Marvel's Haunt of Horror: October 2005 Archives

“But what breed of man or woman finds pleasure in the degradation of another human being? What manner of man could be so shallow? Alas, you are about to find out.”

I knew little of the living dead when I saw Tales of the Zombie #1 at the Book Cache in Anchorage, Alaska. All I knew was that it was from Marvel, and that the cover by Boris Vallejo was one of the most striking images I’d ever seen. A creature with albino skin, standing in a foggy graveyard, clutching the arm of a frightened woman. The Zombie in the upper left hand corner reading a Marvel mag was cute. I bought it and devoured the origin story.

Written by Steve Gerber and drawn by John Buscema (one of his most outstanding black and white art jobs, inked by Tom Palmer and Syd Shores), it was violent, graphic, and sexy. Set in New Orleans, it was the story of Simon Garth, a successful coffee harvester. A hard-driving and conservative man, Simon cared only for his daughter Donna—who liked to skinny dip in the pool when no one was watching. When the gardener Gyps catches Donna in the nude, he makes advances and is thrown off by Simon. Vowing revenge, Gyps takes Simon to a voodoo party in the bayou. He’s supposed to be a living sacrifice to the Loa.

Fortunately for Simon, the voodoo priestess happens to be his super-hot secretary, Layla. Layla cuts him loose, and he runs through the bayou. Gyps runs Simon down and fatally stabs him with the shears that Simon told him to sharpen. Gyps buries Simon in the swamp and then decides that’s not good enough. To truly suffer, Simon must become one of the walking dead!

Gyps forces Layla to perform the voodoo ritual. Simon rises from the grave, and he’s adorned with the Amulet of Damballa. Whoever holds the duplicate coin has the power to control Simon and force him to do virtually anything. It’s a fickle power, perhaps dependent on the one holding the coin. Gyps orders Simon to kidnap Donna, but Simon somehow resists the command. When Gyps drops the coin in a drunken stupor, Simon swiftly kills him in his first moment of freedom.

From there, the series progressed with two main themes. One theme dealt with Simon struggling to end his hellish existence. The other theme dealt with various people getting the coin and forcing Simon to do terrible things. Steve Gerber was the perfect writer for the series. He excelled at writing mindless creatures, allowing the supporting cast to take over most of the story. He wrote the stories from Simon’s point of view, using second person narration: “You stand in a dark, windswept field somewhere outside New Orleans, but you do not feel the chill of the blustery night breeze. You do not feel anything.”

“Only two things separate me from a true vampire…religion and remorse.”

Morbius injected the superhero world with a dash of horror when he appeared in Amazing Spider-Man 101-102. Created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, Morbius was an anti-villain—he didn’t really want to murder anyone. His goal wasn’t to create a super-race of vampires. He wanted to find a cure for his predicament.

The origin story that Kane and Thomas presented in ASM 102 remains vivid in my mind over 30 years later. A prize-winning chemist, Michael Morbius suffered from a terminal blood disease. He sought to turn back his illness using a serum made with the blood of vampire bats. His cure worked, but it also turned him into a vampire—luckily he was wearing a blue and red suit at the time that would go nicely with his new albino skin!

As a vampire, Morbius could fly (the excuse was that his bones were hollow), drink blood, and possessed extraordinary strength. Unlike his supernatural cousins, he didn’t die when the sun came up (although he felt weaker) and he experienced a heavy amount of guilt for those he killed. Shortly after Morbius is cured, he murders his best friend Nikos.

Morbius seemed popular enough that he made a second appearance soon afterward in Marvel Team-Up #3-4. These early appearances were all drawn by Kane, who had an affinity for the character. Kane’s costume design is beautiful simplicity. MTU 4 features Spider-Man and the early X-Men (in a unique appearance without costumes) subduing Morbius long enough for Professor X to examine him.

When Morbius broke free of the X-Men, he exploded into several different venues of the Marvel Universe. He took over the lead serial in Adventures Into Fear, starting with issue 20, lasting until the series’ cancellation with #32. The stories really aren’t very good. The highlight is issue 21, with art by Gil Kane. The rest of the issues have a rotating chair of artists and writers that continually try to pit Morbius against supernatural creatures.

Morbius made a much more notable appearance in Giant-Size Superheroes #1. This title was meant to be the first in a series of oversized (64 big pages!) comics featuring Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and so on. It turned out to be the first and only issue (as each hero got their own Giant-Size comic) but it was a doozy to a ten year old kid. Spider-Man fought Morbius and Man-Wolf in a story drawn by Kane and written by Gerry Conway.

