Back To The Swamp!

Seeing the Swamp Thing movie recently got me to hankering to read those vintage Len Wein and Berni Wrightson stories again. Though I missed out when they first hit the stands and only picked up one issue of the run at the time.





By the middle 70's I was plugged in and got all the stories in reprint form when they were run on a sort of annual basis more or less in the DC Special issues.


Several years ago I picked up a copy of the Dark Genesis trade. More recently I found a digest reprint of all the classic Wein-Wrightson issues. It's this one I'm going to toss into my briefcase for some downtime distraction at work. These visits to the swamp might be just the dose to relax a weary soul on a hard day.

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Above Water Again!

I have my main computer online again. This time it cost me some decent bucks because the hard drive got gobsmacked something awful and I had to replace both disk drives. My fixit guy thinks lightning might've been the culprit, but it's a mystery.

The trouble is I lost it all again, so I'll have to wait a bit to restart the Yang Reports, which I will finish I promise. Until then expect smaller posts for a while.

Glad to back! I hope to keep Mother Nature at bay for the foreseeable future!

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Dr.Graves!

Pat Boyette & Rocke Mastroserio
Tom Christopher
Rocke Mastroserio
One of the eras of Charlton collecting I like is the short burst of activity in the company's final throes during 1985 and 1986. These books aren't very expensive, but they can be hard to find.

Some of the gems from this time are three issues of Dr.Graves, which picked up the numbering of The Many Ghosts of Dr.Graves one of Charlton's most successful ghost books. These three reprint issues from 1985 and 1986 reprint a wide range of material from several issues of the old series. There is art by Steve Ditko, Pat Boyette, Sanho Kim, Don Perlin, and Ernie Bache. One story even features Boyette inks on Ditko pencils.

Much of the debut issue gets reprinted. Some of Doc's earliest adventures from the pages of Ghostly Tales are also sprinkled through these three comics, featuring great artwork by Ernie Bache.

Steve Ditko
Perhaps the best story is "The Ultimate Evil" by Steve Skeates and Steve Ditko which pits Dr.Graves against a magical threat to the whole of Earth. It evokes those classic Marvel Dr.Strange stories but shows off Ditko's more muscular style of the period. Any story that showcases the complete destruction of Earth as part of the prologue has got some real beans.

This Charlton revival sputtered out after a few months. But editor John Wren with the help of Robin Snyder and Steve Ditko among others gave it a yeoman's try. Artist Tom Christopher even produces a new cover for issue #74. But it was to no avail.

On a fun note, take a look how they blended Pat Boyette's cover for issue #1 with Rocke Mastroserio's artwork lifted from issue #4 for the cover of #73.

Pat Boyette
Rocke Mastroserio
And here's Rocke's original cover for issue #7 which got flipped for later use on #75.

Rocke Mastroserio
The logo for the series was derived from Dr.Graves debut story by Ernie Bache from Ghostly Tales #55 -- part of that Charlton tradition of letting nothing go to waste.

Ernie Bache
With the passing of these final Charltons, the company was dissolved and the assets sold off. Soon the storied printing plant would become a parking lot.

All we have now are the comics, which linger like the very ghosts Dr.Graves battled so valiantly.

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Swamp Thing!

Richard Hescox
I've owned Swamp Thing on video for years, but my copy is very dark and it made enjoying the movie rather difficult. I've noticed the same problem on television. I found the flick on DVD combined with some other horror flicks, none of which I own, so I took a flyer on it.

This widescreen version is much brighter, and much easier to see. That alas doesn't necessarily make the movie better. I am now able to detect the weakness of the Swamp Thing suit through most of the flick and that really pulls you out of the movie a bit.

As a movie, I've always thought this one was just okay. It does a decent job of translating the comics story to the screen but alas it must do so with a meager budget. The monster suits were marginal in their own time, and look downright cheesy today. There is a smidge of that old-fashioned movie-making charm, but it's minimal unfortunately.

Adrienne Barbeau is fine in her role as Cable, she bounces around the swamp sufficiently to keep my interest up when little else seems to be going on. The kid who plays Jude, a smarmy teen sidekick for Cable is pretty annoying throughout. Louis Jourdan as Arcane is pretty much stock Jourdan, a reliable villain. The other actors perform their functions adequately, and that says it for me.

This is merely an adequate flick, with a decidedly A-Team feel to the action sequences. There's nowhere near the level of mystery and weirdness needed to really give the movie a Swamp Thing feel. Part of that is the relentless daytime shooting which magnifies the flaws.

Wes Craven really tries to stretch here and comes up quite short in my opinion. I'd have loved to see more of the classic Craven suspense.

Swamp Thing is a diverting flick and a relic of the time, but little else. I do love the poster by Richard Hescox though.



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The Astonishing Marvel Boy!

I just finished reading Marvel Boy's original run from the 1950's just this morning in the Atlas Masterworks volume.


I first ran across Marvel Boy in Marvel Tales alongside Spidey, Thor, and Torch. He was a cool looking hero as rendered by the slick Bill Everett. I liked the hokey adventures then, but I have to confess reading a whole batch of them, the weaknesses in the storytelling really show up.

The thing is that Marvel Boy was a series that seemed to almost have a new premise each issue and often each story. He began as a space warrior, a displaced Earther from Uranus who came back to his home planet to save us from ourselves and from alien threats. But the desire to put out horror material changed Bob Grayson into a battler of ghosts, ghouls, and vampires. Some of those were real, some were bogus. He had a partner in the beautiful circus performer turned secretary Starr Ryder, and then she just disappeared. He was an insurance investigator and then that background seemed to fade. Even his name as Marvel Boy dissolved as the series developed.

He was drawn by greats like Russ Heath and the aforementioned Bill Everett. But despite the handsome gloss of the stories and some really genuinely exciting moments, the series was seriously uneven.

It seemed torn between slamming the Commies in one tale about water on Uranus and then finding for real vampire queens in another set in Italy. Each story had its charms and weaknesses but taken as a whole the mind boggled as the reading unfolded.

I still adore Marvel Boy, he's a character in search of the right circumstances, but he appeared at a time when sadly he was not allowed to become all he might have been. Or perhaps they were just trying desperately to find a formula that worked, but alas none of them seemed to have time to catch hold.

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A Virus Up My Yin-Yang!

The Yang reports will sadly be delayed until I can get yet another computer problem taken care of. Despite numerous attempts to keep them at bay, I've been struck by yet another virus on my main computer. While I might be able to do minor posts from a back up, I won't be doing any large reports.

Hopefully full service will be returned soon.

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Look Sharp!

My first thought when I saw the ad below, was what a supreme nerd I must be to immediately recognize the source as the classic DC ad above announcing the arrival of Jack "King" Kirby to the National Comics stable. Of course I must be a nerd among a targeted many other nerds for such an ad to even be thought to be effective. Cool ad though.


I found the ad at this location by the way. Thanks Richard.

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