Black and White Wednesday: "Subscribe, Marvelite!" Said the Subscription Ads

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Many times has Ol' Groove rapped about the magnificence of Marvel's black-and-white mags 'cause they were truly far-out and worthy of much lavish praise. It seems that the folks at the House of Ideas went out of their way to make every page special--even the ads! Just check out these beautifully illustrated and sometimes hilarious subscription ads from mags like Savage Sword of Conan, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Marvel Preview, Monsters Unleashed, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, and Vampire Tales f'rinstance. We're talkin' art by guys like Robert Kline, Alfredo Alcala, Tim Conrad...like wow! Can you dig 'em?

Black and White Wednesday: "The Fury of the Femizons"

Ah, yes, Stan Lee and John Romita's Femizons. Nope, they didn't appear in a comic that came out in December (they originally appeared in the legendary Savage Tales #1 in the spring of 1971). There's definitely no Christmas theme to the story (except love and sacrifice...hmmm...). Nope, the reason Ol' Groove is layin' these barbaric beauties on ya is to create sort of a tribute to those great Christmases when Young Groove would get one of Stan Lee's "Origins" books stuffed in his stocking. Christmas 1975, it was Origins of Marvel Comics and Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. Christmas 1976 it was Bring On the Bad Guys. The last one, today's focus, was The Superhero Women, which I got for Christmas 1977. Loved, loved, loved those books. They were my gateway to the Marvel Age of Comics, Stan Lee style (Stan was easing back when yours truly got heavily into comics in 1971). I'll cover those titanic tomes before the month is out, never you fear, Groove-ophile!

Anyway, convoluted reasoning aside, I've just been looking for an excuse to unleash this little gem upon ya's. It's Stan at his "relevant" best, mixing sci-fi with a heavy message. Jazzy John Romita really cuts loose on this strip, as well. His costume designs, as well as his mixing medias like wash and charcoal, represent the most daring and original work he's ever produced, imho.

Here's how the strip came about, according to Stan from The Superhero Women, pages 195-196:

"The Femizons first appeared in Savage Tales #1, in the May '71 issue. I might add that that's when they last appeared, also; since we never did a follow-up story. You see, John (Ring-a-Ding) Romita and I were really bustin' to do a story for the first issue of an entirely new type of publication for us. For the first time, were were planning to do a comic book mag for somewhat older readers. Not an underground publication--not a so-called "adult" magazine--but rather, a selection of stories, done in black-and-white, slanted for the more mature science-fiction and adventure reader.

"Jazzy Johnny and I knew neither of us would have the time to do a sequel story after we finished the first one, but at least we'd have gotten this particular yarn out of our systems. We had been planning to do a strip about a band of warrior women for years; a strip that would take place in the future, when--owing to the ration of man/woman deaths, and the fact that the female population is increasing at a disproportionate rate of growth--women would be the dominant sex, and men would be cast in the subjective role that females had occupied for so many centuries."

It wasn't long, however, until Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway found a way to tie the Femizons into the Marvel Universe with the creation of Thundra in the Fantastic Four #129. But that's another story, man. Let's get to the Femizons!

WEREWOLF WEEK Rolls On! Solomon Kane in "The Silver Beast Beyond Torkertown"

It's Werewolf Week! It's Black and White Wednesday! It's Day 22 of... ...and it's time to raise some more Kane! Solomon Kane, that is!

After Marvel's line of monster mags shambled off into that big back-issue bin in the sky, the only place to find good B&W horror comics in the Mighty Marvel Manner was in an odd issue of Marvel Preview or in an issue of Savage Sword of Conan (remember, the Sword and Sorcery genre is half-supernatural, after all). Robert E. Howard's creations Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane bounced around from issue to issue and place to place facing horrors that would make a lesser man die of fright (to put it mildly). Spearheaded by Roy Thomas who surrounded himself with Marvel's top talent (folks like John Buscema, Neal Adams, Tony deZuniga, Ernie Chan, Doug Moench, Dick Giordano, Mike Ploog, Frank Brunner, Tim Conrad, etc., etc.), SSoC delivered the highest-quality B&W comics on a monthly basis.