Frankenstein’s Monster was the classic horror character that joined the Werewolf and Dracula in Marvel’s triumvirate. Monster of Frankenstein #1 was published in 1972 and took up the challenge of creating a sequel to the classic book. At the end of Shelley’s novel, the creature bade farewell to Sir Robert Walton (an explorer) in the Arctic Sea. In the beginning of MOF #1, we see his great-grandson, Robert Walton IV, finding the Monster—encased in a mountain of ice. He carves out a block surrounding the creature, takes him back to his ship, and re-tells the classic tale from Shelley’s novel to a midshipman.

The creative team was Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog. Friedrich made a great decision to essentially adapt Shelley’s novel in the first 3 issues. Friedrich resisted the Hollywood version of the Monster and instead used Shelley’s erudite version. By issue #2, Walton IV watched in horror as his ship burned and the Monster was revived. After rescuing Walton, the Monster narrated the tale of his creation, abandonment, and pursuit of his creator.

Mike Ploog was the best choice to draw this series. He excelled not only at drawing horror characters, but his style was perfect for a period piece. His enthusiasm must have been great, because he penciled and inked four out of six issues. His cover for MOF #2, showing the monster holding his dead bride has haunted me for years. I copied it using tracing paper at junior high school and received compliments for “my work” from lots of kids who didn’t know better.

The cover was reprinted on the back of F.O.O.M. #2 (Friends Of Ol Marvel), sans cover copy and text.

Only the first six issues of this title were of high quality. The third issue ends the flashbacks as the Monster kills Frankenstein’s wife; we see the Monster’s final confrontation with his creator. Issue #4 describes how the Monster was frozen alive, after a confrontation with an Eskimo tribe.

Issue #5 takes place fully in 1898, and it points the way to an interesting direction for the series. The Monster comes across a woman tied to a crucifix, on a boat that has been set aflame. He rescues the beautiful lady and discovers that a nearby village deliberately set out to murder her. The Monster fights the villagers and takes the girl away. Later, he discovers that the girl is a werewolf—after he’s killed the creature. It’s an interesting premise that could have been fleshed out in later issues: the Monster is willful, determined to seek justice, not caring who he needs to fight. In some ways, he’s like Conan. On the other hand, he’s terribly lonely and seeking female companionship—which can never be fulfilled. It could have been further developed, but plunging sales would dictate otherwise.

MOF #6 finds Mike Ploog doing the plot and full art chores. “In Search of the Last Frankenstein” The Monster is still obsessed with getting revenge on any surviving member of the Frankensteins; he’s traveled back to the Frankenstein castle. While the story isn’t much, Ploog’s artwork shows his enthusiasm for the character and the setting. Other writers on the series kept beating this horse to death, with Frankensteins popping up everywhere for the Monster to find.

Marvel dipped its toe into the horror stream cautiously, using Marvel Spotlight #2 (in 1971) as the safest way to introduce a new concept in horror. Bringing the Werewolf legend to modern life (as it was in 71) was no easy task. Aside from “The Wolf Man” movie, there is no definitive work of fiction about lycanthropy. Marvel’s newly appointed editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas, solved this problem with his unique concept: a young eighteen year-old named Jack Russell, who discovers his curse on his 18th birthday.

Jack Russell (yeah, the terrier did have something to do with that name) didn’t live in the Baltic states or New England, as most horror stories did back in those days. He was a California kid, living in Malibu, with his mother, step-father (Philip), and sister Lissa. As he discovers on his eighteenth birthday, Jack is cursed to turn into a werewolf on each night of the full moon. Throughout the series, we often see the Werewolf prowling around Los Angeles and the beaches during the night (click to expand the image above). One memorable sequence had Jack turning into the Werewolf as he drove his car along the Pacific Highway.

It was natural for Thomas to choose Gerry Conway as the first writer of the series. Conway was already writing Amazing Spider-Man and could zero in on young-adult angst like a missile. I’ve read that for a period of time, the Buffy writers admired Conway’s skills at constructing these types of stories. Conway used first-person narration to convey the horror that Jack feels. He avoided making the stories around a Jeckyl and Hyde duality. The Werewolf was Jack. A bit animalistic, but it retained Jack’s basic emotions—it never attacked his friends or loved ones. The Werewolf remembered Jack’s enemies with a passion and pounced on them quickly.

When Jack is first transformed into the Werewolf, he leaves his 18th birthday party in a lurch to prowl the beaches. His mother goes looking for him, and gets fatally injured in a car crash. Jack visits her in the hospital and learns the truth: that his real father was a European warlock who was similarly cursed and killed when he got out of control. Later, Jack discovers that his father possessed a book called the Darkhold—a book of spells that could possibly lift the curse. The Darkhold went on to be used in other series after WBN was cancelled—most notably in the Doctor Strange arc that eradicated vampires from the Marvel Universe.


