Comic Coverage

Bizarro Bad Guys...The Final Lineup!

After hundreds of votes from a dozen different countries, it's time to reveal the world's Worst Dressed Supervillains! BEHOLD...

 

This post brings a close to my month-long Blog of Horror celebration. I  hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed putting it together (despite a five day vacation in the middle of it).  Thanks to everyone who dropped by to vote on a poll, participate in a quiz, or to offer a comment. Your feedback and continued readership is really appreciated!

Happy Halloween!

The Spectre's Guide to Ironic Punishment (Part 3)

 

I am THE SPECTRE. For the third and final time this month, I will extole my principles of Ironic Punishment upon the teeming hordes of evil. You see, it is not enough for me to simply punish an evildoer...because true justice demands that the punishment should not only fit the crime, but echo it as well. As I made clear with evil hairdressers and a swindling swami, a criminal's punishment should ideally share the same theme, settings, or implements as his evil deeds...thus producing obvious and cosmically-satisfying levels of irony!

This final example, originally chronicled in Adventure Comics #434 (1974), involved a twisted craftsman named Ezekial Borosovitch. "Zeke", as he was called, worked for J.R. Monarch creating mannikins for department stores. Hating humanity as much as he loved and cherished his artificial people, Zeke commanded his legions of mannikins to butcher the living beings in their presense... such as these unsuspecting truck drivers...

 

Zeke's macabre, expressionless killers then systematically massacred the customers of area stores, even attacking me in my human guise of Detective Jim Corrigan! With so much innocent blood crying out for justice, I paid a visit to the twisted old man and his brood of unholy plastic...

 

Thus, another suitably ironic end to an evildoer!

Simply the Best: Welcome to the VAULT OF EVIL!

As an eight year-old comic book rookie, I wasn't familiar with either horror comics or the eerie vignettes of shows like The Twilight Zone (having only three TV stations in my hometown). Of course, that didn't stop me from jumping in with both feet and buying The Vault of Evil #13 from Falk's Pharmacy in the summer of 1974. Sure, compared to all of the other Simply the Best covers I've featured, this one may not be an artistic classic for the ages...but it's certainly a sentimental favorite of mine as I recall that vaguely "naughty" feeling of buying something with the Devil so prominently featured. And, yes, this is a scan of my well-worn personal copy (click to enlarge): 

So, since the cover was the primary reason I bought it, what was awaiting me inside? As it turned out, quite a nice variety of weirdness...and my first real experience with the concept of irony-laden "twist" endings.

A summary:

Tale #1: "The Heat's On", a dark tale of cruelty, spousal abuse, marital infidelity, a scheming she-devil, and going straight to Hell! Perfect for an eight year-old! Note the mysterious, looming presence of Satan in the final panel.

Tale #2: "The Telepathic Typewriter", a weird morality tale of a writer who discovered a truth-telling typewriter, but is later overcome with greed.

Tale #3: "The Madman", featuring a nurse who was actually a murderous spy for a race of four-armed subterranean invaders. A very odd and unsettling story at the time.

Tale #4: "Contents: One Human!", a quirky sci-fi story in which people are shrunk to a height of six inches and mailed in packages to save on travel expenses...a program secretly operated by a Martian!

As the years went on, the sci-fi/horror anthology format became a familiar and favorite experience, whether from old time radio, TV, or comic books. But, for me, that great tradition started with Vault of Evil #13 and its collection of surreal, supernatural tales.

REMINDER: Today is the last day to vote for your (least) favorite Bizarro Bad Guys! Polls will be open until 11:59 pm (CST), so click on the links below to select who you think has the worst-dressed supervillain!

Click HERE to vote for DOCTOR DOOM.

Click HERE to vote for GALACTUS.

Click HERE to vote for MAGNETO.

Click HERE to vote for a "WILD CARD" SUPERVILLAIN.

The contestants with the most votes in each character group will join the official final lineup of The Bizarro Bad Guys on Halloween Day!

Monkey Business: Gorilla Witch!

 

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble! As crazy as DC's penchant for ape, gorilla, and monkey covers could get, few covers surpassed the sheer insanity of an eyepatch-wearing gorilla stirring up a witch's brew of world domination! 

Name: Taro, the Gorilla Witch

First Appearance: Strange Adventures #186 (1966)

History: While he brewed a magic potion that would allow him to communicate with animals, a jungle explorer named Reed was suddenly attacked by a gorilla. During the attack, the potion's potent fumes turned Reed into a gorilla while giving Taro (the attacking gorilla) human intelligence. The newly-intelligent Taro put on Reed's clothes (including Reed's eyepatch!), mixed up some more gorilla potion, then set about making an army of intelligent apes to take over the world (ala The Planet of the Apes). Luckily for humanity, Reed's friend Bruce slipped a transformation-neutralizing antidote into the brew, causing Taro to lose his intelligence and Reed to regain his humanity.  Taro was then captured and shipped off to a zoo...while still wearing Reed's eyepatch! 

