The Warren Report Issue 44: July/August 1973

The Critical Guide to 

the Warren Illustrated Magazines

1964-1983

by Uncle Jack

& Cousin Peter

Enrich Torres

Eerie #49 (July 1973)
"One is the Loneliest Number"★★★1/2
Story by Al Milgrom
Art by Esteban Maroto

"The Death of a Friend!"★1/2
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by Jaime Brocal

"Midnight Prey"★★
Story by Al Milgrom
Art by Rich Buckler & Bill DuBay

"Over Population"★1/2
Story by Rich Margopoulos
Art by Paul Neary

"Fear Itself!"★★
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by Isidro Mones

"The Vampire"★★1/2
Story by Esteban Maroto & Don McGregor
Art by Esteban Maroto

Oops...

After growing up friendless, Marvin Kanfer commits suicide by throwing himself in a river. Hang on--it's one of those rivers, full of pollutants, so after two weeks "Marvin, the Dead Thing" climbs out of the river. Not understanding what has happened to him, Marvin heads to work, concerned about being late, but the reactions of his co-workers lead him to look in a mirror. He sees that he has become a creature of the swamp and heads out into the street, where he is quickly attacked by police. Marvin makes his way back to the river, but his attempt at repeat suicide fails and he washes up on the banks to meet a cute little girl who is not fazed by his appearance. They have fun together until she brings her father to meet her new pal, and the next thing you know, Marvin is being hunted by men with rifles. The little girl is accidentally shot and killed by the careless hunters, and Marvin tosses her body in the river, hoping it will undergo a metamorphosis similar to his own. After a month, up pops the little she-swamp creature, and Marvin now has a playmate.

If "One is the Lonliest [sic] Number" can survive the large-sized misspelling of one of the key words in its title, it can survive anything, and it's a very entertaining story. The art by Maroto hardly looks like his usual work at Warren, instead resembling the work of Neal Adams in spots, especially in regard to the human characters in the office. The story starts out with a heavy dose of ironic humor, then morphs into a Frankenstein knockoff with the little girl befriending Swamp Thing Man-Thing Marvin, before concluding with a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. I'm not sure why Warren felt the need to do its own version of the DC and Marvel swamp creatures, but it's quite entertaining.

Despite being dead for a couple of
thousand years, that Mummy gets
some kind of gluteal workout
in his sarcophagus!

A young man and a young woman are just starting to make out when a mummy breaks down the door and kills them both. Before she dies, the woman identifies the bandaged fellow as someone named Jerome. The mummy walks back through the streets of early-1900s' Boston to the museum, where an unconscious man sits next to a sarcophagus; the mummy returns to its resting place and the man's spirit transfers from it back into his body, which revives and departs. Later that day, the woman's friend, a man named Douglas Hundley, watches as the police examine the scene of the murders. He retires to a bar, where he meets his gorgeous sister and her new beau, who happens to be named Jerome. That night, Douglas is with a woman when the mummy breaks in and kills them both. The woman recognizes the mummy as Jerome before she dies.

I went back and read my summary of the prior story in "The Mummy! Walks" series (and yes, the exclamation point is after "Mummy") in hopes that I could make some sense of what's going on, but it didn't help. I read this second entry twice and still don't have a clear understanding. It seems like Jerome transfers his consciousness into that of the mummy, which then tracks down a pair of lovers and kills them both. The women somehow sense that Jerome's spirit is in the mummy's body. How do they know Jerome? I am still fuzzy on that, and also on why the mummy kills everybody. Perhaps next issue will clarify matters.

Back in human form, Arthur Lemming carries the dead body of his daughter to the police station to report her as another victim of the killer. His wife comes to take him home, but on the way he accuses her of adultery with Ethan Adams. That evening, Lemming bursts into the town council meeting and confronts Adams, who defends himself by accusing Angela Lemming of bewitching him. The full moon rises and Arthur turns back into a werewolf before wreaking havoc at the council meeting. Adams escapes and heads for a bar, but the werewolf tracks him down and kills him.