Werewolf By Night featured the debut of a new superstar artist: Mike Ploog. Ploog was an incredible asset to Marvel, since he had learned the craft of drawing from Will Eisner. Ploog had Eisner’s style down cold, yet he wasn’t a clone. He plugged Eisner’s drawing techniques into the Marvel style of storytelling. Click on the above image to expand; you’ll see that Topaz’s introduction resembles the way we met P’Gell in the Spirit. WBN was Ploog’s first assignment, but he quickly developed his talent. He excelled at drawing a number of great horror characters: Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, and Frankenstein. There’s no other artist that I loved more than Ploog during this period.

The early issues of WBN involved a number of weirdoes looking to get a hold of Jack. Some people want to find the Darkhold using Jack; others want to tap the Werewolf’s spiritual energy; one redneck wants to hunt down the Werewolf. There’s an ongoing sub-plot about his step-father, Philip—did he have Jack’s mother killed to inherit her wealth? And what about Jack’s sister, Lissa—will she become a Werewolf on her 18th birthday? The Werewolf himself has few motivations: only the desire to survive, to be free, to return to the forest and hunt various four-legged animals for meat.

In the 1970s, Marvel’s growth was hampered by distribution problems. For years, they were distributing titles through DC Comics, which limited their output. When Marvel switched to Curtis distribution, we saw an explosion in the number of monthly comics being produced. One category for that expansion was horror. When the Tomb of Dracula became a best-seller, Marvel selected that character for their foray into black and white magazines. Dracula Lives! debuted in 1973, racked next to Warren’s Vampirella and Creepy.

The first issue with the Boris Vallejo cover had spotty distribution; I never got a copy until just a few years ago on EBay. Unlike the color comic, which took place in 1970s London, the magazine sought to distinguish itself in two ways. For the first few issues, there was one story which took place in the present-day United States. The other stories were more of an anthology, designed to pick up casual readers who usually didn’t buy Marvel comics. Dracula was a natural for this vehicle. Perhaps taking a cue from Marv Wolfman’s special diaries issue of TOD, Marvel quickly spun a mythology around the character, using him in various time periods since the events of Bram Stoker’s novel. We saw Dracula during the time of the Nazis, fighting Count Cagliostro, in Versailles at the Sun King’s court, and in the American Wild West.

One of the better time-lost stories was Dracula vs Solomon Kane, written by Roy Thomas. The latter story featured beautiful artwork by Alan Weiss (click to expand his splash page above). Kane (a creation of Robert E. Howard), a swordsman with a puritanical streak, is rescued by Dracula and receives an invitation to stay at the castle. When Dracula’s ladies of the night fail to seduce him, Kane and Dracula duel to the death. Dracula survives the encounter only by calling upon Kane's devout sense of honor.

I started collecting Dracula Lives with the second issue. The splash page to the lead story (click to expand) was unforgettable. It was the origin of Dracula, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Neal Adams. While this may be common knowledge now (this version has been ripped off many times in movies), at the time it was shocking to see Dracula, in command of his Romanian army, getting impaled on the battlefield. Torac, the Turk commander of the opposing force, brings Dracula to a gypsy healer, who turns out to be a vampire. When Dracula awakes in a prison cell, he’s unaware of what has happened to him. Torac threatens to kill Dracula’s wife (Maria) and son (Vlad JR) unless he orders his remaining forces to surrender. With a sword ready to decapitate Maria, Dracula capitulates. However, when left alone with his wife, Maria tearfully tells Dracula that she was gang-banged by Turkish soldiers while he was in a coma. The Turk storms in and throws Maria to the stone floor, killing her. Dracula snaps. Using his newfound vampiric powers, he breaks his bonds and sucks the blood out of the Turk. Again, Wolfman succeeded in writing a story where Dracula was the hero. Neal Adams rendered the story effectively (if you’re an Adams fan you will have to get this), really making you feel the shock at the death of Dracula’s wife.

Tomb of Dracula Part I: The Best Dracula Ever Made

Marvel Comics marched into the horror decade with Tomb of Dracula. At various times, this (along with Conan) was the #1 selling comic during the 70s. I would argue that Dracula has never been contemporized as well in any form of popular media.

The cover to Tomb of Dracula #1 was by Neal Adams. Gerry Conway wrote the script, and Gene Colan started a penciling run that would last 70 issues without any fill-ins. Dracula was the perfect subject for Colan. Colan was an artist with skills for drawing everyday scenes of life. He used the side of his pencil to create shades and textures unlike any other penciller before or after. When he joined up with Tom Palmer, he had an inker that was capable of rendering all these shadows with ink and color. Colan was a true original, in the vein of Kirby and Kane. His panel layout departed for the usual four, six, nine panel grid to create helter skelter movement across the page.