Powers and Abilities: As Gorilla Witch, the witch brew gave Taro the capability of making a vast army of intelligent apes with which to take over the world, which he imagined in the panel below (click to enlarge).

Taro's human intelligence gave him the ability to "impersonate" Reed....with the amusing exception of putting his eyepatch over the wrong eye, thereby sowing the seeds of his defeat.

 

For more DC Comics Monkey Business, click here.

Poll: Bizarro Bad Guys...WILD CARD!

As the Blog of Horror heads into its final week for 2008, it's time to pick the last member of the Bizarro Bad Guys.  However, unlike the polls for Dr. Doom, Galactus, and Magneto, this time you'll be picking from four completely different super villains. Gathered from photo sites across the internet, these hapless specimens of low-budget villainy are all vying for your vote.

Next, check out the poll below and click on your least favorite costume. You'll only have between now and October 29th to vote, so get to it!  The contestant with the most votes will join the winners of the other three categories on Halloween Day in the final Bizarro Bad Guys lineup, ready to rock the world with their impressive unimpressiveness.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Random Coolness (Spooky Edition)

More of the small details that made a BIG impression... only this time with a spookier edge befitting this month's Blog of Horror theme. The three randomly cool-slash-spooky items below are just that: completely random elements that, for a variety of reasons, have been instant and enduring favorites of mine.

Doctor Fate's helmet: From my very first glimpse of the character on the back cover of a Justice League treasury edition, I've been fascinated by the character of Doctor Fate. A super-sorcerer who made his Golden Age debut in (the oddly titled) More Fun Comics #55 (1940), Fate's appeal for me wasn't so much his hocus-pocus as it was his arresting visual presense, particularly his golden, gleaming helmet. Completely obscuring his human face, the helmet made Fate an eerie, mysterious presence in stories that were already quite weird and surreal.

Even more eerie were the helmet's solid black eye holes, which was the standard look for Fate's Golden and early Silver Age appearances. Sure, the white "glowing" eye slits of his modern incarnation are plenty cool looking, too...but that helmet with the black, blank eyes?  That's what an eldritch sorcerer with ties to ancient magic should look like!

 

The Puppet Master as drawn by Jack Kirby: By no means an A-list threat, Fantastic Four foe Phillip Masters, a.k.a. the Puppet Master (as originally drawn by Jack Kirby) is nonetheless one of the creepiest chracters in all of comicdom. Creating dolls from radioactive clay, the Puppet Master could control the minds of their human counterparts...which alone is a disturbing concept...but combined with a face featuring the splayed lashes and toothy grin of a vetriloquist dummy (those things have always freaked me out), well...let's just say he made an utterly unforgettable impression on me. Succeeding artists have either gone light on the dummy-features or have simply portrayed him as a non-descript bald guy, which obviously drained the character of all the freaky power of Kirby's original vision.

Gene Colan's Dracula: From my earliest days as a comic book fan, I've loved the moody, murky style and cinematic flair of illustrator Gene Colan. However, as great as his superhero stuff was, I believe his greatest and most lasting contribution to the art form...his masterpiece, if you will, is his long, critically-acclaimed run on Marvel's Tomb of Dracula. At the core of this appeal is his depiction of the title character himself. Sure, initially Marvel's Dracula was merely continuing the visual archetype popularized in movies and costume balls, but Colan took the character several steps further by moving away from the charismatic model featured in films too many to number. Instead, Colan portrayed Dracula less as a suave seducer and more a demonic, supernatural force...which was powerfully driven home through the fluid, flickering shadows of the artist's style. Of course, some of the acclaim should also go to inker Tom Palmer, who understood how to interpret Colan's flowing pencil work like no other.

POLL: Choose Bizarro Magneto!

First you voted for the goofy Bizarro-version of Dr. Doom! Then you voted for the worst Galactus costume in all the cosmos! Now it's time to vote for the lamest version of Magneto, Marvel's master of magnetism and arch-enemy of the X-Men. Gathered from photo posting sites across the internet, these four contestants are vying for the status of least-attractive Magneto (Get it? Magnetism? Attraction? Oh, never mind).

Next, check out the poll below and click on your least favorite Magneto costume. You'll have between now and October 29th to vote, with the winner announced on Halloween Day (along with the winners of the Dr. Doom, Galactus, and a final mystery category). Got it?  Then go vote!

Online Surveys & Market Research

The Spectre's Guide to Ironic Punishment (Part 2)

 

I am the Spectre, an avenging spirit of justice. I take great professional pride in administering highly ironic punishments that fit the crimes committed by the scurrying cockroaches of criminality. For example, in my first exploration of Ironic Punishment principles, I used hairstyling implements to punish evil male beauticians...an offbeat yet near textbook example of ironic justice. I shall now chronicle another ironic punishment that took place in Adventure Comics #433 (1974). Using a glowing crystal ball, Swami Seelal swindled untold riches from gullible socialites. When one of his foolish flock notified the con artist her "donations" were halted by her skeptical industrialist husband, the Swami promised to "intercede" on her behalf:

(click on the images for a larger view)

Once the woman left, the Swami ordered his thuggish assistant Smiley to show Mr. Vandergilt some "righteous anger from the astral realm" at one of his construction sites...assuring the cash flow from Mrs. Vandergilt would continue indefinitely!

