Halloween countdown - Classic Comic Book Pages - Adams and Morrow Man-Thing

The story of how Savage Tales #1 (1971) and Astonishing Tales #12 (June 1972) are linked together is a strange one. Savage Tales #1 was Marvels second attempt at entering the black and white magazine market and would star Conan, Ka-zar and feature other then new concepts including Man-Thing who would appear in an 11 page tale written by Gerry Conway and illustrated by Gray Morrow. However, Martin Goodman Marvels publisher , was not keen on entering the non-code comic magazine market and cancelled the second issue but not before a second Man-Thing tale had been prepared by Len Wein and Neal Adams a tale that would eventually be into the pages of a Ka-Zar story over one year later. Regardless of the eventual reasons both tales were stunningly illustrated by two of the genres artistic giants .

The above strip was republished in Monsters Unleashed #3 ( illo at header and below) and in the first issue of The Book of the Dead in 1994.

As noted above Wein and Adams had produced a second 7 page Man-Thing tale for the aborted second issue of Savage Tales. Not wishing to waste work produced by arguably two of comics tops creators the strip was passed to John Romita to tidy up and add yellow tones, before adding it into a Ka-Zar tale.

Below the cover to Astonishing Tales issue 12.

Below the magazine where it all started the excellent Savage Tales issue 1 ( as you can see my copy is badly marked)

Halloween bring on the back ups- Spawn of Frankenstein by Kaluta and Wolfman

The Phantom Stranger was one of the few DC comic books that I found difficult to track down back in the good old 1970s. That was until one day in 1974 when I came across Phantom Stranger #29 staring out at me from the spinner rack . That issue contained the second last back up tale featuring the Spawn of Frankenstein with art by golden age legend Bernard Bailey. Now Mr Bailey drew one of my favourite golden age strips the origin of the Spectre, but his art by 1974 was very dated for this character, so when I found out Mike Kaluta had illustrated the first 3 tales (#23-25) of the Spawn of Frankenstein I had to track them down. So far I have only found issue 23 ( which I picked up in 1979) featuring his origin tale but its a great little story worthy of reading on a cold dank halloween night.

Below a page fron Bernard Bailey's version of Spawn of Frankenstein. Image from internet

Below the cover from Phantom Stranger #23 featuring the above origin of the Spawn of Frankenstein. Cover art by Jim Aparo

Halloween countdown. Top 13's - The horror covers of Luis Dominguez

Well it's that time of the year again when ghosts and gouls take centre stage, so lets take a look at some of the best horror\mystery comic book covers of the 1970's. One of the best horror cover artists was the excellent Argentine artist Luis Dominguez (1923 - 2020). Luis worked for many publishers including Warren , Gold Key, and Marvel but he was most prolific at DC. During his time at DC Dominguez drew for almost every DC mystery title including Witching Hour, the Unexpected, Weird War, Houses of Mystery\Secrets and the Phantom Stranger. Like the legandary Nick Cardy I picked up many DC comics simply based on his cover art alone. Below are some of my favourite of his covers.

Favourite comics: Captain Sternn by Bernie Wrightson

One of the best comics of the 1980s that wasn't published by the big two (DC or Marvel) was Bernie Wrightson's Captain Sternn. The good Captain first appeared in the pages of the June 1980 edition of Heavy Metal magazine before staring in the 1981 animated Heavy Metal movie. However, it wouldn't be until 1993 when Kitchen Sink published the adventures of Captain Lincoln Sternn in a 5 issue mini series that I would savour Wrightson's lush cartoon style art. Below are some pages from the series featuring the amoral, wisecracking captain along with his wonderful partner in crime, the Hulk like Hanover Fiste (pictured above at the header).

Below are the excellent front and back covers to a recent collected edition (image from inertnet) whic

back cover

Conan the Movie by Neal Adams?

Here's an interesting piece of Conan art from the legendary Neal Adams that was published in Savage Sword of Conan #60. A few years before the release of the first Conan movie ( 1982) Adams was approached to provide some storyboard ideas for the proposed film. Sadly these never came to fruition due to the original producer losing the rights to Conan, other fustrations with Holywood followed which resulted in Adams losing interest in the project. As an exercise he provided a set of unofficial ( and unused) storyboard ideas on the opening sequence for what would become the Conan the Barbarian movie

Below the introduction to Neals storyboard idea by Mike W Barr.

Below the cover to SSOC #60 ( art by Earl Norem).