As proof, I offer this gem from Savage Sword of Conan #14 (July, 1976), written by the ever-so-talented Doug Moench (who at the time was also writing Werewolf By Night) with art by Mike Zeck (ain't that a far-out name?). It's worth noting that this is Zeck's first full-length story for Marvel. Until that time, Zeck had been submitting pin-ups to Marvel's B&W mags, while keeping his pencil very busy at Charlton on a variety of strips (most notably, Monster Hunters). From this story, Zeck would very quickly work his way to super-stardom on Master of Kung Fu, and post-Groovy Age runs on Captain America, the Punisher, and the (in)famous Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars.

Frightening First Fridays: Monsters Unleashed #1/First Comicbook Appearance of Solomon Kane

Today, we're taking a look at the first ish of one of my favorite Marvel Monster Mags featuring one of my favorite characters by two of my favorite authors (Who says this isn't the Groovy Age of self-indulgence?) as...

meets...

Yeah, back in 1973, Stan and the gang decided they would invade Jim Warren's territory and started up a line of black and white magazine-sized comics. According to Roy Thomas (in an interview in Comic Book Artist #13), "...Stan walked in and said, 'We're going to do two black and white horror books,' and the next morning he said, 'We're going to do three,' and then four..." I remember seeing promos in F.O.O.M. magazine for Vampire Tales, Tales of the Zombie, Dracula Lives, Haunt of Horror (a prose digest magazine), and my fave, Monsters Unleashed, so Roy's memory is probably pretty spot on. It wasn't long before non-horror mags started getting added to the list, Savage Tales, Planet of the Apes, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Crazy...it was B&W comicbook heaven for a while, Groovesters!

Ahem, back to the topic of this post. Monsters Unleashed ran for 11 issues (Spring, 1973-January, 1975) and one annual (Summer, 1975). During its run it featured a few series, like the Frankenstein Monster, Man-Thing, Gullivar Jones Warrior of Mars, as well as short shockers and strips with characters from the color mags, like Tigra and Werewolf by Night. The stories and art were of high quality, mostly done by Bullpen regulars like Thomas, Doug Moench, Don McGregor, Steve Gerber, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Gary Friedrich, Tony Isabella, Steve Skeates, Chris Claremont, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Syd Shores, Val Mayerick, George Tuska, Klaus Janson, Don Perlin, Dave Cockrum, George Perez, Pat Broderick, and Neal Adams, as well as awesome artists from "across the water" like Tony DeZuniga, Sonny Trinidad, Vincente Alcazar, Sanho Kim, and Pablo Marcos. It was, indeed, a great mag.

MU didn't start off too shabby, either! Beneath that incredible Gray Morrow cover, the first issue includes a ton of far-out frighteners, like "The Man Who Cried Werewolf" (Gerry Conway and Pablo Marcos adapting a story by Robert [Psycho] Block), Marv Wolfman and Syd Shores' "The Thing in the Freezer", and the Gardner Fox/Roy Thomas/Gene Colan masterpiece, "World of Warlocks". But one story really blew me away back then. Man, it still blows me away! Yep, I'm finally gettin' around to what I was rappin' about at the top of this post ('bout time, huh?). Roy Thomas teamed up with former Wally Wood assistant, underground comics, National Lampoon, and paperback illustrator Ralph Reese on one of Robert E. Howard's earliest (and greatest) tales of terror, "Skulls in the Stars". Not only was "Skulls" a terrific tale on its own, it's even more important because it introduced the world to Solomon Kane, Howard's legendary Puritan hero. In ten short pages, Thomas and Reese captured the sheer terror of Howard's original prose and produced, what I believe to be, the true masterpiece of the whole Monsters Unleashed series. Dig in, baby!