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Post by Phil Maurice on Aug 23, 2014 21:15:49 GMT -5
Giant-Size Creatures #1 features an article by Roy Thomas entitled "Waiter, There's A Werewolf in my Soup" wherein he describes plotting an origin story for a proposed horror book called "I, Werewolf," an ongoing series told in first-person using monster tropes heretofore verboten by the Comics Code. The idea would eventually materialize as Marvel's Werewolf By Night, but in the early development stage, Roy says:
Count me among those interested. Giant-Size Creatures only lasted one issue, and a Google search fails to yield any fruit. Have Smith's Werewolf pages ever seen the light of day? |
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Post by berkley on Aug 23, 2014 21:28:53 GMT -5
No idea, but I'd love to see them. BWS really should have done a horror series while he was at Marvel, as IIRC he made his stylistic breakthrough, as far as his work with Marvel is concerned, right around the time their horror line was just starting to explode; but I suppose he was pretty busy with Conan.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2014 21:42:27 GMT -5
Such a tease, that Roy Thomas!
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Post by Phil Maurice on Aug 23, 2014 22:42:53 GMT -5
For me, Mike Ploog has the definitive take on Marvel's Werewolf (likewise Man-Thing and Monster of Frankenstein). It was a Lon Chaney Jr. inspired design that was followed up with skillful treatments by Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, Ross Andru and others. I'm ambivalent toward later efforts that made the character more lupine in form. Would love to see what BWS did with the concept.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 24, 2014 9:51:03 GMT -5
Would defiantly agree with you Phil on Ploog. His art is amazing, and his work on titles, some of the only that I own of that title, simply because of his name. While BWS' pages would certainly be interesting to see, in hindsight I would certainly not want to trade Ploog for anybody on WBN, or anything he's done. He's a good a master at macabre as Wrightson is.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jun 4, 2015 19:30:30 GMT -5
A similar story I just ran across:
The Bullpen Bulletins for January 1971 mention "ROARIN' RICH BUCKLER, who's presently penciling a brand new thriller for us. We wanna keep you in suspense a while longer, but we think the title, MAN-WOLF, is sure to grab ya!"
Then from an interview with Buckler in Comic Book Artist #7:
Buckler: The first assignment I got from Stan Lee was a Man-Wolf story, which was a character he wanted to do something with, and he made up a story on the spot. I drew it, and it was never published. I believe later George Perez did something with the Man-Wolf character...
CBA: Oh, this was before the start of the Man-Wolf series in Creatures on the Loose?
Buckler: Yeah. I think Stan liked my pages where I'd handled the Black Panther and he thought "Wow, let's have Buckler try an animal-like character--he seems to be good at this."
This would have been before the Comics Code was relaxed to allow werewolves, thus obviously before the debut of WBN in Marvel Spotlight, so I suspect that Stan had this in mind for the new Savage Tales black and white magazine, which would debut and immediately stall the month following this bulletin. I'd wager this original attempt was not tied in with Spider-Man, but I do wonder how much, if anything, from Buckler and Lee's first try was retained when Gerry Conway finally used the name for John Jameson's lycanthrophic menace a few years later. Because now I can't help but see suggestions of Buckler in that Man-Wolf design, with the raised piping around the shoulders where the sleeves are torn off reminding me of Deathlok, for example.
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Post by hondobrode on Jun 4, 2015 20:12:14 GMT -5
Man-Wolf was a pretty cool concept and Perez made it very period-appropriate for the late 70's.
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Post by berkley on Jun 4, 2015 21:05:47 GMT -5
Man-Wolf I remember mainly for the excellent early Perez art. It was a sort of ERB-style planet-story, wasn't it, on another world with sword-fighting and vying kingdoms and so on? To be honest, my vague memories say that it would have been just as much fun if Man-Wolf had been just a regular John Carter type rather than a wolf-man.
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Post by fanboystranger on Jun 4, 2015 22:23:26 GMT -5
Man-Wolf I remember mainly for the excellent early Perez art. It was a sort of ERB-style planet-story, wasn't it, on another world with sword-fighting and vying kingdoms and so on? To be honest, my vague memories say that it would have been just as much fun if Man-Wolf had been just a regular John Carter type rather than a wolf-man. Didn't Marvel already have a running John Carter: Warlord of Mars series around the same time when Man-Wolf appeared? Or maybe just before? I know Gil Kane did some work on the title. Perhaps Man-Wolf had something to do with the ERB license, and they had to alter the original concept so the ERB people would stay on Marvel's good side.
I'm just spitballing here, but I know someone around here is going to have a definitive answer.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2015 0:58:31 GMT -5
Man-Wolf debuted in '74, they didn't get the ERB license until like '78 or '79. DC still had the ERB license at the point Man-Wolf was coming out I think.
-M
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 5, 2015 11:15:02 GMT -5
A similar story I just ran across: The Bullpen Bulletins for January 1971 mention "ROARIN' RICH BUCKLER, who's presently penciling a brand new thriller for us. We wanna keep you in suspense a while longer, but we think the title, MAN-WOLF, is sure to grab ya!"
Then from an interview with Buckler in Comic Book Artist #7: Buckler: The first assignment I got from Stan Lee was a Man-Wolf story, which was a character he wanted to do something with, and he made up a story on the spot. I drew it, and it was never published. I believe later George Perez did something with the Man-Wolf character...