When I investigated the crime in my guise of police detective Jim Corrigan, the murderous assistant blew up my car with a hand grenade. Arrogantly thinking Corrigan to be dead, the Swami and his assistant only accelerated the timetable for their own highly ironic punishments! Having already dealt with Smiley, my attentions turned to the Swami...using the very instrument of his deceptions to administer my wrath...

 

21st Century Advancements: Cool Costumes!

As you can see from this 1974 Sears Catalog page, options for Halloween costumes were extremely limited, especially if you wanted to go as a superhero (click on the image for a larger view). Unless you were a kid who had a world-class seamstress for a mom, anyone who wanted to trick-or-treat in an authentic-looking Superman or Batman costume had to dramatically lower their hopes and expectations.

You see, this was the era when adults who designed such costumes believed that as long as there was at least a vague resemblance to the actual comic book costumes, it was good to go. That mindset certainly explains the decidedly non-tough, pajama-like look of the Superman and Batman costumes...not to mention the non-sensical red mask for Superman and that eerie plasti-face mask for Batman. Those types of masks, besides being incredibly dangerous (by virtually eliminating peripheral vision) were also somewhat claustrophobic, hot, and tough to breathe through...making tripping and kid collisions a common occurence in darkened yards.

Flash forward thirty-four years and you can see that Halloween costume-tech has come a long way since those dark days of inauthentic jammy-costumes and creepy "old man face" plastic-masks. Let's do a side-by-side comparison of the 1974 Superman costume with readily-available versions sold today:

In almost all respects, the modern costume looks very convincing, and a dream come true for a young Superman fan.  I think the fake muscle padding is the most significant "advance" from the Bad Old Days...and, of course, tossing aside that bizarre red mask (whose idea was that, anyway?).

The modern Batman costume offers an even greater contrast with its 1970's predecessor. Gone is the giant chest emblem with the "Batman" label and the weird, expressionless mask, replaced by a torso of synthetic muscles, a cool scalloped cape, and a nifty-looking cowl. Man...if we had anything close to these modern costumes in the 70's, our superhero Halloweens would have been even more exciting and certainly alot less dangerous.  

Of course, even if we did have cool costumes like this back in my day, I'm sure my mom still would have made me wear a jacket over it.

The Highlight Reel: Frankenstein vs. Dracula!

If you have a pulse, you'll recognize the two gentlemen on the left as Boris Karloff's Frankenstein Monster and Bela Lugosi's Dracula...quite simply the greatest of Universal's pantheon of movie monsters. 

Of course, the only thing marring their combined greatness is the fact that these guys never actually fought each other in any of the Universal horror movies. Sure, the characters co-starred in plenty of movies like The House of Frankenstein (1944) and The House of Dracula (1945), but none of their interactions (with the exception of one schlocky 70's movie) ever approached that of an actual mano-a-mano slugfest (click here for a long overview of their non-fighting history). 

So, with movies missing the boat on a Frankenstein-Dracula clash, it would eventually fall to a comic book to make that fantasy-fight a reality...specifically in Marvel's Frankenstein Monster #8 and #9 (1973).

Befriending a gentle gypsy named Carmen, Frankenstein's monster was tricked by the young woman's scheming grandmother to unleash the evil of Dracula. Wasting no time, the Lord of Vampires began a killing spree that counted Carmen herself as one of his victims.

After he escaped from the standard gang of angry villagers, the monster sought refuge in a dark mountain cave, only to be attacked by Carmen...who was now a savage, blood-hungry vampire! With the stage now set, let's join the tormented creature as he sadly does what must be done...followed by the entrance of her imperious new master...

(click on the pages for a monster-sized view)

At this point in his career, few artists could surprass the sheer emotional impact of John Buscema's pencils. Merging superheroic dynamism with wonderfully expressive faces and body language, Buscema (along with underrated inker John Verpoorten) made this battle every bit as exciting as we always imagined it could be....

Battles like this are notorious for ending in unresolved "draws", as not to favor one character over the other (i.e. the many Superman vs. Flash races). However, this battle ignores that frustrating tradition by offering a clear and convincing winner. "One Must Die" as the cover proclaimed, and "one" certainly did...in a decisive, savage, and emotionally powerful sequence worthy of any Universal horror classic:

This fantastic (albeit brief) battle makes it all the more perplexing as to why Universal Studios never staged anything similar in their long series of monster movie crossovers. Perhaps Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula simply appearing in the same movie together was a big enough thrill for their original audiences, while violent physical battle may be something we comic book fans tend to impose upon these sorts of things.  Well, whatever their reasons for not filming what could have been History's Greatest Battle, at least Marvel Comics went where nobody else was willing to go with these two Titans of Terror.