Emergency! #1 - Charlton

A seemingly unusual choice for a comic book, Emergency! was a hit TV show that ran from 1972-1979. This was another example of Charlton issuing a color comic at almost the exact same time as a b/w magazine version.

This magazine hit the stands in 1976, so Charlton was a little behind the curve, but they certainly gave it their all--after all, the main artist in this book is Neal Adams!

Charlton was a notoriously cheap company, so it seems surprising they would hire Adams(via his Continuity Associates company) who demanded, and got, top rates(as revealed in a Charlton-themed issue of Comic Book Artist, Adams and Continuity took a little less in exchange for a lot of creative freedom).

The cover painting is by Adams, and the mag kicks off with some text pieces about the show and one of the lead actors, Randolph Mantooth(what a name!) who played paramedic Johnny Gage.

The first story is simply called "The Paramedics", written by Joe Gill and uncredited artists, which means some sort of mix of Adams, Sal Almendola, Terry Austin, Joe Barney, Joe Brozowski, Rick Bryant, Klaus Janson, Dick Giordano, Bruce Patterson, Carl Potts, Josef Rubinstein, Bob Smith, and Bob Wiacek, all of whom are listed on the table of contents.

You definitely see mostly Adams' influence here, in a story that gives you the basic set-up and establishes the characters. Adams' ability at likenesses is on par with Gray Morrow, so pretty much it looks like the actors speaking in every panel.

There's another text piece about Kevin Tighe, who played Roy Desoto, and then there's a second story, also by Gill, called "Silent Death" which, if the show had looked this exciting, it would still be on the air today.

Julie London as nurse Dixie McCall gets an article next, and then is "Horror House" which to my eye looks to be mostly done by Sal Amendola, about kids getting in trouble in a seemingly-abandoned haunted house. From the title on down, the spooky content in this story(written by Nick Cuti) is way higher than the show ever did I bet, and it's another example(like the work he did for Charlton's Space: 1999 magazine) of Cuti taking the basic premise of a show and expanding it to the comic book form, making it way more exciting than the show itself.

There's two more text articles on the cast, Bobby Troupe and Robert Fuller, and then the final tale is "His Bark Is Worse Than His Bite", written by Mike Pellowski and bearing more--much more--of Adams' personal stamp in the art.

In fact, there was maybe a little too much of Adams' stamp in this story for its own good, since by his very style Adams makes everything he renders look dramatic and exciting. The dialogue suggests a slightly lighter-hearted story involving a woman bit by a possibly-rabid dog, and the paramedic's attempts to find the dog. I bet when writer Pellowski wrote "...then they find the rabid dog" he didn't expect to get this:
...holy crap!

I don't know about you, but if I got one look at this hell-beast, I would've run the other direction as fast as possible. It's such a gripping, jarring image that it doesn't really seem to be in the same world as the rest of the story.

And it doesn't stop there! Near the end of the story, one of the firemen pulls a practical joke--the old bucket of water over the door gag--on Roy Desoto, to get back at him for a joke Desoto pulled.

The gag comes off, but Desoto gets mad--real mad:
...there's an intensity in this panel rarely seen outside Deaman's raging against his fate in Strange Adventures. And the look of fear on Chet's face is right out of a House of Mystery story.

Adams is clearly giving his all here(despite the low page rates!), giving us a "10" when the story is around a "6" on the Intense-O-Meter. Maybe Adams sensed the story was just ok and tried to ramp it up a notch. Or five.

So it's a pretty interesting magazine, much more than you'd expect from a TV tie-in comic. Despite the creative people involved, neither Emergency! the comic or the magazine lasted long, only four issues each. Not for lack of trying!