Dracula Lives (1973) #13

Dracula Lives 13

They do briefly mention Dracula Lives’s impending demise; very, very briefly. It’s an excellent finale, with a couple surprising successes, but—outside a three-page Russ Heath portfolio (two Draculas and a Lilith, with lots of nipple bumps the Code’d never allow)—it’s a very different kind of issue. Besides the letters column (which doesn’t seem to reference the imminent cancellation) and the “Marvel black-and-white magazines coming soon” (which includes all the canceled titles still), there aren’t any text pieces in the issue. Lives has had a bumpy ride, so at least they go out strong with the comics.

The first story is a Western set in Transylvania. An Old West sheriff has-been goes bounty hunting Dracula; some rich guy’s son fell for a vampire bride, and now there’s a bounty to collect. Tony Isabella writes, Tony DeZuniga on art. It’s gorgeous, slightly experimental art from DeZuniga, playing to the situation’s unreality. Isabella splits the story between the bounty hunter’s Old West forced retirement story and tracking Dracula through the castle. It’s absurd, but thanks to the art, it more than works.

There’s not good art on the next story—George Tuska pencils and Virgil Redondo inks combine into a bland Dracula outing, but the peculiar story more than makes up for it. Rich Margopoulus gets the writing credit, and it’s an ambitious tale. In the present, Dracula meets a hippie artist chick who reminds him of a vampire bride he had a lot of fun with a few hundred years ago. This hippie chick’s a New Yorker moved to Paris, where she finds dudes are really more interested in bedding her a few times than staying with her. On the further negative, they’re also shitty to her about her art.

Unfortunately, there’s never a scene where Dracula likes her paintings, but it’s a fine, bittersweet tale deserving much better art.

Then comes the surprise of the issue—Tom Sutton. He writes and arts the story of a swamp mutant and how the local normies abuse him. It’s a devastating seven pages, with shockingly good art and narrative sensibilities. It doesn’t feature any vampires, much less any Dracula; not sure if it’s coincidentally great filler, Sutton’s flexing (or just his personal work), but the story’s an incredible, devastating success. It doesn’t reinvent any wheels, instead perfects them.

The last story is a Gerry Conway “History of Marvel Dracula” tale, with art by Steve Gan, set relatively soon after Dracula’s conversion, which means anywhere from ten to 100 years. Dracula’s still playing local despot, defending his serfs against outside aggression. He saves a village girl—collaterally, he’s trying to kill the enemy soldier—and she becomes enamored with him. Dracula’s not interested in school girl crushes, however, he’s got the other local warlords to argue with. They don’t seem to realize the vampire bit is for real.

Conway’s always done a little better in Lives than Tomb (despite being the first Tomb writer, I think), and even though he lays it on a bit thick—the story’s about how Dracula decided to free his serfs—there’s solid character development and excellent Gan art. It took them a while, but Marvel eventually figured out these origin tales.

It’s an outstanding late period Dracula Lives; mostly strong art, all solid or much better stories. I’m going to miss this book.

Dracula Lives (1973) #12

Dracula Lives 12

No mention of Dracula Lives!’s forthcoming cancellation in the letters page, nor any explanation for the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation skipping a month. Instead, the issue seems committed to origin stories; how Bram Stoker’s Dracula became the Marvel Universe’s Dracula. Or, in the case of Doug Moench’s three-part feature, how Marvel’s Dracula became Bram Stoker’s Dracula became Marvel’s Dracula.

Moench’s story is set in 1597, which is only important compared to Gerry Conway’s set in 1465. Moench’s Dracula is a sad, solitary sort. He hangs out in the castle, writing in his diary, whining about how he can’t find any good human blood these days. The villagers have gotten wise to Dracula being a bloodsucking vampire, though it turns out there’s plenty about vampires they don’t know yet.