CBA: Oh, this was before the start of the Man-Wolf series in Creatures on the Loose?
Buckler: Yeah. I think Stan liked my pages where I'd handled the Black Panther and he thought "Wow, let's have Buckler try an animal-like character--he seems to be good at this."
This would have been before the Comics Code was relaxed to allow werewolves, thus obviously before the debut of WBN in Marvel Spotlight, so I suspect that Stan had this in mind for the new Savage Tales black and white magazine, which would debut and immediately stall the month following this bulletin. I'd wager this original attempt was not tied in with Spider-Man, but I do wonder how much, if anything, from Buckler and Lee's first try was retained when Gerry Conway finally used the name for John Jameson's lycanthrophic menace a few years later. Because now I can't help but see suggestions of Buckler in that Man-Wolf design, with the raised piping around the shoulders where the sleeves are torn off reminding me of Deathlok, for example. I think Buckler is misremembering. His work on the Panther in Jungle Action occurred in '73, a full year after the debut of Werewolf By Night and the same month as the first Man-Wolf story. Even his earliest Avengers art comes half a year after Marvel Spotlight #2. Cei-U! I summon my bullshit-o-meter! |
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Post by fanboystranger on Jun 5, 2015 12:54:16 GMT -5
Man-Wolf debuted in '74, they didn't get the ERB license until like '78 or '79. DC still had the ERB license at the point Man-Wolf was coming out I think. -M Oh, so perhaps Man-Wolf was an attempt to produce a John Carter-type book without actually being able to use John Carter. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jun 5, 2015 15:06:31 GMT -5
A similar story I just ran across: The Bullpen Bulletins for January 1971 mention "ROARIN' RICH BUCKLER, who's presently penciling a brand new thriller for us. We wanna keep you in suspense a while longer, but we think the title, MAN-WOLF, is sure to grab ya!"
Then from an interview with Buckler in Comic Book Artist #7: Buckler: The first assignment I got from Stan Lee was a Man-Wolf story, which was a character he wanted to do something with, and he made up a story on the spot. I drew it, and it was never published. I believe later George Perez did something with the Man-Wolf character...
CBA: Oh, this was before the start of the Man-Wolf series in Creatures on the Loose?
Buckler: Yeah. I think Stan liked my pages where I'd handled the Black Panther and he thought "Wow, let's have Buckler try an animal-like character--he seems to be good at this."
This would have been before the Comics Code was relaxed to allow werewolves, thus obviously before the debut of WBN in Marvel Spotlight, so I suspect that Stan had this in mind for the new Savage Tales black and white magazine, which would debut and immediately stall the month following this bulletin. I'd wager this original attempt was not tied in with Spider-Man, but I do wonder how much, if anything, from Buckler and Lee's first try was retained when Gerry Conway finally used the name for John Jameson's lycanthrophic menace a few years later. Because now I can't help but see suggestions of Buckler in that Man-Wolf design, with the raised piping around the shoulders where the sleeves are torn off reminding me of Deathlok, for example. I think Buckler is misremembering. His work on the Panther in Jungle Action occurred in '73, a full year after the debut of Werewolf By Night and the same month as the first Man-Wolf story. Even his earliest Avengers art comes half a year after Marvel Spotlight #2. Cei-U! I summon my bullshit-o-meter! It's not clear in the Buckler interview, but I assumed he was talking about some sample pages he had done with the Black Panther. After all, he just got through saying that "Man-Wolf" was his first assignment, so I don't think he intended to suggest that he got his first job based on his Jungle Action work. I didn't realize that Man-Wolf and WBN debuted the same month. Stan must have been eager to bring werewolves back to comics in a big way if he was giving Conway the OK to use the Man-Wolf name at the same time he was approving Roy's Werewolf by Night. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2015 15:17:06 GMT -5
Man-Wolf debuted in '74, they didn't get the ERB license until like '78 or '79. DC still had the ERB license at the point Man-Wolf was coming out I think. -M Oh, so perhaps Man-Wolf was an attempt to produce a John Carter-type book without actually being able to use John Carter. Well the two strips that preceded Man-Wolf in Creatures were Thongor, the Lin Carter S&S series in the Conan vein and the Gullivar of Mars stories before that. So it was another in a line of adventure strips as the lead in that series...anmd I assume neither Gullivar nor Thongor set the sales charts on fire. -M |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 5, 2015 15:29:03 GMT -5
Oh, so perhaps Man-Wolf was an attempt to produce a John Carter-type book without actually being able to use John Carter. Well the two strips that preceded Man-Wolf in Creatures were Thongor, the Lin Carter S&S series in the Conan vein and the Gullivar of Mars stories before that. So it was another in a line of adventure strips as the lead in that series...anmd I assume neither Gullivar nor Thongor set the sales charts on fire. -M It's too bad in the case of Gulliver Jones; the first issues (drawn by Gil Kane) and the last two (drawn by Gray Morrow) were pretty damn good. The last one even had a cover by Steranko. The comic had sweet f****l to do with the novel, however, apart from being an adventure set on Mars! It really was a way to tell John Carter stories without paying ERB enterprises a licence. (And I hasten to say that I was all for it!) |
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