Recently in Marvel Monsters Category

At the comic shop the other day, I noticed the digest sized reprint of Vampire Tales - Volume 1.  This reprint contains the first 3 issues of the Marvel magazine, in glorious black and white, the way it was originally published.  It features stories by Steve Gerber, Pablo Marcos, Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Gerry Conway, John Romita (Sr) and Esteban Moroto!

The star of Vampire Tales was Morbius, the Living Vampire, but he didn't make on the cover of the magazine until issue #3.  This cover painting was credited to Luis Dominguez, but it also has touches of Romita, especially on the girl's face.  I suspect that Romita did a cover rough and gave it to the painter.

I loved Morbius and these stories in Vampire Tales were far more graphic than his Spider-Man appearances.  Don McGregor portrayed Morbius like a heroin addict, trying to refrain from drinking blood, then going crazy when he can't control the urge.  McGregor set up an arc of stories involving the Demon Fire cult, and the first two were drawn by Rich Buckler.  This is the splash page of the story in issue #3 and you can see Buckler's knack for innovative panel layout once again.

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Besides Morbius, you get the first two Satana stories in this volume.  The very first story was a teaser by Conway and Romita, only 4 pages long, but just perfect in execution.  Romita's design for Satana's costume is wonderful.  In the third issue it was Esteban Moroto who drew Satana.  A wonderful artist, 180 degrees different than any Marvel artist, but the first thing he did was ditch Romita's costume!  And it has been used rarely since. But the costume was resurrected a few years ago, in the Alex Ross/John Romita poster titled Mighty Marvel Heroes and Villains.

If you're a retro dude like me, or if you appreciate classic monsters with a bit of cheese, I think you'll like this reprint volume.  Nuff Said!

Link: Vampire Tales - Volume 1 on Amazon

Mark Millar once remarked that he has several notebooks with all kinds of ideas for Marvel characters.  His new Ultimates mini-series has been giving him the opportunity to showcase a lot of revised heroes and villains. 

Ghost Rider appeared in Ultimate Comics Avengers, Vol. 2: Crime and Punishment.  His first appearance was in this glorious double page spread.  His Ultimate origin still remains tied to Satan, and this supernatural creature is more than a match for the Ultimate Avengers.

M. Schulman is the lucky fellow who owns the pencils to this page by Leinil Yu.  I was surprised to see that Leinil pencils the image on paper, not that I object, I just assumed all young artists drew on the computer.

Millar's take on Ghost Rider is a nice tweak, giving Johnny Blaze a new motivation to keep riding on his hellcycle.  This series also featured the Punisher, who joins the Ultimate Avengers--against his will--to hunt down the Ghost Rider.  The only problem is that he approves of the villains that Ghost Rider is killing.

One piece of Ghost Rider movie news came last week:  Ghost Rider 2 will go into production very soon in Romania.  It will be shot in 3D, of course, because you demanded to see a flaming skull as close as possible.  Don't look too closely at the Penance Stare in this film. 

According to this Nicholas Cage quote on Comic Book Movie News (who got it from MTV):

"This story picks up eight years after the first film. You don't have to have seen the first film. It doesn't contradict anything that happened in the first film, but we're pretending that our audience hasn't seen the first film. It's as if you took that same character where things ended in the first film and then picked it up eight years later - he's just in a much darker, existential place."

One stroke against this film right on the starting gate is that Cage is back as Johnny Blaze.  Who wants to see a middle aged man as Ghost Rider?  Johnny Blaze should be no more than 30 years old.  Eva Mendes won't return as Roxanne Simpson, saving me from another frontal lobotomy.  The directors are Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who produced an entertaining movie in Crank, but fell apart in other works.   

I really don't demand too much from this type of movie.  The first Ghost Rider film I can still watch, if I fast forward right to the scenes where the flesh burns off Cage's face.  The scene at the end with the cowboy version of Ghost Rider, played by Sam Elliott, riding on a flaming horse was really cool.  Nuff Said!

