Dracula Lives (1973) #10

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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 make me wonder if DeZuñiga thought it was 1909, and they moved it back after the art was done. The vampire living in the big scary castle on the mountain keeps killing the town’s wives and daughters, but the mayor and police chief don’t want to hear about it.

One angry husband decides he will not let Dracula have his wife and fights back, with multiple terrible consequences and an excellent cliffhanger. Such good art. So, so good. I’d been impressed with DeZuñiga’s last work on Lives, but this one’s even better. Lots of range.

The magazine continues to suffer format adjustments—less funny text pieces, a letters page—but Gary Gerani’s Dracula A.D. 1972 review fits the Lives review pattern. Gerani gives a lengthy recap of the Hammer Dracula movies, mentioning the one or two he thinks are good, then does a very brief, disappointed review of the subject sequel. It’s a lot of filler for anyone reading Lives regularly.

Then comes the next part of the Bram Stoker adaptation by Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano. Giordano excels at drawing Victorian Good Girl art but can’t manage to draw a dog close-up. It’s an outlier panel in an otherwise gorgeous entry.

The action has moved to England, where Mina is writing in a new journal all about how much she misses her fiancé, Jonathan Harker, and why doesn’t he write more. She’s staying with her newly engaged friend Lucy, who’s taken to sleepwalking. It’s standard Dracula adaptation fare, but Giordano’s enthusiastic, and the chapter’s the first to really engage with the novel’s epistolary style. First Mina’s journal, then a newspaper report about the ship crashing. It’s one of the most successful entries, even if the source novel’s prose ain’t great.

The following story is a tedious sixteen-page story from Steve Gerber, Bob Brown, and “Crusty Bunkers.” It’s not a Dracula story; it’s a Lilith, Daughter of Dracula, story. My bad for reading things out of order, but at least this way, I know I don’t want to backtrack and read Vampire Tales for Gerber’s Lilith stories. Lilith is a Marvel attempt at a sexy female vampire who lusts for male blood. It’s very awkward wish fulfillment.

Lilith’s a good guy, though, beating up Mongols who interrupt Village hippies’ acoustic sets. This story has her getting involved in the problems of her human host’s boyfriend. He’s been framed; it’s up to Lilith to save the day. Or night, as it were.

Gerber writes a lot. A lot. Some of the action is good, but the endless exposition and Lilith’s tepid characterization are big minuses. Then there’s the art. Brown clearly needs a strong inker, and even though the Bunkers were Neal Adams, Bob McLeod, Terry Austin, and Russ Heath, apparently their Voltron combination was not what the art needed. As a result, it feels amateurish at times.

Not a strong finish to an outstanding issue—the best in a while, but also the most accomplished.

Though it does remind me to read Giant-Size Chillers in-line with my Tomb of Dracula read-through.

I also forgot the two-page finale: uncredited Moench script, uncredited Win Mortimer art. It’s in the style of a fifties horror quickie but way too overwritten by Moench. They obviously should’ve gotten DeZuñiga to even him out.

Dracula Lives (1973) #8

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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 concerned a few pages into Dracula Lives. Would the book continue its seemingly inevitable downward trajectory?

Nope.

There are still causes for concern. The issue has even less content than the previous one, with no movie review, no Atlas horror reprint, just an even longer prose piece. Chris Claremont has the honors this time. He’s better than many of the prose writers—possibly the best even—but it’s still… a prose piece in a comic book. Also, Claremont repeats the same paragraph structure every third or fourth one, which leaps out. Marcos contributes the art.

And the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation is losing momentum, primarily because of Dick Giordano. This issue’s entry involves Jonathan Harker loitering around Castle Dracula, waiting for the story to take off; Giordano’s got very little enthusiasm for Jonathan Harker. I get it; lack of enthusiasm for Jonathan Harker is the big problem with Dracula.

Harker spends most of this chapter alone, during the day, no vampires in sight. I’m guessing Roy Thomas faithfully adapted the novel because the doldrums are familiar. It’s not a horror story right now; it’s a Victorian hostage thriller; Giordano’s not the guy for Victorian hostage thrillers.

