Vampirella #57 - Warren

Jan. 1977 - Boo!

Considering today is Halloween, and who was "sponsoring" the blog all this week, how else could we end but with Vampirella?

A very nice cover by Enrich--Vampi, a zombie, stuff on fire--how can you beat it?

The opening Vampi story, by Roger McKenzie and Jose Gonzales, is called "City of Ghosts":

Vampi wakes up dazed, not really sure where she is. She has memories of being in her lover Tristan's embrace, but also being in some sort of Old West boom town.

Gonzales does a fantastic job on the art, mixing in some photographic elements:

Its initially kind of jarring, seeing something near a photograph alongside the pencil art, but it in the end it works. It gives the whole story the quality of a fever dream, which works to its advantage.

Next is Joe Brancatelli's regular "The Comic Books" text feature, this time talking about comic book publishers being bought by large media conglomerates. Huh, as if!

Next is "Rusty Bucklers" by Bruce Jones and Estaban Maroto:

Its about a young knight who accompanies an old one to defeat an old wizard, slay a dragon, and rescue a maiden...but what's waiting for them once they arrive is not what they expect. A funny twist on an old plot.

Next is "Stand-In", by Jones again, with art by Carmine Infantino and Dick Giordano:

With art by Infantino and Giordano, this feels like a DC story from Mystery In Space has somehow escaped and made its way over to Warren's offices. I mean that in a good way!

Bruce Jones is up again, this time with Raymon Torrents for "Magnificent Ephemeral":

A really unusual story about a movie glamour queen that made a huge splash in her first movie, who then mysteriously vanished. Even after reading, like, a billion comics, it had an ending I did not expect.

Last is "An Insult To Science" by Fernando Fernandez and Jose Mirales:

Its about a doctor who is determined to expose a would-be master of the occult as a fraud, but this relatively simple task takes him down a road he doesn't expect.

Following is the standard Captain Company section, including the giant two page spread advertising back issues:

As a kid, seeing the covers of all the older issues really gave whichever one I was reading at the time a little extra...gravity, for lack of a better word. It was so cool seeing all the previous adventures represented in one place, and I think it really helped the Warren mags have an even more distinctive feel.

Of course, DC and Marvel weren't set up to sell back issues, so they couldn't run ads like this...this was one of the advantages Jim Warren had built in to his company.

A really solid issue, with no real weak story in the bunch. I've mentioned before that sometimes, to my eye at least, the use of similar art styles in Warren mags made the stories blur together, but the Infantino/Giordano job sits right in the middle of this issue, giving the whole thing a nice visual "break."



Okay, here's the final Angelique Trouvere glossy up for grabs:

We'll announce the winners tomorrow, plus some mention a couple of other fun things. Be here as we wrap up our week at All in Black & White For 75 Cents!

Vampire Tales #4 - Marvel

April 1974 - Despite my timing this week of updates to count down to Halloween, there's been a relative lack of horrorific content! So let's change that with a look at Marvel's Vampire Tales magazine.

The cover, by Boris Vallejo, is superb--the staging, the lighting, the blood-red gown--all of it nearly perfect. I especially love the detail he put into this guy:

...that's an exquisitely rendered person, all the more amazing when you realize he's not the thing most people would be looking at. Nice job, Mr. Vallejo!

This issue is in really good shape, a steal at the $2 I paid for it--except for the absurdly giant "12" some newsvendor slapped on the cover with a grease pencil. The only comic book markdown that can be seen from space!

The issue gets off to a good start right on the first page, with a very inventive use of an old movie still (a frequent ingredient with these magazines) combined with the table of contents:

...very nice!

Despite the cover, this issue's lead feature is Morbius, The Living Vampire, in "Lighthouse of the Possessed" by Don McGregor and the always-distinctive Tom Sutton:

Sutton's work is more cartoony than the standard Marvel style, but somehow it seems to make everything heightened: the slime slimier, the girls sexier, the violence more horrible. A solid story (involving some killings going on at a spooky lighthouse) brought to vivid life by Sutton.

After a text piece by Chris Claremont about "real" vampires, and an unusual one-pager by Gerry Conway (where he talks about how he doesn't want to write said piece), is "Somewhere Waits The Vampire" with art by Paul Reinman:

Its a reprint from Journey Into Unknown Worlds #27 (Marvel regularly filled outs its b/w line with reprints from the 50s and 60s), so it has a much more reserved tone than the lead. But in this particular story about a woman in love with a vampire, it features some surprisingly lurid images:

Usually, vampires in 50s comics were drawn like Bela Lugosi--clearly a vampire, but still recognizably human. Here, Reinman has him look more rodent-ish, like Nosferatu. No wonder this young girl's father is so determined to keep them apart!