Link: Schulman's Gallery on ComicArtFans.

Link: Ultimate Comics Avengers, Vol. 2: Crime and Punishment

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It's hard to believe now, but there was an issue of Giant-Size Man-Thing that was highly valued in the back issue market.  Issue #4, which featured the very first solo Howard the Duck story by Steve Gerber and Frank Brunner!

Hardcore Marvel fans will clearly remember the printed cover, where Manny is holding the hand of a fearful fool--burning at his touch.  The circle to the lower left contained the cover blurb to let his know that Howard was finally in this issue!  His appearance had been delayed from Giant-Size Man-Thing #3.  But did you know that there was originally something else in this cover circle?

Mike Blanchard (see below for the link to his gallery) owns the original art to the Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 cover.  In the circle, Brunner had drawn a headshot of Howard the Duck!  Apparently the editor thought this wasn't effective enough and had it replaced with the blurbs.  It's kind of a nutty decision.  I would just have put a blurb underneath Howard's head announcing his premiere.

Also interesting: the instructions to give the color to Frank Brunner or Glynis, which was the colorist Glynis Wein.

Paul Stephenson commissioned Brunner to recreate this famous cover.  In this commission, the circle appears with the cover blurb.  Nuff Said!

Link:  Mike Blanchard Gallery on ComicArtFans

Link:  Paul Stephenson Gallery on ComicArtFans

We haven't had a Monster Monday here for quite a while.  Here's a Mike Ploog piece to get us back in gear.

A nice gluey gloppy Man-Thing commission for ComicArtFans Simon Reed.  Nuff Said!

It's going to be a monstrous week for me.  The only thing that can make it better is a week of Michael Golden covers...starting off with my favorite hell-raiser, Ghost Rider!

This 1991 cover appeared in the Doctor Strange Ghost Rider special.  The interior story wasn't that great, but the cover alone justified the buck fifty.  I love how Golden draws that hellcycle climbing up that mystic bridge.

Surprisingly, Doctor Strange is very small, even though he's the co-star.  I am sure the editors wanted Ghost Rider to be the focal point, since his popularity was much greater.  The version above was the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider.

Golden did draw the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider 10 years earlier in this cover to Defenders 96.  Blaze's hellcycle is literally ablaze in flame, which Golden details in utter delight.  Doctor Strange and Daimon Hellstrom appear in the background.

Which Ghost Rider do you prefer?  Ketch's bike is cooler, but Blaze's uniform, an ode to Evel Knivel, simply can't be beat.  Nuff Said!

As a big fan of the Marvel Monsters, I couldn't wait to see them meet each other.  In particular, I wanted Morbius to meet Werewolf By Night.

Giant-Size Werewolf By Night #3, published in 1975, featured this titanic event.  Would you believe this Gil Kane cover was the single best thing about this comic?  The interior artwork by Virgil Redondo is so horrible, I can't even bear to crop any scans and show you here.  It's like the artwork for a drab 1950s romance comic (not a Johnny Romita romance book--that would be cool) that some idiot thought was appropriate for a horror story.

Of all the Giant-Size books, the Werewolf drew the short end of the stick on artists.  What a shame--especially after being drawn by Ploog, Kane, and Sutton in the regular monthly series.  Nuff said.

Here's a 1990 drawing by Javier Saltares that I found on Romitaman's website.  According to the description, this was a promotional drawing for the "second-generation" Danny Ketch Ghost Rider that debuted later in 1990.  Nuff said!

Here’s a pinup that I’ve waiting to share for a while…

Man-Thing, by Vicente Alcazar, in the frontispiece for Marvel Preview #8, 1976.  Great use of the light source held by the boy, illuminating Manny in all his freakish glory.  Alcazar always worked well with ink washes, but he dropped off the comics radar after 1980 or so.  You can read a small bio of Alcazar on Wikipedia.  Nuff said!