Just like all Dracula adaptations, they promise once Drac gets to London next issue, it’ll start getting good.

But the issue’s also got two excellent original stories. The first is from Doug Moench and Tony DeZuñiga. DeZuñiga’s art is lush and gorgeous and a perfect fit for the plot. Though I just realized the story’s somewhat out-of-order; it’s a “Dracula’s U.S. Vacation,” which Lives has been loosely doing, only I thought he already went home.

Anyway.

Drac’s in New York to get back the artifacts Americans grave robbed from his castle. Moench’s got a simultaneously thin and potent subplot about Dracula becoming a pop icon and everyone being fascinated with him. Neither Lives nor Tomb addresses the general Marvel-616 public’s reaction to Dracula being real. I’m not even sure Moench’s making that flex (it’s thin, after all), but there’s also potential.

But this one’s not about the artifacts (maybe next time). Instead, it’s Dracula versus New York beat cop. Moench cuts from Dracula’s perspective to this copper’s; he hates his job, hates the working poor, and wants to quit; just one more night. And, wouldn’t you know it, Dracula attacks the streetwalker the copper didn’t arrest, and the cop intervenes.

It quickly becomes an action piece; the cop injures Dracula (slightly), but enough Dracula decides to destroy the cop. But he’s also hungry.

Great art from DeZuñiga, good script from Moench. It’s really effective.

The second original is from Len Wein, Gene Colan, and Ernie Chan. Once again, Chan proves a perfectly able inker for Colan—at least in black and white—which continues to surprise.

Thank goodness for the art. Wein’s script is surprisingly okay, but the story’s absolutely goofy. The year is 1936, and Dracula is in Rome. He’s hitting on the ladies, even when those ladies belong to the local mob bosses.

Except these mob bosses aren’t like the Sicilians from The Godfather Part II; they’re 1930s Hollywood gangster types. In the extremis. Incredibly, Colan and Chan can get away with it even as the story lends itself more to a spoofy style. It ought to be absurd comedy; thanks to the art, it’s not.

The more interesting part of the story is Dracula and the ladies. Wein writes brief flirtation and courtship scenes for Dracula and his lady victims, only without Dracula—in his thought balloons—acknowledging he’s going to kill them. They’ll be dead, and he’ll wonder what happened to that lovely Italian gal he liked so much. Still, there are some stories only Len Wein could write, and this story is one of them. Multiple times it seems like it ought to be entirely derailed, only Wein’s chugging along just fine.

Also, Colan and Chan’s Rome is absolutely incredible. Such good art.

Even as its problems continue piling up, Dracula Lives remains a very worthy read.

Foolkiller (1990-1991)

The last time I read Foolkiller, almost fifteen years ago, I really liked it. I wish I knew what I’d liked about it because it’s really not good. Even back then I know I thought the art—Joe Brozowski on pencils, Tony DeZuniga then Vince Giarrano on the inks—was bad. And the art’s bad. It appears DeZuniga had been handling the facial features and without him, the people start looking real bad, but then Giarrano adjusts or something. Very rocky, art-wise. Never good, sometimes less bad than other times.

But the art’s not the problem. The problem’s the script, which is from Steve Gerber, who’s not just good, but also not the guy you expect to do a comic all about how the “super predators” are real. At one point they even do a Central Park Five reference. In Foolkiller, it’s a string of Central Park attacks on cyclists where the gang beats the victims to death, enraged the victims can… afford bicycles. Even the killers’ parents are okay with their sons brutally murdering those better off bicycle owners.