"Midnight Prey"

Remove some of the violence and profanity and this Bucker eight-pager could've run in a Marvel comic or, more likely, one of the black and white horror mags Marvel was flooding the newsstands with around this time. "Midnight Prey," the latest entry in the "Curse of the Werewolf" series, is weak on plot and heavy on violence. One problem is that none of the characters is sympathetic. It's hard to enjoy a series when there's no one to root for. I agree with the comments on part one that Buckler's work here shows a Steranko influence.

One of Paul Neary's overly busy page designs.

In the future, Nor Kavalec is a reporter. He and his wife Judie face the problem of "Over Population" that has begun to plague the planet. The nations have worked to create a super computer named Anna May, which orders that unimportant people be rounded up and put to death. When Judie is taken away to be killed, Nor joins a resistance movement and a revolution begins. Nor makes his way to the control center of Anna May and learns that the computer planned it all, correctly predicting the revolution that followed its order. Nor destroys the computer, but societal problems continue.

Man, the '70s were bleak! This story hits every cliche from the decade of worries about the environment, overpopulation, and artificial intelligence. It reminds me of some of the sci-fi comics Charlton would put out and it also reminds me of the Laser Books paperbacks that started showing up in '75 at my local bookstore. Paul Neary's art looks like what John Byrne would soon be doing, also at Charlton, with lots of gals with long, flowing hair, kooky eye makeup, and bell-bottoms. One question: what ever happened to the worries about overpopulation? When was the last time anyone warned us about that? The world population hasn't gotten any smaller in the ensuing decades.

"Fear Itself!"

An old man is holed up in his house with his adult daughter, Dorothy, certain that people are coming to get him. He begs her to call the police, but when he realizes she's faking the phone call, he smacks her and runs out the door. Her boyfriend Bruce arrives and she explains that her father has exhibited paranoid behavior ever since her mother died. She and Bruce go out to look for the old man, who is sitting alone in a bar. He thinks two men are coming for him and runs through the city streets, finally shooting and killing his pursuers. But did he? The police arrive to find him holding Dorothy's dead body, which lies next to Bruce's corpse.

"Fear Itself!" contains no surprises, but at least it's not another entry in one of these dubious series we're seeing nowadays. It also looks like a Warren story rather than a Marvel cast-off. Unfortunately, the Skeates script is devoid of imagination and the art is run of the mill.

After busting his way into a spooky castle, Dax happens upon yet another uber-hot chick who, this time, is lounging nearly naked on a bed among bats and skulls. Dax, hungry and horny, ignores the obvious warning signs and prepares to get it on with the gal, whose name is Walenka, but when his sword hilt casts the shadow of a cross on her, she keels over dead. Her scary wizard Pop appears, none too happy, and tells Dax that he will pay a steep price. Dax heads for the exit and fights his way past loads of undead creatures, finally polishing off Pop by crashing through the front door and letting the sun shine in.

The skulls are never a good sign.

"The Vampire" features more standard Maroto art than did "Marvin, The Dead-Thing," but it's still rather stunning, especially his patented gorgeous gal and the cadre of spooky creatures that Dax must fend off. An uncredited Don McGregor tries to make some sense of Maroto's story, but I found myself wishing that someone had numbered the panels so I could be sure which one came next. Overall, not bad (for a Dax entry), but the issue as a whole is an odd mix of the old and the new style of Eerie stories. Not to say I didn't enjoy it!-Jack

Peter-I don't really have a problem with yet another Swamp/Man/Heap/Thingie, but couldn't a bright young writer like Al Milgrom come up with a snazzier origin than Marvin tossing himself into a chemical-infested river? Gee, that sorta kinda sounds like the last few Swamp/Man/Heap/Thingies, don't it? The climax is pretty creepy, but I'd question why the little girl's Pop never went looking for her dead body. Maroto, as always, turns in a stunner. "Marvin, the Dead Thing" holds the unofficial record for longest span between two installments in a Warren series (unofficial only because I'm too lazy to look it up), with the concluding chapter two not appearing until Eerie #129 (February 1982)!

