Giant-Size Werewolf #3 might be artist Don Perlin’s best… oh, wait. He just penciled. Sal Trapani inked. Perlin was penciling and inking over in regular Werewolf by Night at this point. Okay, never mind. I mean, it’s okay art—especially for Perlin—but it’s nowhere near as impressive with someone else helping out. Especially since my biggest compliment was Perlin doing a nod to Mike Ploog’s Topaz every sixth panel. The other five panels aren’t good (people’s noses change shape, or their eyes move up and down on their heads between panels in the same scene). But there seems to be an attempt at a Ploog nod.
Maybe it’s coincidence.
But Perlin does better with the Eastern European Universal Monsters village setting than he ever does in L.A.
The Werewolf story is thirty pages, the bulk of the issue but not considerably longer than the reprint backups (four, five-page stories). The feature comes with the caveat the first chapter is a red herring to fill pages. Jack, as the werewolf, goes back to his family castle off the coast of Monterey. Writer Doug Moench goes overboard with his adjectives and adverbs here, including variations of Monterey. It’s a lot.
He (Jack) thinks Topaz is being held prisoner there; only once he completes the level, he finds out—rather anti-climatically—she’s actually being held in another castle. His family’s summer villa back in Transylvania. After a brief chat with step-father and uncle (I just realized Werewolf is Hamlet with a happier family situation), Jack and seventeen-year-old sister Lissa are off to the old country to find Topaz. Lissa wants to go because it might have to do with the Darkhold, and she’s been about to turn eighteen for three years and over two dozen comics. It could happen anytime. Birthdays are weird in the Marvel Universe.
They get to the airport and run into Jack’s best friend, forty-something Buck Cowan, who the comic goes out of its way to imply is way too touchy-feely with Lissa.
In Transylvania, they discover the villagers are angry at a traveling band of Romani people. The band is hanging out at Jack’s family castle; only when he gets there, they’re not. Worse, Topaz is being held somewhere else again! Only this time, Jack’s going to werewolf-out to rescue her.
The story’s got some twists and turns and silly werewolf fights, but Perlin and Trapani aren’t bad when the action’s in long shot. And even though Moench’s obnoxious writing of Jack’s inexplicable narration (past tense describing things Jack doesn’t remember), the actual dialogue’s okay. It’s nice to have Topaz back, all things considered.
It’s a much better Giant-Size Werewolf than I was expecting. Not good, but not a waste either.
The backups are similar in quality. They’re all early fifties Atlas reprints, mostly without writer credit.
George Roussos has art chores in the first story about a creeping, killer mist. It turns out to be an inter-dimensional thing, kind of like Lovecraft. It’s decent throughout, but the finish is blah.
The second story’s much better, though, with a similarly blah finish. Written by Carl Wessler, with art by Pete Tumlinson, it’s about a suicidal eighty-year-old who discovers a magic spot in the river. It doesn’t drown you; it sends you back in time. He keeps going back, getting richer and richer (thirty-five years before Back to the Future Part II revived the trope), only there are bad guys after him. With a better ending, it would’ve been something.
Still, engaging.
Then there’s an all-horror killer rat story; art by Manny Stallman. A random guy happens upon a man talking to rats, and the rats understand him. The rat-keeper is planning on having the rats kill the guy until the guy mentions a rich uncle. It’s fine. Cute rats.
The last story has inks by Abe Simon and pencils by none other than Don Perlin, twenty years before he did the feature. The guys at a newspaper send a female reporter out to cover a strangler case, even though it makes her a target, and she doesn’t want to go. Once she arrives in the town, she immediately finds herself trapped by the stranger. Or does she?
It’s okay. The reveal’s logic is fine; it’s just too rushed.
All in all, a solid Giant-Size. Well worth the four bits.
Sal Trapani inking Pat Broderick. I don’t even know where to start with the result… somehow the people look better than the superheroes, which isn’t how Broderick pencils usually work. Trapani inks them almost like comic strip characters, Ronnie and Martin in particular. It has to be seen to be understood.
One problem I can see Gerber having with Man-Thing is what to do on the regular issues, the ones where he has a somewhat ambitious narrative structure, but isn't doing anything fantastical. Gerber excels at the fantastical. This issue is not fantastical.
At one point during the issue, the editor–or writer Steve Gerber–apologizes for the visual madness in Gerber’s script. This apology is for the reader. But given all the insanity Gerber throws together, which ranges from superheroes, Howard the Duck, wizards, barbarians, politicians in big cars and then army guys–not to mention castles, swamps and cosmic walkways–one has to wonder how artist Val Mayerik felt about it.
Apparently Mayerik and Trapani are keeping this new style, which is Trapani doing bad faces most of the time. Very unfortunate.
It’s really bad art. From Mayerik and Trapani too. Maybe the inks are a little off but I think a lot if it must be the pencils. I really hope it’s not some new style they’re working on. Because it’s bad.
This story is the best so far in Gerber’s Man-Thing run so far. He does a story introducing a Superman analogue, only without growing up in the world and some other significant changes. But what’s important is how Gerber writes this character as encountering the world. Gerber does a second person thing and it’s fascinating stuff.
Sal Trapani inks Mayerik fairly well. Everyone looks a little too Marvel house style for it to be a horror comic, but it’s good art. There’s a lot of action in the issue, with Man-Thing getting involved with these Native American kids who decide to attack an industrialist destroying the swamp. They do it in costume, which gives the book an odd feel.
It says something when Moench’s got more character in two or three dialogue interchanges between Jason and Alfred’s daughter–they don’t like each other or something–than in a bunch of lengthy conversations between Batman and Robin. Family services takes Jason Todd away because Bruce Wayne neglected the legal process.
It’s a strange issue with Batman chasing the Penguin down to Antarctica to stop him from selling military secrets to the Russians. Moench throws in a couple twists, both of them vaguely amusing, but they come after his two instances of Batman overcoming impossible odds to succeed. They aren’t as amusing after Moench’s sapped all the suspense from the comic.