"The Choice" (from Vampirella #24, May 1973)

art by Rafael Auraleon

my grade: B



Plot synopsis: A werewolf is observed by a woman while preying on another female, but shakes it off, returning to his castle (he is a baron), only to discover the woman who witnessed him was his own wife. Though she struggles with the revelation, she agrees to stay with and aid him, locking him in a cage under the next full moon and becoming thoroughly emotionally drained by the experience. The two grow increasingly distant as an overly accommodating servant begins spending more time with the wife. During the next full moon, the baron bursts out of his cage to spy upon his wife and servant, only to learn that the servant is a vampire who has slowly been turning his wife. He rejects the urge to kill his wife out of rage, feeling immense pity for her instead, and thus deciding to mercy kill her instead. As his wife burns to death in the fire he has created, he debates whether he should join her and end his misery or live and destroy the vampire who did this to her.


Possibly Moench's most psychologically rich tale yet, this one is such a metaphor for the darknesses we all bring into our relationships. That the baron must wrestle with the hypocricy of resenting his wife for becoming a vampire when she has had to deal with his being a werewolf, as well as the later inversion that he only became a werewolf in attempting to save her from a wolf attack, exposes a level of circuitous introspection that we all become ensnared in when relationships are turning sour and eating away at our souls. Is this really about extra marital affairs? Latent sexuality? Maybe just the question of "who's fault is it that we're fighting this time?" Who is to say? And yet it all feels so very very familiar.

Much of what makes it easy to relate to this story is Moench's unusual choice to have the baron maintain total awareness while the werewolf. His impulses and emotions change, but not his overall character. I'm not sure I've ever seen it done in quite this way before. It's a much better reflection of our own experiences in life and relationships: able to be cruel and irrational at an arbitrary turn and then wonder how we can still be us and yet behave like monsters.

The flaw in this story is the pacing. While Moench delivers a powerful psychological study, it ends abruptly, with the baron attempting to make his decision. There's a way to end on that note and make it resonate, but instead it just feels like Moench ran out of space, time, or consciousness when writing this thing. There's also no visual premise this time, narrative cleverness, nor twist ending -- all traits I've come to expect from Moench as a writer. Of course, Moench will see nine stories published over the next two months and, on that kind of writing schedule, I'd imagine he isn't doing many revised drafts (if any!). Remember, Moench is being paid to churn out hack thrill adventures, and, at this point, he's being paid by the story.

As of May 1973, Auraleon has been the artist most frequently paired with Moench, and yet there is no great synergy between them. I would rank Auraleon's work on Moench's scripts as generally being average. Here, his layouts are ordinary, his inks inexpressive, but he adequately conveys all that is happening. He does make a stylistic choice in how he draws the werewolf:



But, upon further inspection, I think he's just looking for ways to avoid depicting all that detailed hair. After all, he turns in one photo-referenced panel late in the story, and it makes no effort to go for the same style he'd been employing otherwise:



Yes, you've found a good photo of Lon Chaney jr. and duplicated it well, but you'd think he'd make some minor changes to have it resemble the werewolf he'd drawn for the rest of the story if he'd actually cared about what he was doing.

"The Slipped Mickey Click Flip" (from Creepy #54, July 1973)

art by Richard Corben

my grade: A




Plot synopsis: Uncle Creepy is on strike, lamenting being temporarily replaced by a Mr. Diment; a character who wastes no time revealing that he's so psychologically disturbed as to be completely confused between what is good and what is bad, brutally stabbing his assistant as a reward for pleasing him. He then goes on to introduce a doctor who once tried to cure him of his insanity and then discusses the nonsensical supernatural means he used of enacting revenge -- first murdering the doctor, then his wife, then his faithful dog, and the utterly twisted ways in which he did so. Ultimately, realizing that the rant makes little sense, he decides to be offended by the reader not enjoying the story and then threatens to get us next.


When Richard Corben first took on a Moench script with "Bright Eyes" (Eerie #43, Nov. 1972), I noted that the story felt far more like tales Corben would go on to co-author than anything Moench was writing at the time. Now, in their second story together, we once again have a tale that feels nothing like anything Moench had written previously or would go on to write after. The extent of the non-sensical derangement, delivering shock and absurd humor with no regard for narrative craft whatsoever, just isn't Moench at all. It leaves me wondering if, in fact, these were both Corben stories that Moench merely scripted.

In "The Peruvian Connection: Confessions of a Horror Writer" (2001)*, Moench acknowledged having phone contact with Corben around this time (he never spoke to most of the artists who did his scripts prior to Marvel), but Moench remembers them only discussing his submitting a story for Corben's Grimwit publication (coming soon in this thread):



But he in no way suggests Corben was plotting or co-plotting these scripts. In fact, earlier on in the same interview, he suggests just the opposite while discussing artists who would bungle his vision when penciling:




So that leaves us with four distinct possibilities, here:

1. Moench is badly misremembering, and these stories were, in fact, at least partially conceived by Corben.

2. Moench is badly misremembering, and these stories were significantly altered by Corben. Moench either didn't mind or saw the changes as improvements.