Because of what transpired later on, I find it extremely hard to separate the Werewolf and the Mummy in my head (I had the same problem with Ray Milland and Rosey Grier after I saw The Thing With Two Heads, but that’s another story) or in my comments. As a Monday morning quarterback, it becomes increasingly obvious that neither Skeates nor Milgrom was working from an outline. There is literally no plan in effect. Both creatures pop up for their 8-10 pages, slaughter some family members, then slink off to their sarcophagus or human form. Half of me wants to warn away those who have not dipped into the LSD-tinged wack these two series become and the other half (the larger half) wants to exclaim “Stick around for the most delightfully cretinous material ever found outside a Skywald magazine!” I like Brocal’s work here; it’s dark and leaves some of the atrocities to the mind’s eye. Not so with Buckler’s stuff (and I’m a very big fan of Buckler at Marvel); I find it too superhero-esque; everyone is clench-fisted with legs spread wide; your typical Ben Grimm pose. If you shake your head in wonder at the random murders being committed by both Werewolf and Mummy but still think it’s entertaining, then I would suggest you go get yourself a six-pack and get ready for some real eye-opening and coma-inducing entertainment coming your way soon.

Pretension: Addictive

“Alien Nation: Over Population” is an overlong and overcooked Logan’s Run knock-off that thankfully only lasted the sole entry. It further cements my view that the Warren boys never got science fiction, they only read it. You’d be forgiven for thinking the silly dialogue, lengthy captions and gimmicks (like the splash page that reads like a Dragnet script, a contrivance used many times before) were cooked up by Moench or McGregor but, nope, it’s a new member of the M-Squad. But, clearly, Neary can produce some decent visuals, especially when it comes to the female form.

Steve Skeates’s “Fear Itself!” is the best story of the month and Skeates’s best story in a loooooong while. Rather than resort to the cliched “Guess what, the old guy is right, the Martians have landed and he’s the only one who can see them,” Steve flips the plot on its ear and delivers a satisfying climax. “The Vampire” contains what could be some of Maroto’s best art (I see some of you going over your notes, ready for your rebuttal) and some of Don McGregor’s most indecipherable gobbledygook (I see you going for your notes again): He hurls himself against the crumbling wood frame, and this time the entire door disintegrates, weathering ages accomplishing its end with Dax’s aid! Still, even with all my nits, this is a very solid issue of Eerie. Trivia: The back cover advertises the next issue, featuring “Coffin, Man Without a Past,” but that series won’t show up for another year or so.

Creepy #55 (August 1973)

"Brain Trust"
(Reprinted from Creepy #10)

"Welcome Stranger"
(Reprinted from Creepy #2)

"Act, Three"
(Reprinted from Creepy #18)

"Thundering Terror"
(Reprinted from Creepy #17)

"Incident in the Beyond"
(Reprinted from Creepy #3)

"Prelude to Armageddon"
(Reprinted from Creepy #41)

"The Law and Disorder"
(Reprinted from Creepy #47)

For your lousy buck this issue, you get seven lousy reprints and a two-sided poster (featuring the covers of Creepy #46 and Eerie #41). The poster is pretty cool (I know cuz it hung on my wall for years) but it's the same poster you'll get when you plunk down another lousy dollar for the all-reprint Eerie #51 in a couple of months.-Peter

Jack-Looking at the artists who drew most of these stories, it's clear that the editor still thought readers wanted to see EC talent in the reprint issues. Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, Johnny Craig, John Severin, and Wally Wood are represented in a collection of stories that weren't that good the first time around. And why would they reprint a bad story that ran less than a year before: "The Law and Disorder"? I get the idea of a summer break and easy money for Warren, but with what they had to draw from they could've put together a better package than this.

Vampirella #26 (August 1973)

"Demons in the Fog!" ★1/2
Story by Tony Isabella
Art by Ramon Escolano Metaute 
& Jose Gonzalez

"Moonspawn" ★★
Story by Doug Moench
Art by Esteban Maroto

"Fringe Benefits" ★
Story by Doug Moench
Art by Jose Bea

"Demon Child" ★★★
Story by James Crawford
Art by Ramon Torrents

"Blood Brothers!" ★1/2
Story by Lynn Marron
Art by Isidro Mones

Good news? The series has been cancelled?

