Tag: Roy Thomas
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The issue ends with an afterword from Dick Giordano talking about finishing the Dracula adaptation thirty years after he and writer Roy Thomas started it. He confirms my suspicions they didn’t actually have it plotted out; rather, they did that work thirty years later. Or twenty-eight or whatever. Plus, it sounds like artist Giordano did…
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Like all faithful Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptations, Stoker’s Dracula has hit the point where the source material’s bad writing is causing problems. Or, at least, lazy plotting. But it’s not writer Roy Thomas’s fault; it’s all on Stoker. The most obvious example is someone screwing with Van Helsing’s plan to save Lucy’s soul. Last time…
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Stoker’s Dracula collects and then continues Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano’s seventies novel adaptation, which ran in the black and white horror magazines, Dracula Lives! and Legion of Monsters. Thomas and Giordano only did six entries back then, and since they’ve only got one chapter of new material in this issue… they stopped before they…
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Legion of Monsters opens with a defensive letter from editor Tony Isabella, responding to the Marvel faithful who were mad at the inglorious cancellation of the other black and white magazines. Isabella explains the books weren’t ever losing money; it’s just not in Marvel’s best interest not to make money. If readers really want black-and-white…
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I had planned on opening bemoaning Dracula Lives only having two issues left just when the series has found itself again, but then I did some research and discovered it’s worse than the series just canceling. They’re not going to finish the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation here; there’s no more Lilith (more on her adventures…
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The secret to Doug Moench on Dracula Lives is the art. Tony DeZuñiga does a great, sometimes sketchy, always emotive style for their story this issue, and it’s fantastic. The art’s moody enough to sell Moench’s more turgid exposition. They’re on the first story, which takes place in 1809 Transylvania, though the outfits and mannerisms…
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I may be committing sacrilege, but I’m not a fan of Pablo Marcos’s Dracula. Sure, the outfit looks good, but Dracula himself—with his seventies stash—looks more like a plumber than the prince of darkness. The issue opens with a Marcos pin-up; I’m not just taking the chance to gripe. In other words, I was again…
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I fear Dracula Lives has reached a turning point and not for the better. While this issue retains the same page count as previous issues, there’s a lot less content. Comics content. There’s still text content, including Tony Isabella finding his voice in his Taste the Blood of Dracula review, but there’s a little bit…
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I’m trying to decide if this issue is lackluster or if I’m just peeved I’ve managed to outpace Tomb of Dracula in my Dracula Lives read-through. The first story refers to future issues of Tomb, which would be spoilers if the comics weren’t fifty years old and I hadn’t read them already. Well, except this…
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This issue starts with the Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I read in reprint. I’m not going to check the original novel, but I’m not sure Stoker had Jonathan Harker be a shitty racist about China (complaining about how their trains ran in 1897). Harker writes in his diary…
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There aren’t any pages of the Dracula movie stills with new dialogue. There are still some movie stills with accompanying text, but it’s not for laughs. It’s a welcome change to Dracula Lives, though the pages instead seem to be going to somewhat middling text material. But first, the comics. Writer Marv Wolfman contributes another…
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There’s a thirteen-page Neal Adams warlord Dracula comic this issue, and I don’t understand why it’s not a bigger deal. Like, it’s gorgeous. Of course, the other stories have good art, too… well, the Gene Colan and Dick Giordano one, but the Adams one is kind of an immediate classic. I started reading Dracula Lives…
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Dracula Lives offers a considerable bang for its six-bit cover price. There are three new Dracula features and three old Marvel (from the Atlas days) reprint strips. The reprints are from black and white horror comics and perfectly match Lives’s format. There’s also a Marv Wolfman article covering Dracula movies; Wolfman doesn’t contribute a script…
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Even with some great Gil Kane art, the last issue of Atari Force is a tad meager a finish for the series. Kane doesn’t have to suffer through a lot of video game-type space action, but there’s some and it’s too much. Worse is the romance. Thomas and Conway promote it to a full-fledged subplot…
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Andru’s back for exactly the type of comic I expected with the title Atari Force. It’s roughly eighteen pages–I’m not counting the double-page spreads–and most of those pages is like watching someone else play a video game. Only it’s an Atari game, so the designs are pretty childish. (Not to knock Atari game designers, but…