While Dracula mopes, a stranger comes to town and offers to ride the village of Dracula for a thousand gold coins. He’s going to wait until Dracula comes to the village to feed, then head up to the castle and try to find some way to kill him. Except on this particular night, Dracula’s really, really pissed the humans are staying inside instead of coming out to be fed on—don’t they know he can’t enter a domicile without an invitation!

They do not, of course, because they don’t even know Dracula’s afraid of the sunlight yet. Or his aversion to crosses. Drac’s got a few surprises up his sleeves for the villagers, not just near the castle but also in a second village where he goes to feed the next night. But the stranger is somehow one step ahead, preparing those villagers for the attack; dejected, Dracula commits to his new role as lord of the undead and gets busy raising an army.

There’s a different artist for each chapter. Sonny Trinidad does the first; he and Moench have done some nice Lives stories. Trinidad’s work is quite nice this issue as well. Yong Montaño does the second part, which features Dracula and the new villagers, but also the first villagers getting too cocky. Montaño’s decent enough, but more on the people than the vampire. He’s got a comedic sensibility, and it doesn’t work here.

The third artist is Steve Gan, and it’s full Gothic horror. Beautiful stuff. However, his Dracula’s not as good as Trinidad’s. You’d think they’d have just ordered everyone to ape Gene Colan at some point.

Moench’s very intentional about Dracula’s character development. At the story’s start, Dracula’s a withdrawn, self-loathing monster. By the end of the story… well, he’s in a different spot. It’s an excellent feature and Moench’s best writing on the series. Does it make up for the missing Dracula adaptation chapter? Sure, fifty years later; at the time, I think I’d have been concerned.

Moench also contributes a text piece about Christopher Lee. It’s long, detailed, and enthusiastic because Moench’s a fan. It’s unclear why, however, since he seems to agree Hammer movies stink and Lee mostly made Hammer movies. The article’s disconcertingly spread throughout the magazine, presumably to make room for more advertisements.

The second story is the Conway one. Set six years after Dracula’s transformation to vampire and over a hundred years before Moench’s, this Dracula still has vampire orgies. He decides to go on a culinary trip and messes with the wrong German, who vows to avenge his sister’s death at Dracula’s hand.

Fang.

Whatever.

So Hans goes to kill Dracula in Transylvania, but times it wrong for vampire-killing success. Still, it’s warm and sunny, and Hans falls for a fetching local girl. Will Hans’s thirst for vengeance ruin their romantic bliss? Will it somehow tie into Tomb of Dracula? Will Conway bull in a china shop his way through the subtleties? Will it even matter?

Just to answer the last—no, it won’t matter, none of it will matter. Tom Sutton does the art, and it’s terrible. The story’s ten pages, and he manages to get worse every page. It’s indescribably bad art and a lousy way to finish an otherwise outstanding issue.

Werewolf by Night (1972) #11

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It took Marvel until Werewolf #11 to get Marv Wolfman writing the book. Just the credit alone is worth it, which they seem to get—the credit reads: “finally a Wolfman written by a Wolfman.” Wolfman does get to create a new villain—The Hangman; I’m pretty sure he goes on to more in Marvel. The Hangman’s a fascist vigilante who goes around with a noose and scythe, killing bad guys.

Oh, he also kidnaps all the women he saves, taking them down to his sewer lair. Presumably, a different sewer liar than the last villain in Werewolf. Thank goodness L.A.’s so big.

Gil Kane and Tom Sutton do the art; Kane penciling, Sutton inking. Wolfman Jack Russell is great. The rest varies from okay to good. Sutton inks Kane’s faces wrong. At their best, Sutton’s inks feel like they’re bundling and intensifying Kane’s pencils. At the inks’ worst… well, Sutton takes too much out of the faces. He flattens too much and leaves the eyes and mouth floating. It’d be okay a couple times, but it’s most times.

The issue opens not with Jack or the werewolf but with Jack’s kidnapped step-father, Phillip Russell. It’s a torture scene. The shadowy group of evil white men—I think the Council but so many of these comics had them—is willing to forgive Russell’s still unrevealed transgressions if he’ll just give them his stepson. We found out last issue the bad guys know Jack’s a werewolf. Also, last time they wanted Jack’s younger sister, Lissa, who hasn’t become a werewolf yet.

