Another new mag I haven't talked about before--Vampire Tales(plus I wanted to find something appropriate for Friday the 13th!).Back issues of this title are a lot more expensive to find than you'd expect, at least compared to other from that time, like Dracula Lives! and Monsters Unleashed. Is there a huge Morbius fanbase still out there, keeping prices up?
The creepy cover, upside-down cross and all, is courtesy "Hescox", whose work I'm not familiar with. All I know is, it suredly wouldn't fly nowadays. That makes it cooool.
After a letters page and the b/w magazine's equivalent to Bullpen Bulletins, we get the Morbius tale "Death Kiss" by Doug Moench and Sonny Trinidad. A crewman stumbles upon a box which he thinks carries cargo, but actually houses the Living Vampire, Morbius! Morbius bites into the guy's neck, killing him for the trouble. Immediately, Morbius is Mortified(ha!) that he has lost control and killed again and hides elsewhere on the ship. He is discovered by the sexy and mysterious Morgana St. Claire, who not only knows who Morbius is, but helps him escape to her state-room!
It gets even crazier from there--turns out Morgana is a vampire hunter(what are the odds?!), there's an attack on Morbius, he falls into the ocean, wakes up on an island, populated by a blood cult! Great, crazy, where-is-this-going-next fun. Transporting a Spider-Man villain into the more adult b/w format and making him the protagonist was a pretty cool idea, and ahead of its time. DC would of course take Swamp Thing down a similar route, to huge success.
The one other story in this issue is "Hobo's Lullaby" by John Warner and Yong Montano, about a vampire who gives a train-traveling hobo a bite. This starts a hideous, horrorific chain of events which leads to a bloody, savage battle between newly-infected vampires and stake-wielding police. Pretty brutal stuff--not particularly explicit in its gore, but definitely more intense than the usual Marvel horror fare.
I enjoyed this issue very much, especially the Morbius story. I would love to get other issues of this title once the prices settle down a bit!
2 comments:
David Hescox was an artist who shared studio space at one time with William Stout and Dave Stevens (according to an old COMICS FEATURE mag I have). He did a number of fantasy paperback covers in the 70's-80's including covers for DAW Books.
cool, thanks for the info. i changed the text a bit since i thought my "whoever that is" comment was a little flip, and i didnt mean it to be--just because i've never heard of 'em doesn't mean he didn't have a good career, which he obviously did, at least for a little while.
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