Next is "A Vampire's Home Is His Castle", by the prolific Doug Moench with art by Lombardia:

Despite this impressive opening shot, the rest of the art is fairly dull. Not bad, just dull. It almost makes up for it with its goofy, absurdist ending.

Next is a text piece called "Hell House Is Dying" by McGregor, then its time for another reprint, the EC-ish "The Vampire's Coffin!", drawn by Tony DiPreta, from Mystery Tales #15:

The last story is the cover feature, "The Drifting Snow", by Tony Isabella (adapted from the story by August Derleth) and drawn, in a tour de force, by Estaban Maroto:

A genuinely spooky story (about a family stuck inside a snow-covered mansion), with an amazing art job by Maroto. Considering the reproduction quality of some of these magazines, its stunning, the sheer amount of detail and linework Maroto put in his pages. I can only imagine what his originals must have looked like, coming into the Marvel offices for the first time.

Marvel found room for one more feature, slipping it onto the inside back cover--one those "true legends of..." pieces, this time about Lilith: The First Vampire:

I've always enjoyed these little one-pagers, usually done by Isabell and Ernie Chua. Maybe, because of their brevity, they have to be open-ended, or the fact that they mix real life and fantasy. I'd love to see these all collected somewhere.




Today's Angelique Trouvere glossy up for grabs:

Swank Vol. 4 #1 - Male Publishing Corp.

Feb. 1957 - When I saw this in the box of b/w magazines for sale at a dealer's table at the Big Apple Con, I knew there was no way I could pass it up--just look at that cover!

The Swank magazine I was "familiar" with was/is a hardcore porn mag, so I assumed that this Esquire-ish-looking publication must have been some unrelated publication that just happened to have the same name. More on that in a moment.

Before I even got to the first page, I saw this priceless ad:

...they make it look so glamorous! And I love these testimonials:

Sadly, the rates have barely changed from the 1957-era quotes seen here. And I dig that second guy--I'd love to be a freelance artist that looks like Dashiell Hammett, too!

Anyway, one of the first things I was struck by in this magazine is the diversity of art styles found within. There's this Mr. Magoo-ish caricature of Frank Lloyd Wright:

...to this very colorful, almost abstract piece (accompanying a fiction piece called "Panic"):

...to your standard--but still very nice--gag art of the time:

...to gritty, black and white watercolor work like this (alongside a non-fiction piece called "The Harder They're Hit"):

As an artist, I weep for the era that was gone before I ever came around, when there were a thousand magazines like this, utilizing the talents of so many different kinds of illustrators.

As the cover suggests, there's also lots of mild T&A in the magazine, like in this photo spread for an article called "How To Be A Damned Fool At A Convention"(?):

There are some "profiles" of comely young lasses, but this is about as explicit as it gets:

...no wonder Hugh Hefner made a fortune.

Buried in the middle of the mag, there's this piece about an up-and-coming actress named...Julie Newmar!

...awesome! This was worth the $2 I spent all by itself.

The magazine has other fiction pieces, gag cartoons, joke pages, etc. Overall, a solid package of men's entertainment.

Sure, the nudie content is pretty nonexistent, despite the winking cover, but I guess that's what other magazines were for:

...now I gotta go find an issue of this!

Related to what I mentioned above, I assumed that this Swank was not related to the still-ongoing hardcore Swank. But one look at the mag's wiki page tells me that, yes, this is still essentially the same magazine!

This was one of the magazines that was owned by the legendary Martin Goodman and then was bought by someone else, and, over time, the T&A content of the mag got bigger and bigger, eventually pushing everything else out of the magazine. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

One final note: I love the name of Swank's publisher--the absurdly macho "Male Publishing Corp." I bet the offices were just like they are on Mad Men.



Today's Angelique Trouvere glossy up for grabs:

Famous Monsters of Filmland #36 - Warren

Feb. 1957 - Like Savage Sword of Conan, I feel like I can't let a week of new posts go by without looking at an issue of the legendary Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Since, also like SSOC, you kind of know what you're going to get inside (no matter what the issue) I tend to pick up whichever issue has the best grabber of a cover--and this is a good one! Vic Prezio's Kharis the Mummy, with its blue tones, really pops against the avalanche of type surrounding him. It makes this issue look jam-packed!

Amid all the stills that make up your average issue of FMOF, this one really caught my eye:

I've never seen War of the Zombies, but wow does it look like fun! I'm off to Netflix once I'm done writing this...

There's a longish piece on the Lon Chaney, Jr. movie The Alligator People:

For all of the plaudits FMOF has received over the decades, one of things I think it did best but sometimes gets overlooked is its typography: The Alligator People is not exactly Bride of Frankenstein, but giving a full page to just the text intro really makes the thing look exciting, you know? With that kind of full-throated intro, you'd think The Alligator People is The Greatest Horror Movie Ever Made.

