points of view. Moench gives us a much more straight-forward yarn which showcases Morbius and makes him the most bizarre thing in the story, a remarkable difference.

One more issue to come before the series gets cancelled. More on that next time.

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The Golden Derby - October 1965!

Fifty years ago this month things were really beginning to heat up at Charlton. Captain Atom returned in new adventures for the first time in nearly a decade and the stories were by his original creative team of Joe Gill and Steve Ditko. Charlton still was producing some handsome westerns like Billy the Kid (one of the longest running westerns from any company) and Wyatt Earp, a sturdy seller, but a book which would soon disappear from the stands. As always Charlton had a line of war books full of short tales and some few regular features. Charlton stood out from their competition in the war arena in that they would feature stories set in the then ongoing war in Vietnam. DC and Marvel waged battle safely on the historical fronts of World Wars I and II but rarely ventured into the quagmire which America found itself in during the 60's. Charlton went there, often with Commie-bashing zeal left over from an earlier decade but sometimes with a sense of tragedy which spoke to the larger issues war dealt with. This month's issue of Fightin' Army is just such a moment akin to the sentiment found in John Wayne's much more bombastic peon to the war The Green Berets from a few years later. Rocke Mastroserio is a favorite artist of mine and his talent can really be seen on the three covers he did for this month's presentation, the war cover in tandem with Pat Masulli. Finally we have Blue Beetle by Joe Gill, Tony Tallarico and Bill Fraccio, one of Charlton's superhero revivals which was falling on hard times since its sensibilities were not really in the moment. I love these charming tales for what they are and this particular issue in which BB battles The Praying Mantis Man and his army of giant insects was perhaps my first Charlton comic book. A real wild tale with energy if not subtlety.

More next month.

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Hell Houses!

Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is among my all-time favorite books. Matheson is widely recognized as one of the best writers of his generation and so it's long been a desire of mine to read more of his work. To that end I picked up Hell House several years ago with the specific intent of reading it immediately and well that didn't work out. Now at long last I've read it for the first time and weirdly, I've sort of read it for the first time twice. I'll explain.

First published in 1970 Hell House tells of the latest assault on the "Mount Everest of Haunted Houses" the Belasco House dubbed "Hell House" by the many who have been victimized by the various paranormal phenomenon which abound within its shuttered walls. Emeric Belasco was a depraved man who tormented those around him and created within his house a plague of sin and decadence which presumably set up a virtual army of ghosts intent on protecting their abused turf. In 1940 researchers went to the house to exorcise the demons and some died, some went mad and only one, the youngest survived intact more or less. That man named Ben Fischer now forty-five years old returns in tandem with a beautiful medium named Forence Tanner and a married couple Dr. Lionel and Edith Barrett who seek to use science to defeat the haunts. The team is offered a large sum by a man intent on beating death to find out the secrets of "Hell House".

That's the premise and what the team find inside the shadowy halls of the isolated Maine house form the story told in a carefully regimented sequence of changing perspectives told with precise time measures over the course of a week's time.  This is not a story for the squeamish as the attacks waged on our researchers are deeply personal, intensely crude and perversely violent and sexual. Not all of them survive, but that's no surprise. But there are surprises. Of course they made a movie out of this novel in 1973. Here is my review of that from a few years ago, and I noted the movie is less effective than the book.

What mostly surprised me was that this was the second time in two weeks that I've read this story, and bot without my knowing it. Recently I've detailed my reading of the Marvel series Werewolf by Night after too many decades. It turns out that Doug Moench unofficially adapted the story of Hell House in five rousing issues of that series substituting members of the regular cast of the comic for the characters in the novel.

The villain is named Belaric Marcosa instead of Emeric Belasco, but still has the same vile personality and intentions though of course moderated a great deal to meet the conditions of the Comics Code.

Ironies in reading like this happen from time to time and recently I had another. I will be detailing that one next month. 

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Vampire Tales #9 - Blood Lunge!

Vampire Tales #9 is dated February, 1975 and sports a moody cover by Marti Ripoll of a ghastly vampire maid in a somber graveyard. It's connection to any story in the magazine is not apparent, but it's handsome.
This issue will not feature any Morbius stories, but rather Blade the Vampire Slayer is the headliner, though briefly. 