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Even though the characters are still visually bland, Atari Force gets Gil Kane on the art and he knows what he’s doing. It’s a big read instead of a long one. Writers Conway and Thomas split the issue into three chapters, but it’s more like two–there’s even a cliffhanger mid-point. For this issue, there are…
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This issue covers two more team members–both new members whose little origin stories come right after their introductions–and both of their stories are, once again, rather rough. First there’s the Indian guy, who only got out of poverty because some British guy mistakenly accused the kid of theft and a tragedy followed. Then there’s the…
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Atari Force is immediately strange on three levels. First, it’s game tie-in to the company, not a game. Second, it’s a reduced size comic and all the art looks too spacious. Ross Amdru is clearly trying to fill things out. Finally, writes Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas borrow lots of sci-fi movie tropes. But they…
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If Herb Trimpe spent as much time on his figures as he did on the shading lines, his Ka-Zar story might not have been hideously ugly. It’s actually passable–ambitious at times even–until the dinosaurs show up. Trimpe can’t draw dinosaurs. Roy Thomas scripts the story, which is an extended chase and fight scene. The narration’s…
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Ladies and gentlemen… the writing stylings of Roy Thomas! Yay! Yay! Oh, wait. Umm. No. Not yay. I suppose if someone wanted to read some really bad seventies young person counterculture dialogue, he or she could read Roy Thomas’s Adam Warlock story. It’s painful to read. And eventually painful to see too. It’s another issue…
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Ladies and gentlemen… the writing stylings of Roy Thomas! Yay! Yay! Oh, wait. Umm. No. Not yay. I suppose if someone wanted to read some really bad seventies young person counterculture dialogue, he or she could read Roy Thomas’s Adam Warlock story. It’s painful to read. And eventually painful to see too. It’s another issue…
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For some inexplicable reason, probably because he liked to read himself (I don’t think Marvel paid by the word in the seventies), Roy Thomas has his protagonist spouting expository dialogue every panel. Thomas and Gil Kane do the feature, Guillvar Jones, and it’s beautiful to read. Kane eventually does have some weak panels, but most…
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For three pages, Wonder Woman has good art. In their all-knowing wisdom, DC only had Carlos Rodriguez do three pages. The first part is by Rich Buckler, who’s not terrible, just not even mediocre. But the last part, by Tim Smith III, is absolutely hideous. I wonder if they were willy-nilly hiring artists, trying to…
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Conan has another dalliance, this time as consort to a queen. It doesn’t turn out so well for him—well, he gets in trouble because of her fetching handmaid as well. At least in the queen’s perspective. To Conan, he’s getting weary of women. The sex is so obvious, I was a little surprised to see…
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Windsor-Smith has this amazing close-up of Conan during a fight with an ape (the ape has gone amok, the pet of Conan’s target). There’s still the significant nose problem, but the panel just looks so great it’s hard to believe Windsor-Smith didn’t think maybe drawing a reasonable nose was in order. Thomas continues the previous…
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Oh, the noses. Why, oh why, can’t Windsor-Smith get noses right? He didn’t start out having problems with them. It must have been some kind of weird creative decision to draw bad noses. I don’t see how any of the characters gets enough air to breath. Otherwise, he does a good job with the issue.…
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So, The Garden of Fear–Howard’s original story this issue is based on–did come out after Burroughs’s Out of Time’s Abyss. They feature a very similar evil winged race of men… though with different motives for kidnapping women. That possible “homage” of source material aside–and Windsor-Smith’s continually weak noses and prominent brows–this issue is excellent. It…
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How sweet, Conan ends the issue with a girl on his arm. Well, actually, they’re on horseback fleeing for their lives, but it’s the first time he’s gone off with anyone else and the first girl to be around for the last page. Windsor-Smith is doing something bad with the noses. It’s not the inkers.…
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The art this issue is a mess. Buscema and Adkins each hurriedly handled a half of the book. I assume Windsor-Smith was speeding along too because the result is people with huge eyes and minuscule noses. Sometimes it looks like Conan’s face is off-center on his head. It’s an ugly issue, which is too bad.…
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Thomas is really bad about following a story with something very similar but not exactly alike. This issue Conan has to rescue a girl from a tower, a tower where there’s something mysterious going on. Thomas doesn’t come up with anything awesome like a flying elephant from outer space, just a giant bat. Sure, it’s…
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