Of course, one of the other bad guys is a right-wing TV host. The first few issues of Foolkiller have a different feel than the rest of the comic and not just because the noses go bad at some point. The comic’s about a new Foolkiller, inspired by the original, who’s actually the second one, and is currently in a mental institution in Indiana. The protagonist, Kurt, has just lost his father, his job, his house, his wife, and finds Foolkiller—on the right-wing TV host’s show—aspirational. Pretty soon Kurt’s going around killing bad guys, romancing his shift manager at the burger joint—the only job he could get because savings and loans—and working out in garbage. On one hand, Foolkiller feels like Gerber amping up the absurdity over this kind of character but Gerber’s also grounding it as he goes along. It’s like Gerber’s too dedicated to the actual narrative to subvert it with jabs at the protagonist’s philosophy. Taxi Driver: The Comic.

And outside a mention of The Avengers and Spider-Man swinging through an issue to sell at least one to the Spidey collectors, Foolkiller doesn’t feel very Marvel comic. Outside the art, which—even bad—looks like Marvel and the lettering, which is perfunctory and somehow inappropriate. Foolkiller’s journals are all supposedly written on the computer but they appear in handwriting. It’s also unclear how the journals are supposed to be read—contemporary to events, past tense. It’d be nice if it mattered. Something in Foolkiller should matter.

Yeah, Gerber created Foolkiller, didn’t he. At least the most famous one—and he was in Man-Thing. I just can’t figure out what happened to the joke in Foolkiller. The comic takes a shift when it starts dealing with the Iraq War in the last few issues; that news is pushing Foolkiller’s killing spree out of the headlines. The other headlines are about crack babies and something else kind of iffy, even for the early nineties. The first half of Foolkiller is Randian objectivism with some sprinkles of libertarianism, the second half of it is the lead dispassionately offing examples of those philosophies. Maybe if there were a connection there’d be some impact but Gerber introduces the relevant supporting characters—outside the TV host—when he needs them, not before. And the TV host doesn’t really provide much texture. Foolkiller confuses hyperbolic with effective.

Nothing in the comic stands out. None of the characters, none of the moments Gerber tries out with the supporting cast. He’s got a lack of empathy for everyone involved, which matches the protagonist I suppose but… it’s a little long—ten issues—to go just to prove you can do something. Though Foolkiller is from the old days, back when publishers never would’ve dreamed off cutting issues off a limited series. Or at least it seemed like they wouldn’t. What do I know? I used to be a big Foolkiller (1990) fan. And not when I had any excuse to be.

Maybe the most disappointing aspect—other than Gerber’s exaggerated, almost defensive classism—is the pointlessness of the narrative. It doesn’t add up to anything for anyone involved, not Foolkiller III, not Foolkiller II, not Foolkiller II’s too liberal psychiatrist, not the girl who falls for Foolkiller III, not the stupid villain who can’t seem to die… no one. One of the villains is even a New York City real estate developer who is way too competent to be confused for any real figure.

Either something went very wrong with Foolkiller or it was always a terrible idea.

I’m not sure I wrote about Foolkiller the last time I read it, but if I did, the posts are long gone. I don’t know if I want to know what I thought but I’m frankly embarrassed about it.

Foolkiller (1990) is most decidedly not good. From the start. I kept thinking maybe it turned around in the last few issues and Gerber finally acknowledged the nonsense.

But no.

It’s just bad all the way through.

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.

Godzilla 3 (October 1977)

Tony DeZuniga’s inks help a lot, but even he can’t make what should be an awesome page–Hercules toppling Godzilla–work. Not with that Trimpe perspective.

This issue, Moench and Trimpe do let Godzilla destroy an American landmark–the Golden Gate Bridge. I guess someone at Marvel decided it could go, while the Space Needle in the last issue got to stay. Hercules also knocks the SHIELD helicarrier (or one of them) out of the sky in an apparent fit of rage.

Oh, I forgot–the Champions guest-star in this issue and their presence (except Black Widow’s) breathes some life into Godzilla. Instead of just being a crappy licensed comic, it’s a goofy, crappy licensed comic. The addition of Marvel superheroes makes it a lot more entertaining.

Though Moench does have a big problem (besides Trimpe). Protagonist Dum Dum Dugan’s completely unlikable. Moench writes him as a fascist pig.