The issue starts off with a one-page bit by Tony Isabella and Ernie Chan titled "The Vampire of the Inn" which tells of a Chinese vampire from olden times who impales himself on a tree while attacking his victim.

The follows the text piece "The Marvel Bullpen Page Goes Black and White and Read All Over" which details some of the editorial shifts and highlights some of the other offerings from Marvel's magazine line. 
 

"Bloodmoon" by Chris Claremont and Blade creator Marv Wolfman pits the vampire slayer against the Vampire Legion led by Anton Vierken and as we later learn the beautiful but deadly Maragrite D'lesco. The vampires kill all the women in the brothel in which Blade grew up including his unofficial foster mother Lady Vanity. Blade declares he will gain vengeance when the vampires fail to bring him under their spell and later tells Van Helsing that he will attack this "Legion" on his own.

But that story will not be continued in Vampire Tales as this is the last Blade adventure to appear there despite several ads that suggest otherwise, but will wait for an issue Marvel Preview.

"Blood Lunge" by Doug Moench and Russ Heath is a clever little quickie vampire yarn about a vamp who terrorizes a small village, but one which is ready for him with crosses on nearly every door. Despite that though, he finds a victim he thinks but is surprised to find not a human being at all, but a deadly surprise. I'll let you discover that when you read it at this groovy link. For the record in the reprint I read a few of the pages are printed out of order as is the case at the link above, and that hurts given that the story is a short one. So be careful to read the fourth page after the first one than shift to the second -- it will help.

"The Bleeding Time" by Gerry and Carla Conway with art by Virgilio Redondo and inks by Tony DeZuniga and Alfredo Alcala is a striking story of a vampire who gets shifted against his will from 1902 to the future world of 2300 or so and which is using time travel to siphon off energy from earlier eras. This has the side effect of sometimes shifting unsuspecting folks into the future. In addition to victims the vampire finds a woman from his own time and seeks some solace with her before meeting another deadly enemy from the 19th century who is as merciless as he is.

"Blood Stalker" by Larry Lieber features some tasty art by Jesus Blasco and pits a rather unappealing pimp against a vampire as both battle for control of the women in the area. Neither the protagonist nor the antagonist in this story evokes much sympathy.

Finally there is a rather odd story titled "Shards of a Crystal Rainbow" by Doug Moench and Tony DeZuniga which does a rather masterful job of comparing the curse of the vampire to the much more commonplace but decidedly deadly practice of drug abuse. It's a cleverly done story with a surprising ending and some substantial impact.

All in all despite the absence of Morbius, this is a solid issue with some very compelling stories, some with real heft.

More to come as Morbius returns and really kicks some ass.

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Marvel Horror - Werewolf By Night!

Werewolf by Night proved to be one of Marvel's sturdiest outings in the monster arena, lasting a cool forty-three issues plus assorted giant-size editions. The artist most associated with the title is probably Mike Ploog, but the artist who drew the most issues is far and away Don Perlin. Perlin joined regular writer Doug Moench to create some truly weird adventures for the lycanthrope, his friends and his enemies. Though I collected all of the Werewolf by Night issues over the years, I sadly often bagged them and filed them away with the intent to read them one fine day. That day never came, that is until I finally bought them all again in Essential form -- and I'm glad I did. The reason being that Don Perlin's talent really shines through most magnificently in black and white.

Together Moench and Perlin create a wide range of adventures stretching the format to have the werewolf confront corporate conspiracies, mad vigilante superheroes, other-dimensional warriors, demonic haunted houses, and surreal mad scientists from across space, and much more. Always Jack Russell and his friends and family search for a cure, though they seem weirdly constantly unable to find a safe place for Jack to transform. It's clear that the format was growing tired in the final issues and the addition of guest-stars like Iron Man seem woefully out of place, but the attempt seemed to find a way forward for a horror series that had outlived its trend. Too on-the-nose for any real transformation, the series eventually ended, and mostly with a whimper.

But it was a heady run.

Here's a cover gallery of lycanthropic awesomeness. 

Now go howl at the moon.

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