There's an article on The Mummy's Ghost:

After the "Who Did It?" feature (where readers have to guess what movie a particular still is from), there's this long-form ad for the FMOF Monster Make-Up Handbook:

I can imagine that to adults, the above pictures look horrible, mortifying even. But of course to kids of the era, being shown how to turn yourself into a ghoul was the coolest thing ever!

There's an interview between Forry Ackerman and Joe Franklin, titled "To Kill A Mocking Bat", a piece on The House of Wax, and then a long article on The Return of The Fly:

There's also the regular "You Axed For It!" feature,"Montana Monster Found In Lost World", and then a "Monsterama Quiz."

In the "Headlines From Horrorsville" section, there's this curious bit of news in the third paragraph:

I has always thought Vaughan Meader, whose career of impersonating JFK took an understandable nosedive after Dallas, had pretty much dropped off the face of the earth, but according to this, in 1965 he was still plugging away.

I'm betting the Dracula's Castle nightclub idea never took off--too bad, that woulda been cool. Just imagine the sordid stuff that would've gone on there...

The rest of the issue is filled with Captain Company stuff, including a full page for this cool-looking item:

I've never seen this piece before, but it looks really cool. Off to eBay after Netflix!

And I can never resist scanning in an ad for this wonderful little item, one of the most infamous of all the Captain Company stuff:

...I think this model represents everything Monster Kids loved were about, something their parents could not comprehend at all.



Today's Angelique Trouvere glossy up for grabs:

The Savage Sword of Conan #10 - Marvel

Feb. 1976 - I can't let any week of new posts go by without looking at an issue of Savage Sword of Conan--they're just too fun.

Sure, you pretty much know what's going to happen before you even open it up (Conan will kill a bunch of guys, try and steal some stuff, nail a couple of wenches), but its the endless variations of the formula that, to me, make it so much fun.

This issue is the final chapter of Roy Thomas' adaptation of the Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard. It opens with Conan entering the town of Khemi, in pursuit of a Stygian priest named Thutothmes:

During his quest, within moments of getting off the boat, Conan runs afoul of a giant, man-eating snake, who he manages to stab to death after it attacks.

Instead of being grateful he has dispatched of the giant monster, the townspeople start throwing rocks at Conan, calling him a blasphemer for killing one of the sacred creatures! Conam runs off, calling them "Damned fool snake-lovers!"

Conan resumes his search, and has to sneak into a giant chamber, filled with many rooms. To do so, he grabs one of the masked men striding the halls, and pretends he's one of them. There's a great, tense sequence where Conan tries to bluff his way past a guard:

Conan makes his way past (after introducing the guard's skull to a giant stone wall), and of course he then meets his pre-requisite gorgeous wench, dressed in...not much:

These scantily-clad women, as drawn by John Buscema, haunt my dreams. Isn't she even a little chilly in that outfit?

The girl offers to help him find Thutothmes, but not first without trying to bed Conan (of course!). Conan demurs, keeping his eyes on the prize. Good thing, since we learn that the girl is a vampire!

He fights her off, but before he can finish the job he finds the room cloaked in darkness. Later, he finds his way to main chamber, where he sees his target leading a ritual to bring back the dead!

The story also involves the attempted rejuvenation of the lost city of Acheron, and we get a creepy flashback showing some of the dark arts performed there:

We meet another crazy wizard type, named Xaltotun, who is told Conan is dead, but he doesn't believe it. No, Conan and his gang are on their way to the former location of Acheron:

Already there, Xaltotun prepares a human sacrifice, and we see some loathsome demons carrying a busty, scantily-clad woman, tied up and reading to be offered to the gods.

Conan and his army interrupt this, and a giant battle ensues. As good as Buscema was at battle scenes (and he was very good), I also love little panels like this one:

...that's just a great, straightforward portrait, full of characterization. I love the perfect balance of lights and darks. I wish Marvel had made this one of their Marvel Value Stamps, its such a great little shot.

The battle continues, and Xaltotun ends up on the business end of Conan's sword (as so many have). Conan rescues the girl, and prepares to take over, installing an imprisoned girl named Zenobia as queen:

In addition to this story, there's a Conan text piece called "Conan the Cannibal", some pin-ups, and a really interesting article showing how Conan was portrayed in other formats:

I thought this was neat stuff. The article only ran three pages, but I could've read a lot more!

The cover is by Boris Vallejo, making for one fine package. All this for a buck!




Today's Angelique Trouvere glossy up for grabs, a more appropriate shot considering we've been talking about Conan: