The Warren Report Issue 35: April/May 1972

The Critical Guide to 

the Warren Illustrated Magazines

1964-1983

by Uncle Jack

& Cousin Peter

Sanjulian

Vampirella #16 (April 1972)

"...And Be a Bride of Chaos"★★1/2
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Jose Gonzalez

"Purification"★★
Story & Art by Nebot

"Gorilla My Dreams"★★1/2
Story by Gus St. Anthony
Art by Esteban Maroto

"Girl on the Red Asteroid"★
Story by Don Glut
Art by Bill DuBay

"Lover!"★★★
Story & Art by Pat Boyette

"Cilia"★★
Story by Nick Cuti
Art by Felix Mas

Vampirella joins Pendragon on a jet plane flying to perform at the European retreat of Count Mordante, who is resting in a coffin in the plane's rear compartment. Meanwhile, Adam Van Helsing recovers from his injuries while his father heads for Count Mordante's castle, having noticed that the note that sent Vampirella after Pendragon bears the seal of none other than Count Dracula! Pendragon and Vampirella settle in at the castle where, unbeknownst to them, various bigwigs from the Cult of Chaos have gathered to support Count Dracula/Mordante in his quest to choose the woman who will take part in a ceremony "... And Be a Bride of Chaos," the ancient god who once ruled the earth.

Pendragon and Vampirella perform for the guests and, when our heroine turns into a bat, Mordante has the room sealed and captures her with the intention of giving her to Chaos as a bride, much to the displeasure of a woman named Lucretia, who resembles Vampi and who had hoped for that honor herself. As he lugs Vampirella's unconscious form to an underground chamber, he regales his guests with the origin of Count Dracula. It seems our favorite count was originally from Drakulon, but was banished and ended up on Earth, where he lived through the centuries by taking on various guises.

Mordante straps Vampi to a table, as Dr. Van Helsing quietly arrives at the island where the castle is located. He finds Mordante's coffin and drives a stake into the Count, who yanks it out and reveals that Chaos protected him from this particular injury. Vampirella bursts upon the scene and rescues Van Helsing, telling Mordante that Lucretia was so anxious to wed Chaos that she replaced Vampi on the slab. Too bad for Lucretia--the sight of Chaos causes immediate death and the failure of the plan to supply the god with a bride removes the protection from Mordante, who quickly expires from the hole in his chest. Vampi, Pendragon, and Van Helsing leap into the water as the castle is destroyed by Chaos.

Archie packs a lot of plot into twenty pages here, yet the story is unsatisfying. There's too much Mordante/Dracula and not enough Vampirella. Dracula's origin is a stretch and his temporary immunity to a stake in the chest recalls some of the increasingly ridiculous Hammer Dracula films of the late '60s and early '70s, when just pounding a stake into the heart of the count was no longer sufficient to end his existence. Pendragon makes a nice companion for Vampi, since he is too old for any sexual tension and has a nicely self-deprecating sense of humor.

"Purification"

A beautiful young witch is grabbed by an angry mob, stripped, and tied to a stake for burning, but when the men see how sexy she is they rescue her and set fire to her accusers instead. A three-page strip that seems almost as light as an Aragones one-pager, "Purification" is good for a laugh but that's about it. Nebot's art recalls Wally Wood's somewhat, though it's more comedic and less technically masterful.

"Gorilla My Dreams"

Sailing back to England after exploring the Congo, Mark Evans is troubled by dreams in which he is attacked and killed by a giant gorilla. In the jungle, he was warned of the devil beast, Shagatha and, when a beautiful woman ran into camp pursued by gorillas, Mark fell hard for her. He and she make it back to London, only to have her reveal that she is the "Gorilla My Dreams"--Shagatha in disguise!

I would rate this one higher if the story weren't so transparent. Maroto's art continues to impress me, and I got a real Reed Crandall feeling from some of his panels here. Too bad the ending is a letdown.

Captain Rhodes is the only survivor when his space ship crashes on an asteroid. He thinks himself alone until he sees a surprising sight: a beautiful, naked girl hatching from a great big egg! He teaches her how to love a man but soon she grows into a giant, reptilian creature. He is unable to bring himself to shoot the "Girl on the Red Asteroid," who retains her gorgeous face and lush red tresses.

Just shoot her already!
("Girl on the Red Asteroid")

This issue of Vampirella is fast becoming a real disappointment, breaking a string of several high-quality issues that I had enjoyed. So far, Glut and DuBay's effort is the nadir: a poor story and worse art. Oddly enough, the depiction of the giant reptile on the splash page looks nothing like the one on the last page.

During the French Revolution, young Marquis Jean Rabat gets his kicks by dressing like a beggar and spending his time with the revolutionaries. He especially likes it when women are whipped as punishment. Using the name Mons. Mysterie, he starts killing women and follows his foul deeds with a bloodcurdling scream. Eventually, Rabat is guillotined, but even his severed head emits the horrible shriek!

Pat Boyette's "Lover!" doesn't make a whole lot of sense, seeing as how it starts at the dawn of the French Revolution and continues on (presumably) for a number of years until Napoleon is in power, but the sheer, baroque style of the artwork and page design won me over. Boyette follows predecessors Gene Colan and Jerry Grandenetti in using creative panel sizes and shapes and manages to keep the narrative flowing without too much confusion.

In 1872, the freighter Davey Jones is lost at sea and the only two survivors are cast adrift on a raft. When they finally make it ashore, Captain Spike sets off for England with a mysterious and beautiful companion named "Cilia." The local fishermen become suspicious of Cilia, who only eats fish and who needs to return to the ocean for a dip every so often. They knock the captain out and grab the gal. The captain later explains to the other survivor, Zackery, that Cilia is a cilophyte, a human-octopus hybrid whose top half is hot babe and whose bottom half is all tentacles. She saved Zackery's life on the raft and Spike fell hard for her. The local fisherman leave her near death and, when she begs Spike to finish the job, he does so with a harpoon. The villainous fishermen are later done away with by vengeful members of Cilia's family who lack the human half.

Nick Cuti's haunting story meshes well with Felix Mas's Ernie Colonesque art to make an enjoyable fable. Nothing special, but not a bad end to a weak issue of Vampirella.-Jack

Peter-Aside from the Vampi story and Pat Boyette's unnerving art, this issue is one big smelly pile of nonsense, which is odd since the other two titles we look at this week are above-average. With all the typos riddled through the text, I'm surprised the letterer didn't "accidentally" mis-title the Nebot entry, "PuTrification." Nebot may have had his fans (the same who haunted the comic shops for the latest issue of Elfquest), but I ain't one of them. I like my horror comics to be a little less... sparkly. "Gorilla My Dreams" may be proof that Forry Ackerman liked to sneak into the Warren funny book division now and then and put in his two cents. What an awful story and, again, plagued by typos in the worst places possible (Behind every superstition there is a seed of thruth) and the most utterances of the exclamation "My God!" ever used in one story. But, hey, what a twist, right?

"Lover!"

I thought "Girl on the Red Asteroid" and "Cilia" were both pretty dumb (even though the cover screams that "Cilia" is "one of the most beautiful horror stories ever told!"), but Felix Mas still contributes some solid graphics. The script for "Lover!" is a bit standard, but Pat Boyette more than makes up for his shortcomings as a writer with his freakish visuals. Boyette seems to see a world that holds no beauty (other than the one pretty maiden who meets the business end of a whip), and every man is missing an eye or layers of skin.

Then there's the main attraction, "...And Be a Bride of Chaos," which seems to be one of the most popular entries in the Vampirella saga, but I find it to be the weakest of Archie's. Lots of logic problems and a meandering plot. I do like that Archie found a way to tie the Vampirella/Dracula saga into his "Coffin of Dracula" two-parter, but this is his swan-song. I can't say I'm optimistic about the future, given the identity of the writer who now holds the reins.

Kelly

Eerie #39 (April 1972)

"Head Shop"★★
Story by Don Glut
Art by Jose Bea

"Just Passing Through"★1/2
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by Rafael Auraleon

"The Disenfranchised"★★★★
Story by J.R. Cochran
Art by Tom Sutton

"Dax the Warrior"★★1/2
Story & Art by Esteban Maroto

"Yesterday is the Day Before Tomorrow"★★
Story by Doug Moench
Art by Dave Cockrum

"Ortaa!"★★★
Story by Kevin Pagan
Art by Jaime Brocal

"Head Shop"

Every day on his way to work, Christopher Ducey walks past a haberdashery that displays hats in its window. One of the hats is perched atop a very realistic head and Chris begins to become obsessed. Noticing that the head is gradually rotting, he works up the courage to go into the store one day and point this out to the proprietor. "You're right!" says he, and chops Chris's head off to replace the one rotting in the window.

When I see a story by Don Glut in a Warren mag, my expectations are low, so anything resembling entertainment surprises me. "Head Shop" features passable art by Jose Bea, who delivers a suitably creepy rotting head in a few stages of decay. This is enough to make six pages not seem overly long. The title's double meaning is cute.

"Just Passing Through"

A young man notices that his clothes don't fit and fears he's shrinking. His mother tells him about his father, who appeared one day as a giant and steadily shrank till he disappeared. One night, when he was normal size, he impregnated a woman he met at a bar. The next morning, he told her he was leaving and that, one day, another man would leave her. It turns out she's the mother of the young man who's now shrinking.

Steve Skeates does Don Glut one better with "Just Passing Through," a story that meanders along for seven pages and then just ends without a real conclusion. Auraleon's art is very nice, but this is not a story--it's a memo.

Harold walks the cold city streets alone, always grinning. He thinks back to how he became "The Disenfranchised." It began when he was a boy, helping out in his father's butcher shop; the neighborhood was razed as part of slum clearance and Harold's father lost his shop, then his apartment, then his life. Now Harold wanders the streets alone, meat cleaver in hand, looking for revenge. He kills a junkie who tries to rob him and he finds shelter with the other poor souls who wander the city streets. Finally, when a city inspector tries to convince him to come to a shelter, Harold snaps and cuts the man to pieces.

Peter has plenty to say about this story, so I'll just note Sutton's chilling art and leave the rest to him.

"Dax the Warrior"

"Dax the Warrior" is returning home from battle when he meets Freya, a super-sexy naked woman who falls for him in the blink of an eye. They frolic happily together until she is snatched away by a flying dragon. Dax gives chase and enters a realm of darkness, ignoring doom-laden warnings from a hooded man. He finds Freya and heads back into the light, but the hooded man points out that if he kisses her, he'll spread leprosy over the earth.

Dax was a Maroto character who had premiered in Spain the year before. In this initial installment, he's basically another Conan, all muscle and never failing. Maroto's artwork is excellent, but the writing is a bit florid for my taste. For example, take this sentence: "I will rip forth your hell spawned entrails, God-forbidden beast!" The GCD puts a question mark next to the writing credit, pointing out the possibility that the original Spanish was translated by someone other than Maroto.

In the 25th century, a thief named Andros Palmer is tired of small-time heists and dreams of one big score that will set him up for life. He murders a scientist who has just invented a time machine and Andros travels 30 years into the future, where he reasons that he can steal the blueprints for new inventions, go back to his own time, and strike it rich. Andros murders a scientist named Gral Tharkos and returns to 2642, where plastic surgery and a new name lead to the realization that he is now Gral Tharkos, destined to be killed by himself three decades' hence.

"Yesterday is the Day Before Tomorrow"

Doug Moench trots out an old science fiction trope and gets confused about how centuries work (2642 is not the 25th century), but more early work from Dave Cockrum makes the confusingly-titled "Yesterday is the Day Before Tomorrow" more enjoyable than it should be. Knowing what Cockrum would do in a few years at Marvel makes it fun to see him develop as an artist at Warren.

"Ortaa!"

On an expedition to the American Southwest to prove that the Aztec race originated there, Adam is haunted by nightmares in which he is an Aztec named Chlan who is sacrificed on an altar and whose heart is cut out by a priest. Seeming possessed, Adam hits a rock with a pickax and a door opens to the old Aztec altar site. In his nightmares, Adam's heart turned into a giant serpent that attacked the priest and drove the people south to Mexico. In the present, he ventures into the cave and again confronts the serpent/monster that grew from his heart. He kills it and saves his fellows, but the effort results in his own death by cardiac arrest.

Adam helpfully tells us that the story's title, "Ortaa!" is the serpent's name and also an anagram for aorta. The story is fairly entertaining and it is helped immensely by Jaime Brocal's art. As is typical in a Warren story, there is a beautiful gal on the expedition and she manages to brighten up the panels.-Jack

"The Disenfranchised"

Peter-"The Disenfranchised" is my favorite Warren story of all time. I realize I have several years of extraordinary material to sift through (well, actually, the pessimist nudges my optimist and insists that, no, I really don't), but I've read all these stories before and this is the one that has stayed with me the longest. I've written pieces on it for magazines and blogs and I've read the damn thing dozens of times and yet I still find it as creepy as the first time I read it nearly fifty years ago. It scared me as a kid like no other comic story would and it still gives me the willies. Writer Cochran tapped into the phobia that America was going through in the early '70s (and goes through to this day): the downsizing of Mom-And-Pop stores and the corporate takeover of the U.S. When the “little market down the street” closed up, it took America’s values with it, leaving behind unemployment and ghettos. Ironically, I first bought Eerie #39 in 1972 at a soda fountain (Pronto Pup on Lincoln Avenue in San Jose, California). That shop’s a Starbuck’s now. Ken Kelly's cover is pretty cool, but it in no way prepares you for Tom Sutton's vision of Harold, the poor, put-upon butcher's son who now roams the streets for a different kind of meat. This is Sutton at his apex; the two-page, 11-panel sequence leading up to Harold's big CHOK! is a virtual guide to building suspense and then releasing tension.

The conclusion of "The Disenfranchised"

In the letters page for Eerie #41, Don Glut says "Head Shop" was inspired by a walk past a Hollywood wig store. "The wigs were displayed in the window on wooden heads. I stopped and did a double take. One of the display heads looked exactly like someone I knew!" More likely, Don got his inspiration from a matinee screening of Amicus's anthology film, The House That Dripped Blood (1971). In the "Waxworks" segment, Philip Grayson (Peter Cushing) becomes obsessed with a wax museum dummy that looks like his dead partner. Turns out the proprietor covered his dead wife's body in wax and uses fresh-cut noggins from the men who become obsessed with the dummy. Guess whose head is next? "Waxworks" ends with a sequence very similar to the final panels of "Head Shop." Now, don't get me wrong, I still love the story (it's Glut's best for Warren, regardless of its origin); it's a nasty piece of work that almost begs the question: why the hell would someone go to the trouble of hacking off a man's head to display hats? Aren't those plastic dummy domes pretty cheap? Bea's disintegrating head (especially the last two phases) is the stuff of nightmares for a ten-year-old.

I'm not sure what the hell Steve Skeates is trying to say with "Just Passing Through," but the least Jim Warren could have done is give his writer enough space to finish the damn thing! Seriously, I'd love to hear the story behind this story. "Dax the Warrior," of course, is groundbreaking territory for Warren. Though the company had run a few continuing characters (who here remembers Thane the Barbarian? Me neither), those would run a couple of chapters and that's all. The popularity of "Dax" paved the way for the (eventual) serialization of Eerie (for better or for worse). "Dax" is a dynamite strip visually, with word balloons and captions added here and there for no apparent reason other than to muck up our view of the Maroto art, but even the prose works for the most part. It's a great launch to what would become one of Warren's best series. Aside from the title, Doug Moench lays off the pretension with "Yesterday is the Day Before Tomorrow." That doesn't mean it's anything but a standard SF tale with a standard EC climax. "Ortaa!" is a bit better thanks to Jaime Brocal's art. The climax is pretty dumb. -Peter

Enrich Torres

Creepy #45 (May 1972)

"What Rough Beast" ★★1/2
Story by Jan Strnad
Art by Frank Brunner

"Targos" ★
Story by Jack Katz
Art by Jack Katz & Nebot

"And Horror Crawls... from Out of the Sea!" ★★★1/2
Story by Kevin Pagan
Art by Tom Sutton

"For the Sake of Your Children!" ★★★
Story by E. A. Fedory
Art by Jaime Brocal

"Dungeons of the Soul" ★
Story by T. Casey Brennan
Art by Felix Mas

"The Picture of Death" ★★1/2
Story & Art by Jose Bea

Sometime in the future, a giant beast terrorizes a high-rise complex while a woman named Ginny sits on a couch, cradling her baby. Enter Ginny's ex, Michael, who cut out after Ginny found out she was pregnant. Now, Michael has returned, assuring Ginny he's grown up a bit and can handle the situation. It's not that simple, explains Ginny, and she tells him the story of how she became pregnant. Exploring "the lowest levels of the city," Ginny was raped by a giant beast known as the Demogorgon (or maybe it's the Demogorgan, depending on which page you're reading) and their child is the result. As evidence, Ginny pulls back the child's blanket, revealing two little horns atop its otherwise cutely demonic head. At that moment, the child's real pop comes crashing through the window, grabs its kid, and exits stage left.

"What Rough Beast"

"What Rough Beast" is not a bad story, it's just not much of a story. The future tense is random as, aside from a guy in a spacesuit in the intro, there are no futuristic trappings or "inventions" or the like (in fact, Michael wears one of those neato gold chain/medallion combos that went out of fashion soon after the release of Earth Wind and Fire's Greatest Hits), so why the extra effort? Is the Demogorgo(a)n a punishment for our sins, pollution, nuclear war, reality TV? The old man who warns Ginny of the Beast seems a good outlet for Jan Strnad to explain away his demon's existence but perhaps it's better off we don't get some kind of early-1970s pretentious jive. Frank Brunner's art is gorgeous, but that's a given; it's also the last we'll see of him around here as he's off to begin his historic run on Doctor Strange (in Marvel Premiere).

Targos is confident that, when his barbarian days
are over, he can find a job on The Golden Girls

"Targos" is yet another stab at the unreachable: a readable Warren fantasy tale. This one sees Targos of Goofynamia, he of the bouffant, embarking on a quest to free Kirke, loveliest goddess of Sillimoniker, from the chains of father Kronis. Along the way, he battles child-killers of Cholkis and the fierce sea beasts known as Ganoids before defeating the evil (but simply gorgeous) Queen Cybele and returning to his little beach girl, Kirke. Yet another grand fantasy from the brain of Jack Katz, whose The First Kingdom "graphic novel" would be published by Comics & Comix beginning the following year. There's nothing resembling originality here (other than the goofy names), but perhaps visuals by Wally Wood might make it "lookable" (if not readable). As it is, the Katz/Nebot style (lots and lots of white space) does not exactly beg for postering. Targos himself is an obvious Ka-Zar swipe.

"And Horror Crawls... from Out of the Sea!"

A giant blob rises from the depths of the sea and, one by one, absorbs and kills two couples partying on a beach. There's not much more to "And Horror Crawls... from Out of the Sea," but what you get is a hell of a lot of derivative fun. Take one part "Who Goes There," a heaping portion of Theodore Sturgeon's "It," and maybe a slight sprinkling of the old sleaze classic, The Flesh Eaters, and you have some idea of what writer Kevin Pagan was trying to accomplish (you even get the requisite "coincidental explanation of what's going on before it even happens," via the convenient chemist on the beach). But let's not beat around the bush; assign Grandenetti, Cockrum, Maroto, or even Corben, and this doesn't work nearly as well. Sutton's Lovecraftian tentacled blob, rotting carcasses, and even bikini'd babes are stellar visual delights, and we know that no other artist in the '70s did cosmic (and deep, deep sea) horror like Tom.

"For the Sake of Your Children!"

Feared by the peasants of the village, Baron von Norda has free reign to tax and terrorize, but now blood-drained corpses are stacking up like cords of wood and the villagers have had enough. They fire up their torches and storm von Norda's castle, driving a stake in his heart. Buoyed by their relatively easy conquest, the troops then go in the cellar to have a look, and they unwittingly unleash hundreds of vampires, locked up for years and fed by von Norda. The townsfolk return to their wives as hungry vampires. I had a hard time following the script for "For the Sake of Your Children!" as it's adjective-heavy and (choke!) poetic in quite a few spots. Take this passage, for instance, which opens the festivities:

The Vienna woods... weird... majestic... dark with foreboding secrets... riddled with ancient hermetic mysteries... hoary with the dust of countless ages!!! Fresh morning mist lies not within for centuries ago it was ripped asunder by a pall of malevolence that choked the dryad-carpet of ferns, and wrought finality to the divine nuptials of nature!! Of kindred nature, it dwells more within the cloak of night... more beneath the cerements of evil, an unholy place the Earth-mother could never suckle!!!

Huh? By the second act, I really wasn't sure I could read between the bold adjectives and muster a cohesive narrative but, by the climax, I was back on sure footing, despite the flowery verbiage. Well, except for the part about von Norda's parents... I'm still closing one eye and looking to the heavens on that one. Jaime Brocal turns in his best work yet; these vampires are savage but the villagers may just be more savage.

"Dungeons of the Soul"

Modrius keeps a man in an iron mask captive in his cellar until Modrius's lady love, Adrianne, inadvertently frees the prisoner from the "Dungeons of the Soul"! Eventually, the masked man and Modrius square off with swords, but Modrius finds he cannot slay his prisoner. After a very touching monologue ("How many times must our trust be betrayed, before we learn not to trust? How many times must our love be rejected before we learn not to love? How many roads must a man walk down..."), the stranger is unmasked and, surprise surprise surprise, we discover he's the good half of Modrius, waiting for the love of Adrianne to set him free!

As a way to lessen the pain I knew would be inherent upon reading another T. Casey Brennan script, I decided to play a game. I would down a shot of whiskey every time Brennan included an abstract and mystical bit of dialogue. Unfortunately, by the second page I was so (expletive deleted) drunk, I had to begin again the next day. Needless to say, it took me two weeks to read "Dungeons of the Soul" but, oh boy, I had a good time doing it. So many TCB nuggets in this one, but I'll focus on one (as, mercifully for you readers, we don't have the space for all of 'em), when Modrius muses out loud about the exquisite Adrianne:

"I have long been set free from the agonies that sensitivity and gentleness bring! Should I wear my heart on my sleeve, as a target? Should I offer my soul in a drinking cup to all those who would have it? How vulnerable we are in our days of honesty, when we seek to show the love in our unstained souls to a world that wants no part of such things! And how secure we are when we at last surrender, to conceal ourselves within our walls of bone and flesh!"

And who saw that twist climax coming? Raise your hands. No, you didn't!

"The Picture of Death"

In 1750, traveler Herbert Wilson stops at a small pub to stay the night. The drunken patrons warn Wilson not to stay in the room he's offered by the tavern's owner. It's haunted, they say, haunted by a very strange painting on the wall. No one who has stayed in the room was ever seen again. Herbert takes the room anyway and enters, noting the grotesque canvas depicting several ghoulish creatures and hanging on the wall but tabling any alarm until he's rested. But something about the picture nags at the man and he finds himself falling asleep while gazing upon its creepy subject. While Herbert slumbers, the painting's subjects crawl down from within the canvas and pull the terrified man back in with them. Herbert learns that the creatures are actually the lodgers who spent the night in the room and disappeared, trapped inside the nightmarish landscape within. Now, Herbert becomes part of the picture. The story has some logic problems (the tavern mistress seems to be on the up-and-up, so why would she keep renting out this room if it's an abyss?), but its atmosphere of dread (very similar to Poe and Lovecraft) won me over, as did Jose Bea's near-perfect visuals. A little bit of editing (we didn't need to see the chase through the other dimension) and this would have been so much better.

You tell 'em, Don!

Though the tone of the issue's stories is somber, the letters page is full of hilarity. Don McGregor defends his "werewolfry as prejudice" sermon back in #43 known as "The Men Who Called Him Monster." Big Donny Mac allows how he figured there'd be "voices raised in denunciation," but for those of you "who wished (character) Richards had been more of a solid stone cat, all I can tell you, Dude, is that there are only so many things you can do in a 14-page story." The whole diatribe is reprinted to your right, but I'll just remind Mac that perhaps he should leave the deep messages to the Coca-Cola commercial folks and just write a good monster story. Another writer asks if Garcia patterned Richards after actor Sidney Poitier, to which Uncle Creepy answers, "Not really... Richards was described to the artist as "black, in his late twenties and... like one of those classic Dashiell Hammett-school types..." Evidently, Garcia's translator broke it down to Luis in a different fashion.

A reader notes in the letters column of #47 that the cover, by Enrich, looks like it was based on a movie photo. Sure looks like the artist might have got some inspiration from that "Dwight Frye as Renfield" still that popped up every few months in Famous Monsters. I like the new "Coming Attractions" feature on the inside back cover and I'll be monitoring the page for any stories that never showed (there was one if I recall correctly that took years to surface).-Peter

Jack-Big changes at Creepy with the May 1972 issue! The page count jumps from 68 to 76 and the price jumps from 60 cents to 75 cents. Billy Graham is no longer managing editor; in fact, his name is nowhere to be found and now J.R. Cochran is listed as associate editor instead. Three stories stood out for me. The first was the Pagan/Sutton effort, "And Horror Crawls... from Out of the Sea!" Sutton's poses can be awkward at times, and I don't think his art is as good here as it was in last month's Eerie, but for the most part this is a decent horror tale with a satisfying finish. I also enjoyed "For the Sake of Your Children!" but, like Peter, I found it confusing in spots. The first page has a half-page panel that is a real winner and Brocal goes overboard in his gruesome depictions of staking, decapitation, and general mayhem, much as Sutton did in Peter's favorite story above. Overall, it's a Gothic romp.

My third favorite, and perhaps Creepy-est of all, was Brocal's Bosch-influenced "The Picture of Death." His art in the pages that are supposed to depict regular people is weird enough, but the sequence when the creatures start coming out of the paining was most effective. The other three stories were all average. I liked the use of the famous Yeats poem in "What Rough Beast" and Brunner's richly atmospheric art is pleasant, but I don't think his work is as good as that of Gonzalez, Maroto, or Brocal. Still, the art elevates a story that is poorly thought out. "Targos" is ten pages long but seemed like twenty--the line drawings are jarring coming right after Brunner's rich shadows. Here's an example of Katz's prose: "Give up the amulet of power or my sword will taste your soft body." 'Nuff said. Finally, there's our pal T. Casey and "Dungeons of the Soul." It starts out much too wordy but the verbosity calms down and it just becomes obvious, since we all know who the man in the iron mask is long before he stops socially distancing himself. The conclusion is surprisingly schmaltzy for a Warren mag.

From Vampirella 16

From Vampirella 16

From Creepy #45

Next Week...
An early Christmas present
courtesy of Frank Miller!

The Hitchcock Project-Morton Fine and David Friedkin Part Five: The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling [10.26] and Wrapup

by Jack Seabrook

Morton Fine and David Friedkin's fifth and final teleplay for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour was "The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling," broadcast on NBC on Monday, April 19, 1965. The episode was adapted from the famous short story, "The Monkey's Paw," by W. W. Jacobs.

In the story, the White family's peaceful evening at home is interrupted by a visitor, Sergeant-Major Morris, who tells tales of "wars and plagues and strange peoples." Morris takes from his pocket a monkey's paw, "'just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy.'" An old fakir put a spell on it "'so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.'" The first man's third wish was for death, and Morris has had his three wishes as well, but when he throws the paw on the fire, White grabs it off and insists on keeping it. Morris reluctantly complies but urges his old friend to "'wish for something sensible.'"

"The Monkey's Paw"
was first published here

After the old soldier leaves, White wishes for 200 pounds to pay off the house. He feels the paw twist in his hand "'like a snake'" but, by the next morning, no money has appeared. Herbert, his son, goes off to work but has not returned by dinner time. Instead, a solemn man arrives to report that Herbert was "'caught in the machinery'" and killed; he delivers compensation in the amount of 200 pounds.

A week after her son is buried, Mrs. White awakens in the night and demands that her husband use the monkey's paw to grant her wish: "'I wish my son alive again.'" Soon, there is a knock at the door. Mrs. White runs to the door and struggles to open it as her husband begs her not to. He grabs the monkey's paw from the floor and makes his final wish just as his wife opens the door to find "a quiet and deserted road."

A powerful and justifiably famous horror story that most everyone has read or knows from one variation or another, "The Monkey's Paw" still captivates the reader well over a century after it was written. The themes are universal and it is easy to empathize with Mr. and Mrs. White, both grieving the loss of their son, one desperate to see him again, the other knowing the horror that waits outside the door. Jacobs tells the tale sparingly, using five characters and a single setting, working in magic and the supernatural so subtly that the reader hardly has time to question it.

Leif Erickson as Paul White

W. W. Jacobs (1863-1943) was a British author known more for humor than for horror. He worked as a civil servant for the Post Office and his first short story was published in 1885. "The Monkey's Paw" is his most enduring tale and it has been adapted countless times for stage, film, and television, from a 1903 play to films currently in production. The story itself was first published in Harper's magazine's September 1902 issue. Some sources claim that the story's first publication was in the short story collection by Jacobs titled The Lady on the Barge, but British newspapers of the time confirm that the magazine came out in late August 1902 while the book was not published until October of that year.

Why did the creators of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour choose this story to dramatize near the end of the show's final season? Perhaps they thought they could bring something new to the tale. A teleplay was written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin, but it must not have been thought satisfactory, since it was revised by Anthony Terpiloff. In addition, the first four episodes of this series with teleplays by the team of Fine and Friedkin were also directed by Friedkin and produced by the duo; "The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling" is directed by Robert Stevens and has no producer credited. (Norman Lloyd is executive producer, as he was on the other four episodes produced by the team of Fine and Friedkin.)

Jane Wyatt as Anna White

The episode seems like a rush job, with a script padding the story out to the hour length and direction that recalls some of the less impressive aspects of Robert Stevens's work in early, live television. Set on one of "'the islands,'" presumably in the West Indies, the show opens at a mansion where a large, diverse group of party goers watch with cynicism as a gypsy woman and her sons chant, shake a tambourine, and pound a drum. This initial scene is most interesting for its diversity, reflecting the changes in what was acceptable on network television in the spring of 1965. An African-American woman is paired with a white man, while another white man kisses a woman who may be Hispanic or Asian--quite a progressive group for a broadcast during the civil rights movement.

In an adjoining room, Paul White is having a difficult phone call: he owes $150,000 and must come up with it quickly. This is a huge increase from the short story's $200! Meanwhile, at the party, the gypsy woman foresees "'doom and death for one.'" These initial scenes set up conflicts between characters, including Celina, the girlfriend of Howard White (Paul's son), and his mother, Anna, both of whom compete for his affection.

Collin Wilcox as Celina Royce

The rich, rude Celina (who owns the mansion where the Whites are staying as visitors) tosses fistfuls of money at the gypsy woman in an attempt to pry from her the name of the doomed person. The gypsy woman produces the monkey's paw and, of course, it ends up in the possession of Paul, who is desperate for money and who pulls it out of the fire, as did his counterpart in the short story. Later, after he and his wife have gone to bed, Paul impulsively wishes on the paw. Son Howard is a race car driver in this version, and the conflict between Celina and Anna increases as he completes time trials at the track. Anna begs him not to drive, but he does so anyway; viewers familiar with the short story expect his death to occur, but it is delayed.

Later, on the day of the race, Anna wraps her favorite scarf around her son's neck to bring him luck and, despite Paul's reassurances that everything will be alright, Howard dies in a racing accident. Later that day, Anna thinks she hears a race car's engine revving and looks outside to see Howard's friends gathered silently in the yard, surrounded by fog. In a dreamlike scene, she questions them, but they all walk away without responding. A representative from the company that sponsored Howard's race car appears, breaks the news of his death to his parents, and presents Paul with a check for $150,000.

Lee Majors as Howard White

The gypsy is brought back for a seance to try to get Howard's spirit to speak; the extended scene feels like padding and serves little purpose other than to show Anna's desperate wish to contact her son. In the wake of his death, she becomes increasingly convinced of the value of supernatural methods. She has a sudden inspiration to wish on the monkey's paw, despite Paul's warnings; she insists that Paul make the wish and he reluctantly complies. There is an immediate knock at the door and, once again, those who know the short story thinks it is Howard's corpse knocking, but it is only Celina and a companion; the young woman tells the Whites that they must leave.

In this final confrontation between Celina and Anna, it becomes clear that the shallow young woman no longer loves Howard (and perhaps never did), but she recalls and comments on the beauty of his face, something that has been a refrain throughout the show. That night, there is a knock at the door and the show ends as does the story, with the added detail of Anna's scarf being left on the front landing and an emphasis on Howard having no face, in contrast to the beautiful countenance he had while still alive.

Janet MacLachlan
as Gayle

"The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling" features good performances by the two leads, but Collin Wilcox, in an interview many years later, recalled that "'I hated that... I was terrible!'" and it is hard to argue with her characterization of her work in this episode. Lee Majors, who plays Howard, speaks like Elvis Presley in this, one of his very first credits, and Jane Wyatt, who plays his mother, recalls that he was nervous during filming. Robert Stevens, who directs the show, often falls back on extreme close ups of the sort he used so often in his early, live TV work; the effect is to give the show the look of a production that was put together quickly and without much planning. The extreme close ups were necessary in early, live TV due to the small size of screens and the often poor reception, but by 1965, they were not needed and usually avoided.

Stuart Margolin
as Robin

Anthony Terpiloff (1929-1978), who revised the teleplay from Fine and Friedkin's original effort, was born in New York and died in Wales. He wrote for television from 1963 to 1978 and this is one of his two scripts for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in its final season. He also wrote two episodes of The Avengers and five of Space: 1999. There is a website devoted to him here.

Robert Stevens (1920-1989) directed mostly television shows from 1949 to 1987, including 49 episodes of the Hitchcock show; "The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling" was his last and one wonders if he was brought in at the last minute to replace David Friedkin. He won an Emmy for his work on the third-season premiere episode, "The Glass Eye." Stevens directed two live TV versions of "The Monkey's Paw" for the early TV series, Suspense; the first, in 1949, starred Boris Karloff; the second was broadcast in 1950. Both are now lost.

Zolya Talma as the gypsy

Starring as Paul White is Leif Erickson (1911-1986), who was born William Anderson. He performed in vaudeville, sang and played trombone in a band, and was on screen from 1933 to 1984. He also served in the Navy in WWII. He was in three episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "The Equalizer," and he was a regular on High Chaparral (1967-1971). He also appeared on Night Gallery twice.

Anna White is portrayed by Jane Wyatt (1910-2006), who was a familiar face on screen from 1934 to 1992. This was her only appearance on the Hitchcock show. She played Spock's mother in a memorable episode of Star Trek and is best-remembered for her co-starring role on the long-running sitcom, Father Knows Best (1954-1960).

Gil Stuart

Collin Wilcox (1935-2009) plays Celina; trained at the Actors Studio, she was on screen from 1953 to 2003 and appeared in three episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "The Jar." She was also on The Twilight Zone and had an important role in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Lee Majors (1939- ) has had a long career on screen and this was just his second TV credit and his only role on the Hitchcock show. He was a regular on many TV series for almost three decades, starting with The Big Valley (1964-1969), reaching huge stardom as The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-1978), and continuing into the 1980s as The Fall Guy (1981-1986). Majors is still performing on screen as of this writing.

In smaller roles:

• Janet MacLachlan (1933-2010) as Gayle, the outspoken African-American party goer; this was her second appearance on the Hitchcock series and she had a busy career onscreen from 1965 to 2003, including a role on Star Trek.
• Stuart Margolin (1940- ) as Robin, another party goer; he has been on screen since 1961 and is still working today. He also worked behind the camera as a TV director from 1973 to 2010. He was a semi-regular on The Rockford Files and won two Emmy Awards for his role on that series.
• Zolya Talma (1895-1983) as the gypsy; she was in a couple of films in 1917 and 1920, appeared often on Broadway from 1918 to 1951, and had a career on the small screen from 1949 to 1974. This was one of her two appearances on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Despite the fact that her entire performance on this episode is in another language, she was born in California.
• Gil Stuart (1919-1977) as the man who brings the Whites the check for $150,000; he was born in London as Derek Grist and he was on screen from 1941 to 1977. He was on Thriller twice and the Hitchcock show three times.

Read "The Monkey's Paw" for free online here and watch the TV version here; it is not yet available on DVD.

Sources:

British Newspaper Archive, www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/.

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.

Jacobs, W. W. “The Monkey's Paw.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Monkey's Paw, www.gutenberg.org/files/12122/12122-h/12122-h.htm.

“The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling.” The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 10, episode 26, NBC, 19 Apr. 1965.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, www.wikipedia.org/.

Morton Fine and David Friedkin on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: An Overview and Episode Guide

Morton Fine and David Friedkin co-wrote five teleplays for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour during its final season. The first three served as the basis for excellent shows, while the fourth was a weaker entry and the fifth had to be rewritten by someone else. The first four teleplays were expanded from short stories that had been published in mystery digests in the 1950s and early 1960s, while the fifth was an unfortunate adaptation of a classic horror story from the early years of the twentieth century.

"Change of Address" tells of a middle-aged man who lusts after a much-younger woman and murders his unhappy wife. In "The McGregor Affair," a man takes advantage of two unscrupulous men who sell bodies illegally to a medical school in order to do away with his drunken wife; unlike the murderous husband in "Change of Address," this man is haunted by his loss. "Crimson Witness" also deals with an adulterous husband, but this time he kills the man who has stolen his wife's affections. The title character in "Thou Still Unravished Bride" is thought to have been murdered by a serial killer but turns out to be hale and hearty, while "The Monkey's Paw" spells death for the son of a man who desperately needs money.

Fine and Friedkin's best teleplays for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour mix murder, marital discord, and humor; they demonstrate great skill in expanding mediocre short stories into longer tales and giving them layers missing from the originals.

It was unusual for the same person to write and direct episodes of the Hitchcock series; David Friedkin co-wrote and directed four, while he and Fine co-wrote and co-produced the same four. This likely gave them an unprecedented amount of creative control over the final product.


EPISODE GUIDE-MORTON FINE AND DAVID FRIEDKIN ON THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR

Episode title-"Change of Address" [10.2]
Broadcast date-12 October 1964
Teleplay by-Morton Fine and David Friedkin
Based on "Change of Address" by Robert Arthur
First print appearance-The Mysterious Traveler, January 1952
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-no

Episode title-"The McGregor Affair" [10.7]
Broadcast date-23 November 1964
Teleplay by-Morton Fine and David Friedkin
Based on "The McGregor Affair" by Sidney Rowland
First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1953
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-no

"Crimson Witness"

Episode title-"Crimson Witness" [10.12]
Broadcast date-4 January 1965
Teleplay by-Morton Fine and David Friedkin
Based on "Crimson Witness" by Nigel Elliston
First print appearance-The London Mystery Selection, December 1962
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-no

Episode title-"Thou Still Unravished Bride" [10.22]
Broadcast date-22 March 1965
Teleplay by-Morton Fine and David Friedkin
Based on "Thou Still Unravished Bride" by Avram Davidson
First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1958
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-no

"Thou Still Unravished Bride"

Episode title-"The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling"" [10.26]
Broadcast date-19 April 1965
Teleplay by-Morton Fine, David Friedkin, and Anthony Terpiloff
Based on "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs
First print appearance-Harper's, September 1902
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-no

In two weeks: Our series on Harold Swanton begins with "Premonition," starring John Forsythe and Cloris Leachman!

Listen to Annie and Kathryn discuss "Dip in the Pool" here!

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "Place of Shadows" here!

Batman in the 1980s Issue 3: March 1980

The Dark Knight in the 1980s
by Jack Seabrook &
Peter Enfantino

Garcia-Lopez

Batman #321

"Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker...!"
Story by Len Wein
Art by Walt Simonson & Dick Giordano

Commissioner Gordon receives an invitation to the Joker's birthday party and the Joker himself is not far behind, flooding Police Headquarters with laughing gas and kidnapping the commissioner right under Batman's nose. It turns out that the Clown Prince has also kidnapped Robin and, that evening, he breaks into Bruce Wayne's penthouse and spirits away Selina Kyle and Alfred the butler.

At the Joker's Ha-Hacienda, he has his four victims tied to a Victim-Go-Round, which will facilitate his eliminating them all on his birthday the following day. Placing an ad in the paper promising free samples, the Joker attracts a huge crowd to Gotham's coliseum where, the next evening, he paralyzes the crowd with gas and begins his celebration. "Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker...!" is an appropriate salutation for the nut who displays his enemies tied to giant candles on an oversized cake, ready to be ignited and burned to a crisp.

Enter the Caped Crusader, who volunteers to stand in for the others and finds himself tied up as well by the double-crossing fiend. Batman manages to escape and rescues the others in the nick of time by means of a well-thrown Batarang that cuts the fuses; he chases the Joker to the docks, where an attempted escape by boat ends in a conflagration. Is this the end of the Joker?