CREDITS

A Tale of Two Saviors; writer, Doug Moench; penciller, Herb Trimpe; inker, Tony DeZuniga; colorist, Don Warfield; letterers, Gaspar Saladino, Denise Wohl and Irving Watanabe; editor, Archie Goodwin; publisher, Marvel Comics.

The Saga of the Swamp Thing (1982) #5

The Saga of Swamp Thing 5 So Swamp Thing now has his supporting cast… at least for now. Casey the mute wasn’t cutting it.

It impressive what a good issue Pasko and Yeates produce with all the handicaps. It’s all about the evil organization running an evil clinic. Swamp Thing shows up and gets duped into believing it’s real–his doctor turns out to be a naive innocent too. Hence the growing supporting cast.

Pasko only has so many pages and he paces the issue quite well, even if some of the content is way too expository. Eventually, it gets to the good, disturbing stuff and he and Yeates do well. Yeates shines, in fact, on the creepy stuff. Though I guess Swamp Thing is still secondary to the horror revelation of the issue (again).

The Phantom Stranger backup is pointless. Howard Bender, with DeZuniga on inks, produces some great art, but Barr’s missing a compelling story.

The Saga of the Swamp Thing (1982) #4

The Saga of Swamp Thing 4 This issue concerns a demon who possesses people in order to feed on children’s souls. The children in question must be murdered, of course. The demon targets minority children as it turns out their troubled souls taste the best. So it’s definitely disturbing, but not as terrible as he could have made it. In some ways, it’s a cop out but Pasko’s Swamp Thing is episodic. Any different handling would have been insensitive.

Yeates’s art just gets better and better. He still has a more action-oriented Swamp Thing rendition, but the people and places are exceptional.

A lot of the issue is talking heads and Pasko has definite understanding of complex issues, if not the dialogue-writing chops to perfectly convey them.

He does well enough though.

The Stranger back-up from Barr and Tony DeZuniga is a little off. Great art, but too much emphasis on Stranger backstory.

The Phantom Stranger (1969) #14

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen pre-eighties Jim Aparo before. It’s absolutely stunning. The tight faces are present, but there’s also a bunch of energy. I never would have thought he’d be a great Phantom Stranger—or any supernatural story—artist, but he excels.

Len Wein comes up with two good stories for the issue, though the Stranger one is better. This villain figures out a way to capture the Stranger and then takes out his heart, figuring transplanting it into his body will give him immortality. Of course, it doesn’t work out as planned (does the Phantom Stranger actually need a physical heart?). Wein has some purple narration, but the plot moves fast and Aparo makes it damned creepy.

The Doctor Thirteen backup is a little silly (Wein opens with a swamp monster and ends with a sci-fi thing), but Tony DeZuniga’s art makes it simply wonderful.

Detective Comics (1937) #523

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Batman kills Solomon Grundy at the end of this story. I wonder if it was easier for writers to do Grundy stories because he’s not human or alive so they could kill him off every time. There’s not even a real explanation of how he comes to Gotham.

The issue’s okay. DeZuniga’s inks aren’t the best for Colan. There are a lot of great faces and expressions, but the figures are too static. It’s like DeZuniga solidifies too much of Colan’s pencils. The figures jump out of the panels.

Conway’s spinning his wheels for a story–Alfred has a page of thought balloons about how Batman is basically just making himself miserable when he ought to be relieved following all the recent events. There’s even a couple wasted pages on Dick, just for filler.

Speaking of filler, Green Arrow fights some goofy villains in his backup. It makes little impression.

Detective Comics 523 (February 1983)

Speaking of filler, Green Arrow fights some goofy villains in his backup. It makes little impression.

CREDITS

Inferno; writer, Gerry Conway; penciller, Gene Colan; inker, Tony DeZuniga; colorist, Adrienne Roy; letterer, Ben Oda. Mob Rule!, Part One; writer, Joey Cavalieri; penciller, Irv Novick; artist, Ron Randall; colorist, Tom Ziuko; letterer, Phil Felix. Editors, Nicola Cuti and Len Wein; publisher, DC Comics.