Vampirella accompanies Pendragon to the hospital where his grandson lies dying (from blood loss due to Vampi's cravings) and his ex-wife lies smoldering with hatred. After the docs tell Pendragon his grandson needs a special type of blood, Pen leaves the hospital for some fresh air and stumbles into a man who tells him all his problems are solved. This stranger, dressed like a Texas oil baron, promises Pen that he's got a whole lot of blood stashed away at a local church and Pen is welcome to it! Pen, suspecting nothing because he's in a really dumb comic book script, grabs Vampi and heads over to the church where the duo quickly discover they've been duped by... the servants of Chaos! (Surprise!) When Vampi tries to escape, her best bud, Pendragon, knocks her upside the head with a big stick and the Servants strap her to the obligatory sacrificial altar. Just as Vampi is about to be served up, Pendragon, obviously getting the requisite fourteen-panel guilts, stabs the high priest and the two make their escape. Back at the hospital, Pen and Vampi meet up with the Van Helsings, who have arrived to give blood. The happy note is interrupted by melancholia when the doctors tell Pendragon they won't let him see his grandson because he's a stinkin' drunk.

Though "Demons in the Fog!" is credited to Len Wein, it was later established that it was, in fact, ghosted by Tony Isabella, my least favorite comic book writer of all time. I have to say, given my preordained dislike of anything Isabella, that this didn't suck any worse than any previous episodes. Faint praise indeed, but at least I'm being fair. I'm beating a dead horse when I say this strip says nothing and it says it slowly. We get a return visit by the Servants of Chaos, but the event is nullified by the lack of anything new happening. This script is literally a stitching together of a lot of previous events (which is what happens when someone who's in a hurry does a sampling of previous issues), but I won't blame Isabella for a paucity of energy as I'm not sure at this point anything can wake me up from my drowse. The art is a bit off as well. C'mon, all you Gonzalez fans have to admit that Jose is probably best served when he does his own inking. There are bursts of JG but far too much Metaute gloss.

Anybody else getting some major Ditko
vibes from the custom chandelier?

Starvos and Lalena are star-crossed lovers, getting away from the village and the jealous eyes of the man who wants Lalena... the gypsy, Borgo. As the two lovers make goo-goo eyes at each other and quote from poetry not yet written, a meteorite lands nearby and irradiates a large wolf, turning him into a werewolf (I guess). This event coincides with Borgo finding and attacking Starvos, beating him to within an inch of his life and stealing away with Lalena. The wolf then attacks the fallen Starvos, transforming him into a creature of the night. Starvos-wolf tracks down his love, being held on a mountaintop by her wannabe-beau. In an embarrassing accident, Lalena is about to drive a dagger into Borgo's back when her lover Wolf-Starvos comes to the rescue and, for his troubles, gets the fatal silver dagger. As he's dying, Starvos lets loose with a nasty right, disemboweling Borgo. Distraught, Lalena hurls the dagger down the mountainside, unaware that the Alpha Werewolf is sneaking up behind her.

Those two stars you see up there are obviously not for Doug Moench's agonizingly dull and faux-poetic script:

A simple mistake can lead to calamity!

Lalena: What is love, Starvos? What makes us feel this way?
Starvos: In preying upon the answer, fair Lalena, I fear we may kill it... better to leave it to its own destiny... the better to thrive and grow.
Lalena: But Starvos, not knowing what love is, how shall we know when we are in danger of losing it? How long will it endure, Starvos? How long shall you love me?
Starvos: As long as the moon bathes us both...