JS: Thank goodness it isn't! I thoroughly enjoyed this story, which zips along at a rapid clip and which features delightful artwork by two of my favorite Bat-artists. The Joker's elongated face shows the influence of Irv Novick's work in the 1970s, but Len Wein's decision to revive many of the fun Batman elements from the mid-'60s Bat-Mania days just adds to the story's entertainment value.

PE: It may just be that I love the character so much but it seems as though any funny book story is lifted into another realm of quality when it co-stars the Clown Prince of Crime. "Dreadful Birthday..." is entirely enjoyable (though I do have to ask why Batman bothered breaking into Joker's party, only to zip away on his rocket), one of the best Batman adventures I've read in years. The Walt Simonson-Dick Giordano art is fantastic, but then most everything Simonson touches turns to gold. Could we just have a 12-part Joker saga now instead of all these one-and-dones?

Aparo

The Brave and the Bold #160

"The Brimstone Connection"
Story by Cary Burkett
Art by Jim Aparo

Returning home from his nightly vigil, Batman rescues a man who has been thrown through the window of a high building. Before he dies, the man tells Batman that he's a government agent and that he was tracking the path of the formula for an experimental rocket fuel. It was being sent through Gotham City in four parts along a secret route and the man makes a cryptic reference to "The Brimstone Connection."

Not finding any clues, Bruce Wayne is flummoxed until Linda Danvers bursts into his office to ask for his help in locating her foster father, who has been kidnapped. Bruce's ears perk up when she mentions that her Dad was working on a rocket fuel formula. A caramel apple's core left in the wastebasket of Supergirl's foster father leads Batman to a cheap hood named Casbeer and the duo track down the crook at his arcade. They find a map with clues to the rocket fuel's route and Batman realizes that brimstone is an old term for sulphur, leading to the assumption that the villainous Colonel Sulphur is behind the theft!

Supergirl just read our review of this issue.

Tracking Sulphur to an abandoned arms factory, Batman is captured and tied up in a booby trap with Fred Danvers (Supergirl's foster father) but, of course, the Dark Knight saves himself and the scientist. Supergirl foils Sulphur's escape by submarine, ensuring that both her foster father and the secret formula are safe.

JS: The cover boasts: "Together Again--The Team You Demanded!" but I have to wonder who was demanding this team-up. As Peter understands, "girl" comics were not very appealing in the 1970s to us boys, and Supergirl was particularly troubling--she could be super-attractive but also super-dull. I remember the ten-issue run of her series in the early years of that decade to be particularly boring. In this story, she doesn't serve much of a purpose beyond making up the other half of this month's team-up. Aparo doesn't seem to have a good handle on how to draw her, either; his Batman is great, as are his male crooks, but his Supergirl is not one of his better efforts. I know that Supergirl will become a much better character later on (see Crisis on Infinite Earths) and I liked the first season of her current TV show, but as of 1980, she was not a great partner for Batman.

PE: A police profile that spotlights a "penchant for caramel apples" and a criminal so stupid he'd leave one at the scene of a kidnapping? A goon that talks smack to a girl with a big yellow "S" across her bust? Batman connects the words "brimstone" and "sulphur," ergo the bad guy involved must be Colonel Sulphur, a 6th-tier baddie Bats hasn't faced since 1973! Sounds like a 1980 DC script to me. To be fair, Supergirl is not a character I've ever warmed up to (nor do I have a soft spot for Aqualad, Kid Flash, or Atom Boy); I'd just as soon Bats team up with a character a little more in his range like Ra's or next issue's Adam Strange. At least Jim Aparo is on board to make things look shiny.

Giordano

Detective Comics #488

"The Spook's Death Sentence for Batman"
Story by Cary Burkett
Art by Don Newton & Dan Adkins

When convicted murderer and terrorist Simon Thatcher writes a best-selling memoir from death row, his publishers decide they just have to have a sequel. But, with Thatcher to be executed the very next night, it seems unlikely. Enter... the Spook, who guarantees to break Thatcher out of Gotham Penitentiary for a high price. Luckily, the Spook himself designed the prison and knows where all the nooks and crannies are. As a diversion, the criminal mastermind incites a prison riot and Batman comes to the rescue. While the guards are all standing around soaking up Batman's atmosphere and sheer physical prowess, the Spook unleashes his Hypno-Ray on the men and, suddenly, they see the Caped Crusader as Simon Thatcher.

Quicker than you can say "false imprisonment," Bats is thrown into a cell and told to wait for his execution. Stymied, the Dark Knight can think of only one man to get him out of his bind: Commissioner Gordon! The prison guard allows Bats one phone call. Unfortunately, Gordon picks that time to have a heart attack and so cannot rescue his super friend. When the Spook pays a visit to Bats' cell to gloat, Batman uses some crafty subterfuge to escape the prison and head to Gordon's house. Together, the two figure out the shady characters behind Thatcher's breakout and Batman lowers the boom on the publishing world: no sequel. Turns out, Thatcher was never pulled from the Pen but rather moved to another cell until he could be safely extracted. The Spook is apprehended and sent to Gotham Pen to "cool his heels in Thatcher's old cell!"

PE: "The Spook's Death Sentence for Batman" has to be one of the dumbest, most confusing, and confounding Bats adventures I've read since the Frank Robbins days. This could be the only piece of fiction that features the deadly triad of literary agent, ghost writer, and publisher. How about Gordon's heart attack? It was the Spook impersonating Gordon! Bats finds Gordon tied up in his living room and comes up with some cockamamie hypothesis about the Spook slowing his own heart rate down at the hospital and then escaping when no one's looking. Why the hell would he bother doing that? Wouldn't that send up a red flag? Hello, Commissioner Gordon just ran out of the ER after nearly dying! Why not just conk Gordon on the head and ignore the phone when Batman rings? Better yet, move on to the next exciting adventure in this issue.... um, well...

Then there's the Spook himself (last seen in Batman #304). Every action of this villain is based on preposterous coincidences and devices (just like the similar Gentleman Ghost). His disappearing act is only explained when it's convenient to the plot (such as when he visits Bats in his cell and it's revealed that the Spook has actually slipped an inflatable balloon in through a cell window and the thing floats right over to the correct spot and starts speaking) and the powers of the Hypno-Ray are equally questionable. Is there a dial-the-villain setting that allows for people to see what he wants them to see? And are the only victims of the Ray those who were present when the beam caught their eyes (brain?). If so, how would the Spook pull off Bats' execution when none of the witnesses were in the yard when the Ray went off? I'm still enjoying the art of Newton and Adkins. It's edgy at a time when DC was playing it safe; reminds me of the work of Val Mayerik.