Russell won’t give Jack up, so they have to keep torturing him. It’s weird to have some dad getting tortured in a Bond villain lair but… fine. What’s weirder is how writer Wolfman does a bunch of work on the running subplots. The comic introduced them way back in its Marvel Spotlight days, then forgot about them until a few issues ago when original writer Gerry Conway returned. Conway lined some pieces up, and now Wolfman’s doing the finishing touches?

I don’t know if Werewolf needed a more constant writer, but it definitely needed better plotting. There’s decompressed storytelling, then there’s taking two years to get to a basic reveal.

Wolfman also gets to send Jack out on his own; he has a big scene telling Buck and Lissa he’s moving out on his own (he’s got his trust fund). Given we’ve seen Buck and Jack hanging out half a scene in ten issues, it’s not the last episode of “Friends.” Then there’s the on-the-nose moment where the Hangman sees Buck and Lissa together and is like, that old man better not be messing with that teenager.

There are a few good plot points opened up for next issue; Buck finally sees the werewolf, there’s the big cliffhanger with Hangman, and Phillip’s still kidnapped. But waiting ten issues for anything whatsoever to happen with the character arcs is way too long.

Even for the seventies.

Werewolf by Night (1972) #10

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I know people buy Marvel superhero comics in Marvel comics. Still, when a kid’s floppies get knocked from his hands during Sarnak the evil sound engineer’s attack on Century City, and the kid wishes Spider-Man or Thor were here… it feels like he’s talking about his comic book heroes. Otherwise, wouldn’t someone just be whining about how L.A. doesn’t have any good superheroes?

It’s a pretty good issue. Tom Sutton’s art is slightly better this time. Last time he made an excellent first impression, this time, he opens with some of his weakest stuff—not sure what’s going on with Lissa Russell’s head, but it looks painful—and then mostly improves. The Century City attack sequence is goofy—pissed off Jack escapes, Sarnak unleashes his army of mind-controlled sewer men on the citizenry. It doesn’t really play into the main plot, but I guess writer Gerry Conway thought any set piece would do.

While that attack’s happening, Lissa’s presumably passed out in her sewer pit jail, while Jack goes to Venice Beach to get help from Buck, who doesn’t wonder why Jack’s shirtless and smelly. Weird norm.

At the same time, copper Lou Hackett wants to question Phillip Russell, but the bad guys from the Committee show up and—literally—karate chop Russell into submission before kidnapping him. Lots going on at once, but none of it for this issue. We met the Committee earlier during Sarnak’s origin flashback; he was once a great sound engineer, but he started bootlegging records. Apparently, the label guys burned him alive for it. But he still knows his stuff, so he can create a mind-control device and do the Committee’s bidding.

Their bidding in this case? Capture Jack and Lissa; the Committee knows Jack’s a werewolf and suspects Lissa will be one too. They want to control the werewolf siblings, and Sarnak’s just the man to do it, right after he organizes a brainwashed sewer army.

It’s all extremely contrived, but it also makes the story much stranger than it would be without such a silly series of events.

The finale’s good—Sutton obviously enjoys doing the werewolf scenes—and it’s nice to see Jack and Lissa on the same page about his lycanthropy. Even if she only plays damsel in distress when she was actually the Committee’s primary target.

The Larry Talbots… I have it, my father had it, my sister has it.

Conway and Sutton pull it off, rescuing the two-parter.

Werewolf by Night (1972) #9

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For a while, I thought artist Tom Sutton would be Werewolf by Night’s return to art form. Or at least getting closer to it than it’s been since they started putting consecutively worse inkers on Mike Ploog, then lost Ploog altogether. Sutton’s probably the most successful since then, but he’s not good.