TOD was unique in that a villain, with plans to conquer the world with vampire hordes, was the main character. He needed a supporting cast, a group of vampire slayers who would oppose him. Quincy Harker, a descendant of Jonathan Harker from the Bram Stoker novel, had suffered a crippling accident as a result of fighting Dracula. He went around in a wheelchair armed with stakes and other gizmos. Harker was joined by his daughter, Edith; Rachel Van Helsing (a descendant of Abraham Van Helsing), his ward; Frank Drake (Dracula’s human descendant); Taj, a mute Sikh who had his throat ripped by Dracula in India. Rachel, with her blond good looks and crossbow, may have been a prototype for Buffy.

The series suffered through a succession of writers until Marv Wolfman came aboard with issue #7. With his arrival, Dracula began acting in a more intelligent manner, as did his opposition. In issue #10, there was the first appearance of Blade. This was a time when the black hero was emerging in popular culture. In the movies, we had Shaft. With Marvel superheroes, we just met Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. In this pack, Blade truly stood out, taking on Dracula single-handed, armed with a set of stakes and his instincts. At first he shunned joined Harker’s crew, and then later gave in to the inevitable.

The storyline that kicked off in issue #12, “Night of the Screaming House” was unlike any serial that I had ever read up to that point. Dracula is tired of Harker’s interference and kidnaps Edith. He lures both Harker’s crew and Blade to a deserted mansion filled with death traps. The vampire hunters survive Dracula’s attacks, only to find that Edith is now a vampire. Quincy stakes his own daughter and vows to kill Dracula once and for all.

Issue #13, “To Kill A Vampire”, continues the story. Quincy shuts down his remorse, cremates Edith, and goes back on the hunt for Dracula. In a flashback we learn of Blade’s origin: the white-haired vampire (Deacon Frost) who killed his mother when she was in labor. We also see a sub-plot forming about Dr. Sun, who wreaks havoc later in issue 20. The vampire slayers track down Dracula’s coffin and attack just before sunrise, preventing his escape. Blade gets lucky and stakes Dracula in the heart on the very last page.

The 70s were the haunt of horror. That’s how I remember them, growing up in Alaska from 1970-75. The whole country was on a horror kick. Was it a backlash against the Vietnam War, or was it a reaction to the changing roles of women, or the open sexuality that was driven by the 60s? Hard to say, but monsters were everywhere…lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on people as they walked to their car at night.

The Exorcist was a popular novel by William Peter Blatty (published in 1971) before it became a hit movie in 1973. The story of a child possessed by a demon (and supposedly based on a semi real event) had people everywhere taking about Satan. That he was real, that his minions possessed people. It was all over various news paper stories and talk shows.

In 1972, horror came to television when the Night Stalker movie premiered on ABC. I was definitely into the story, when Carl Kolchak, bumbling reporter, goes into Seattle’s “underground city” to confront the vampire that he is certain exists and is killing people. Years later I would go to Seattle and be disappointed to find that the underground city is just a few cellars and rooms underground.

Classic horror films were shown over and over on TV. We only had three stations in Anchorage. One of them showed the original black and white versions of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man. I sat up at night (Alaska has the blackest nights in the winter you will ever find) and watched these until 12:30am.

The world was ripe for horror, especially in comics. For over a decade they had been driven out—vampires, werewolves, zombies—from four color comics. In the 60s, Jim Warren started a line of black and white magazines featuring some: Vampirella, Creepy, and Eerie. But in Marvel and DC, there weren’t allowed. Until the comics code was altered and then Stan Lee seized the opportunity to bring them back.

Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and a horde of talented creators unleashed the monsters upon us. Dracula lived, Frankenstein lived. The Wolf Man became a teenager in the Marvel style: Werewolf By Night. Satan exerted his influence, creating Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, and Satana. A swamp monster called Man-Thing saved reality several times over. Voodoo was represented by the Zombie and Brother Voodoo. Their adventures were chronicled in color comics and then they made the jump to black and white magazines.

Morbius was a prime example. He debuted in Amazing Spider-Man 101, and after a while got his own series in Adventures Into Fear. At the same time he appeared in Vampire Tales, where his exploits were more graphically detailed.

They were frightening, but also unique. They were cursed and doomed and somehow strove onward. Being a nerd in a land full of lumberjacks, I could relate to them. As far as I was concerned, these characters were the first anti-heroes in literature. Dracula was a downright villain who successfully had his own series for 70 issues—not to mention the black and white magazines. This is a feat that Doctor Doom couldn’t pull off.

I will be revisiting my favorite Marvel horror characters for the entire month of October. Halloween is the only holiday that I like. Nuff said.