JS: What intrigued me most was that, for the second time this month, we see Selina Kyle lounging around Bruce Wayne's pad and this time there is a reference to her being the former Catwoman. How long till that wears off and she's back in the game? As for the Spook, does he advertise in the Yellow Pages? How do crooks know they can just up and hire him to do their dirty work? And what a coincidence! The Spook is hired to bust a guy out of a prison he just happened to have designed. Good thing the bad guy didn't hire the Riddler! I thought it was clever to have Batman trade places with the convict but the Spook's powers overall seem far-fetched.

"The Last Duty!"
Story by Denny O'Neil
Art by Johnny Craig

It's "The Last Duty!" for veteran Gotham subway cop, Clem Schenectady, and he imagines it will be just as uneventful as the previous 9,000 days in the underground. Boy, is he wrong! A spy nabs a boatload of top secret papers from the U.N. (don't they have a locker room for that stuff?) and he's riding Clem's train. It's up to our hero, who grew up idolizing Sherlock Holmes, to figure out which of the passengers is the crook.

PE: Lightweight fare, again, from Denny, "The Last Duty!" is the first in a series of "Tales of Gotham City" shorts highlighting everyday characters from Gotham. I assume everyone in Gotham is named so subtly, so we'll look forward to the adventures of trash man Bobby Tribeca, pizza deliver girl Susie Brooklyn, and sympathetic dope dealer Paco Manhattan. The reveal is so confusing, I had to reread it a couple times and then asked myself, "Why bother?" "Tales of Gotham City" will run steadily until Detective reverts back to normal size. The most jarring aspect of the tale is not that Denny once wrote the best Batman stories on the planet but that Johnny Craig has wasted away to what could best be described as a 1980s Jack Kamen. This work bears no resemblance to the classic stuff he pumped out for EC and Warren; it's lazy and flat.

JS: Peter! How could you? This was my favorite story in the issue and, based on about five minutes with the Grand Comics Database, it is very nearly the last new story Johnny Craig ever drew. I thought the story was a delightful character piece and Craig still knows how to tell a good tale.

"The Leader of the Dark Lords"
Story by Jack C. Harris
Art by Jose Delbo & Frank Chiaramonte

Babs Gordon is having a hard time keeping her mind on her political career when her alter ego, the "Daughter of Darkness," Batgirl, keeps swinging into bad situations. This time out, the Cowled Coquette must come between two warring street gangs, hell-bent on wiping each other out. Can Babs/Bats head off a major brawl and make the streets peaceful again?

PE: "The Leader of the Dark Lords," like "The Last Duty," is typical, pedestrian comic book storytelling; just enough to fill pages with nothing extra on the bone. All that can be salvaged from the strip is Batgirl's final monologue to the gang members, delivered as if by a congresswoman. That's a nice touch by scripter Jack Harris, but I'm not sure two-syllable-plus words won't be wasted on these thugs. Doubtless this storyline is brought on by the phenomenal success of Walter Hill's The Warriors, which captured America's eye and brought the JD gangs back into a popularity they hadn't enjoyed since the early 1960s. Again, Batgirl's segment in Detective seems to be the only series that embraces continuity.

JS: I did not even think of The Warriors, but you're right! Now I won't be able to get "Warriors! Come out to play!" out of my head for the next day or two. I thought the interactions between Barbara Gordon and her father, Commissioner Gordon, were more interesting than the murder mystery involving the street gangs, and the overarching story arc is promising.

"Minus One Miracle Car!"
Story by Mike W. Barr
Art by Eduardo Barretto & Joe Giella

Ralph Dibny is enjoying a rare day off from crime-fighting as the Elongated Man by taking in a test performance of a brand new, dynamite "miracle car" that runs on fuel made from garbage (I assume bundles of 'tec #488 might have found their way into its system). Of course, no day is complete without someone committing a crime in front of the E-Man and the test car is stolen right out from under the manufacturers' noses. It's up to Elongated Man to slide into spots Batman couldn't, to squeeze into soda machine slots Superman would have problems with, and to lie flatter than a pancake, something Wonder Woman could never do! In the end, a very complicated plot is unraveled to a legion of readers who fell asleep on the second page.

PE: Unless I've missed something in my notes, this is the first new E-Man story to come our way since Detective #444 way back in 1975. The strip was handled by Barr and artist Ernie Chan at the time and I must say that, though I wasn't exactly floored, the previous installment is head and shoulders above this tripe. Barretto & Giella have that same pablum sheen so many artists brought to the DC Universe in the '70s and '80s. There's not one bit of unique style here; most of the art looks unfinished (and if it's not unfinished, that's an even worse scenario) but, good news is this is a one-and-done. I love how the crooks let "Hey, you can't stop me, Elongated Man!" just flow off their tongues. By the time they get the sentence done, E-Man has punched them with a sixty-foot-long fist.

JS: Agreed, this is the worst story in the issue, just six pages of filler. I never much liked Elongated Man, even though he was in my beloved Justice League. Once DC got the rights to Plastic Man it seemed pointless to keep going with Elongated Man. And stop calling him E-Man! That's a different (much better) comic. (P.S.: I think there were some more stories after the one in Detective 444.)

PE: E-Man! E-Man! E-Man!

"The Great Campus Kidnap!"
Story by Jack C. Harris
Art by Kurt Schaffenberger & Vince Colletta

Jack Harris hacks the
Batman '80s blog

On campus to get his class card, Dick Grayson gets word he's supposed to report to Kenmore Hall. A bit perturbed (as that's where the bad boys get sent), Dick trots over to the building but sees a lovely distraction on his way: the super foxy new student, Jennifer Anne. Dick crosses the street to make time with the babe but his move is interrupted by a van full of thugs who grab Jennifer and toss her in the back. Turns out Jennifer ain't the only one to be kidnapped that day so Dick changes into his Robin costume and investigates. He uncovers a pack of scumbags who are nabbing students and demanding ransom from their rich folks. With a little help from the campus fuzz, Robin saves his fellow students and fills a few more cells at Gotham Pen.

PE: Not much to say about this one that I haven't already said about the other back-ups, other than "The Great Campus Kidnap!" adds fuel to my belief that no one really cared about these support strips, in either the script or art department. There's virtually nothing to distinguish the Schaffenberger/Colletta art from the work done by Barretto/Giella or Delbo/Chiaramonte or Johnny Craig. It's uniformly pedestrian, with virtually no pizzazz. I have no idea, if I was a fan of this stuff, how I would defend such weak graphics and lazy writing. No distinguishing characteristics at all. Have a look at Bruce Wayne in the final panel; he looks just like Dick, ferchrissakes. Really awful stuff.

JS: I'm no fan of Schaffenberger and I know you're no fan of Colletta, but I think this was slightly better than the tale that preceded it, probably because it was four pages longer and had to tell more of a story. In comparing this issue of Detective to the prior one, I thought this was an improvement and, in the letters page, Paul Levitz admits that they're trying to get Robin and Batgirl back on track. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and comment that the preview of next issue's team up between the two looks promising.

Next Week...
We give our fans a chance to debate
as Peter reveals his favorite Warren story
of all time! Be there!