The first sequence has Wolfman Jack running through rainy Los Angeles while some scary-looking guy in a scarecrow outfit chases him in the sewer, eventually attacking. The werewolf holds his own until a supersonic dog whistle paralyzes him, letting the scarecrow guy escape, with the werewolf passing out in public. Jack wakes up in the morning in the LAPD drunk tank, with detective Lou Hackett waiting to question him.

There was also a Len and Glynis Wein cameo, which is cute, but probably shouldn’t be one of Sutton’s most successful “people” panels. Because while Sutton’s better than most at the werewolf and his sewer-dwelling, scary-looking foe… the people are the pits. And they get worse as the story progresses. Then it turns out the sewer-dwelling grotesques are just ugly people who were experiencing homelessness and then hypnotized by some guy with a pied piper pipe… it’s rather dehumanizing and icky.

Pied piper guy is named Sarnak. He works for the Committee. And he wants to brainwash the werewolf into helping them attack Century City, but it’s all actually a ruse to kidnap Lissa Russell (in addition to Jack, in werewolf form). Sarnak sent his bad guys to get Jack from step-dad Phillip’s place, where Lissa was asleep—before the full moon rose, they go to bed early in the Russell household—and the bad guys didn’t go to get her.

There’s a line in Jack’s narration about Lissa’s presence being inexplicable, but go with it, so there may be no explanation next issue in the resolve.

The rainy street scene’s really good. The bad guys fighting the werewolf in the Russell house is good. The rest is pretty blah.

We do get Hackett trying to strong-arm Russell into giving him some answers about the werewolf, but Hackett calls Phillip, who shows up and takes Jack home. Not sure why they didn’t keep questioning him. But then Jack and Phillip get to argue for the first time in almost ten issues (I don’t know if they’ve had a scene together in Werewolf by Night proper). And Jack and Lissa get to briefly talk about the werewolf curse.

She’s seemingly unworried about coming down with it herself.

Gerry Conway’s script is okay. The people talking stuff might work if Sutton didn’t draw the people poorly.

It’s good they’re finally getting to the Russell family drama stuff, but it’s been about a year since the series started putting it off. So hopefully, they’ve got something good planned for next issue’s resolution. But I’m also not holding my breath.

Batman 400 (October 1986)

830781 I hate this comic. I hate how DC used it, I hate how Moench writes it, even if it was an editorial decision.

There are nods to Moench’s run, but only so far as he gets to give each of his characters a page to sort of say goodbye. There’s no closure on any of the story lines, not a single one.

There’s also a lot of crappy art. It’s an anniversary issue with a lot of big names drawing either poorly or against their style. Rick Leonardi and Arthur Adams are some of the worst offenders, but not even Brian Bolland does particularly well. Ken Steacy is the only decent one.

Moench’s writing for a different audience than usual, the casual Batman reader, not the regular. Apparently he thinks the casual readers like endless exposition and incredible stupidity. It’s a distressing, long read; a terrible capstone to Moench’s run.

D-

CREDITS

Resurrection Night!; writer, Doug Moench; pencillers, John Byrne, Steve Lightle, George Perez, Paris Cullins, Bill Sienkiewicz, Art Adams, Tom Sutton, Steve Leialoha, Joe Kubert, Ken Steacy, Rick Leonardi and Brian Bolland; inkers, Byrne, Bruce Patterson, Perez, Larry Mahlstedt, Sienkiewicz, Terry Austin, Ricardo Villagran, Leialoha, Kubert, Steacy, Karl Kesel and Bolland; colorist, Adrienne Roy; letterers, John Costanza and Andy Kubert; editor, Len Wein; publisher, DC Comics.

Swamp Thing 98 (August 1990)

16068 Thanks to guest penciller Tom Sutton–and a real understanding of the Arcane character–Wheeler brings his Tefé in Hell storyline to a successful close.

Oh, and Pog. Can’t forgot Pog. Even though Sutton doesn’t draw him as well as Broderick (yes, I’m surprised too), the character really makes this finish work.