"Moonspawn" is chaotic and meandering at the same time. We have no idea who this Borgo character is or why the meteorite would have such an effect on a common wolf. It's a regular wolf one moment and then it's a super-werewolf that can pass its curse onto anyone it bites. But at least while you're enduring the dopey words that pack the caption boxes in "Moonspawn," you can bathe in Maroto's fabulous art. Esteban's previous lycanthropic work, "A Most Private Terror" (way back in Creepy #52) was only a warm-up for his wolfman star of "Moonspawn." The obvious moral here is: if you gotta keep buying lousy werewolf scripts from Moench, you better be prepared to punch it up with some EM graphics.

John Alben comes home early one night from work but it's not early enough to prevent his once-beautiful wife, Vicki, from being stabbed to death. The intruder, still in the house and still wearing his Halloween mask, puts up a good fight, ripping a gash across John's face before he's able to jump through a window and escape. With John in pursuit, the murderer steps out in front of a speeding car and is pummeled. Waking up in the hospital, the killer is told he has a problem with his spinal cord but, never fear, a specialist is on the way. Guess who? Yep, with freshly-stitched face and all.

"Fringe Benefits" is supremely dumb and comes equipped with one of the all-time most overused reveals. A whole boatload of prime Moench-isms, too. In fact, that's the only thing that keeps me reading Doug's stories:

... and then the darkness. The darkness of oblivion spilling over and into the deeper darkness of gray-speckled fading terror. And then, unknowable time later, great spiralling (sic) whisks of vertigo, queasy sensations of disembodied buoyancy, and the gradual formation of dull, throbbing lights...

"Demon Child"

Jose Bea's art is not bad, but he's one of those artists who translates best in black and white. The color ruins his shading, not to mention the big reveal, a panel so bright it's impossible to see John's gash. Keep Jose in B(ea)&W please!

Psychic investigator Arthur Toltor believes his wife was murdered by their granddaughter, a changeling who will act as a doorway for demons from another dimension to take over our world. No one believes Arthur and his son-in-law, the greedy Henton Wentworth, vows to put the man in an asylum and take over his fortune. After listening to a particularly long monologue on the "Demon Child" and her kin, Henton tells Arthur he's calling the men in white coats and Arthur's granddaughter smiles.

A very energetic and imaginative little thriller, evocative of Lovecraft and his Circle, the guys who dominated the pages of Weird Tales. The ending reveal is predictable, but that's okay since we're reading Vampirella magazine and we're pretty sure the little imp is what gramps says she is anyway. The Torrents art is gorgeous, very much in the ballpark of Esteban; several of the panels are poster-worthy. The best story to come around in Vampirella in some time.

"Blood Brothers!"

Two revolutionaries plot to rob a huge temple of its gold but must contend with the "Brothers of Doom" once they make their way in. Truth be told, I found "Blood Brothers!" extremely hard to follow (hence the half-assed synopsis) but if I thought the damn thing was any good, I'd have read it a second time for clarity. After such a big build-up, the climax crashes with a loud, thudding "So What??!!" The Mones art runs hot and cold for me; there are panels that convey sheer artistry but a lot of it looks just like what the other Spanish artists were pumping out.-Peter

Jack-Peter, you'll be surprised to learn that my favorite story in this mediocre issue was "Fringe Benefits." I thought the color seemed better than what we've seen to date in the center sections, and the story got off to a truly scary start. Of course, midway though I guessed what would happen at the end, and from then on it was just a matter of panels putting off the inevitable. I knew it was Moench without even seeing the credits.

"Demon Child" was too wordy for me, more an illustrated lecture than a story. No surprises, as you admit, but nice art. "So the kid isn't dead after all?" was my first thought on starting "Demons in the Fog!" and I was not thrilled at the return of the Cult of Chaos. The art is unusually uneven and the GCD credits pencils to Metaute and inks to Gonzalez. It looks to me like Gonzalez redrew some panels entirely, usually the ones that focus on Vampi.

"Moonspawn" reads like another story that Maroto wrote and drew in Spanish and then Warren handed it to Moench to make some sense of in English. If so, he failed. Too much Maroto, too little clarity. Finally, Lynn Marron's script for "Blood Brothers!" is a snoozer and I'm not impressed with Mones's art, either. All in all, a disappointing issue.

From Vampirella #26

Next Week...
Babs Behind Bars!