Not even Sutton can make the denizens of Hell look frightening or creative. They look like action figure proposals still, but his Hell is fantastic. Some great panel composition too. And I love how he draws Alec as a monster. It’s a static Swamp Thing, but a distinct one.

Wheeler’s layered betrayals and revelations about Arcane’s plotting, his bosses’ plotting and Hell’s mechanics work out here. He’s moving towards a conclusion, not treading water with exposition.

The issue’s not without its problems–some of the guest stars are utterly superfluous–but it’s good. Maybe Wheeler’s best so far.

CREDITS

Family Reunion; writer, Doug Wheeler; penciller, Tom Sutton; inker, Alfredo Alcala; colorist, Tatjana Wood; letterer, John Costanza; editor, Karen Berger; publisher, DC Comics.

Godzilla 5 (December 1977)

Oh, I get it, the bad guy keeps calling Gabe “black man” because he’s a racist and it (hopefully) makes the reader take an immediate dislike to the character.

But Moench did basically the same thing with Dum Dum in the last issue and the reader’s not supposed to want Godzilla to step on him.

Huh. Misfire there.

The racial stuff is awful, regardless of Moench’s intention. When Gabe makes a “We Shall Overcome” reference, Moench’s gone off the deep end.

Sutton’s still on pencils, with Klaus Janson of all people joining him on inks. This issue’s almost impossible to follow, but it’s gloriously vibrant and full of movement. Janson’s inks can’t make Godzilla or the other giant monsters look any more proportional but he sure does make the issue fun to read.

When I say it’s impossible to follow… seriously, I haven’t got a clue about half the story.

CREDITS

The Isle of Lost Monsters; writer, Doug Moench; penciller, Tom Sutton; inker, Klaus Janson; colorist, Phil Rachelson; letterer, John Costanza; editor, Archie Goodwin; publisher, Marvel Comics.

Godzilla 4 (November 1977)

Wow, Dum Dum’s not just an unlikable jerk, he’s also a racist. And a complete idiot who ends up helping the evil Dr. Demonicus.

With good guys like these….

Tom Sutton guest pencils this issue; did Marvel decide to stop punishing their readers with Herb Trimpe? Sutton’s not very good on the monsters–there’s nothing interesting about two giant monsters fighting each other in an empty ocean, sorry–but he’s a lot better on the people.

As for the story? Well, Moench introduces tis Dr. Demonicus guy who steals oil from tankers, using his giant monsters to cause distraction. No one’s caught on to his plans yet–certainly not SHIELD, because Dum Dum runs the place and Dum Dum’s too busy bitching about blacks and social progress.

Demonicus wears a goofy costume and enslaves a bunch of Inuits. It’s kind of disturbing, really… especially since Moench doesn’t take it seriously.

CREDITS

Godzilla versus Batragon!; writer, Doug Moench; penciller, Tom Sutton; inker, Tony DeZuniga; colorist, Phil Rachelson; letterer, John Costanza; editor, Archie Goodwin; publisher, Marvel Comics.

Planet of the Apes 29 (February 1977)

Planet of the Apes finishes without fanfare. Sutton is back on he and Moench’s story of the seafaring humans and apes and I guess Moench gets to resolve some of the outstanding issues in the series. Moench has a familiar pattern though. He works up a bunch of interpersonal hostilities and calms them all down—returning them to their initial state—without any lasting consequences. It’s frustrating, but the point of the story isn’t these character relationships.

Sutton’s art is the sloppiest he’s done on the title. At one point I couldn’t tell a pair of ape feet from a human face.

Oh, speaking of the difference between apes and humans—didn’t anyone tell Moench (i.e. the editor) an ape cannibal would eat apes, not humans?

It’s an okay enough story, but a bad way to finish the series. Moench seems primed to excel… yet the series ends without notice.

CREDITS

To Race the Death-Winds; writer, Doug Moench; artist, Tom Sutton; editor, John Warner; publisher, Marvel Comics.