3. Corben was picking and choosing the stories he would do and was particularly drawn to the two Moench stories that felt the least like Moench stories.

4. Moench wrote these, Corben drew them, and it's an utter coincidence that they don't feel like Moench stories at all.


You decide.



Anyway, if we can put aside the fact that there's little Moench to be found in this script, the story is utterly awesome, as Corben appears to infect it with all the nonsensical sadism of the underground comix scene. Sure, there's a little bit of Poe to be found in the rambling narrator bragging about the twisted revenge he formulated, but beyond that, it's all just strange and perverse for the sake of strangeness and perversity.

Here's the doctor getting run over by Thomas the Tank Engine:







Yay!


And then there's the sheer lengths that Mr. Diment goes to in getting revenge on the family dog for the sheer sake of having been the doctor's faithful dog:







One thing I always love about Corben is how soft and rounded his edges are. For most artists, you'd use such an approach to indicate safety and simplicity, but Corben seems to purposefully thrive on the mismatch of tones his style elicits and, in this case, there's almost a perverse eroticism at play in those soft edges as Mr. Diment seems to nearly get off on his revenge fantasy.

Really supremely twisted stuff. Bold content for something as mainstream as Creepy.




* Cooke, Jon. "The Peruvian Connection: Confessions of a Horror Writer." The Warren Companion. Vol. 1. Raleigh: Twomorrows, 2001. 118-125. Print.

Frank,

Deathlok has come up before in this thread. Doug scripted his earliest stories but the credit for creating Deathlok goes to Rich Buckler. See my post on page 3: classiccomics.boards.net/post/64114

"Let's All Drink to the Death of A Clown" (from Psycho #13, July 1973)

art by: Fernando Rubio

My grade: C



Plot synopsis: A wealthy man is being pursued by a clown that he appears to know. As he continues to run from the clown that casually follows him, he flashes back to recall that he is a circus owner who wanted to date his top aerialist, but she was engaged to the clown now pursuing him, so he killed him and then fired all of his clown friends. At the end, we learn that it's the clown friends dressing as their murdered comrade who are haunting the circus owner until they surround and kill him. Ultimately, the narrator decides, he was the real clown.


I'm occasionally asked what my criteria is for grading these stories. It's quite simple: C is an average story that is neither particularly good nor bad, and then every grade above and below is that much better or worse than a C, with an A+ being a flawless work and an F being a work utterly beyond possessing any redeeming qualities. And yet, while I've had many A+ stories before and one or two Fs, I rarely (if ever) stumble upon a perfect C; a story so thoroughly ho-hum ordinary as to almost not be worth discussing.

In a thread reviewing the breadth of Moench's output, this story is the perfect C that lies in the middle of everything else I will grade. Moench delivers a well-tread revenge plot, recycles a visual motif last employed (and to a far more successful degree) in a previous story, the narration attempts to be clever by employing a device that neither particularly works nor particularly doesn't (framing the narration through the emotions the protagonist undergoes: desire, rejection, indignation, shame, fury, avowal, jealousy, helplessness, envy, and resolve), the characters are flat arch types neither done particularly well nor particularly badly, and Rubio's art is absolutely adequate.

The awesome title aside, there is truly nothing remarkable about this story, one way or the other. A perfect C at a time in which Moench was pumping out stories as fast as he could for Warren and Skywald.

(NOTE: Moench's first work for one of the Big Two)



"Special Sale: Canned Death 1/2 Off" (from House of Mystery #216, August 1973)

art by: Abe Ocampo

my grade: A-




Plot synopsis: An elderly woman kills off her husband because he spent all of his time on his store and never gave her any attention. When she goes to take over the store, the power blows, she gets locked in, and the cans attack her. She dies, believing her husband has exacted his revenge on her, only for the cops to disclose in the final panels that this was all caused by an earthquake.

Moench was certainly doing his all to get as much as work as possible at this point. I wonder whether his submitting work to DC was a conscious effort to get in with a Big Two publisher, or if, in fact, he was just producing more work than even Warren and Skywald combined could accept and publish. Either way, this brief four pager marks his quiet introduction to Big Two publishing, even if it was a small freelance gig that likely didn't garner any attention at the very back of an anthology book.

And, while these four pages are devoid of the usual things we've come to expect from Moench: dense narration, clever visual concepts and the like, this is just a delightfully brutal tale. Somehow, even while writing a relatively safe story for a Comics-Code approved book in which, it turns out, there wasn't even a supernatural presence, both the old wife's murder of the husband and that later death by canned food felt excessively brutal somehow. It's not that shocking when a vampire, werewolf, or monster kills. It's a lot different to watch someone's grandmother do it with a simple roller skate, or to see a familiar scene like a grocery store aisle become a brutal death-trap.



It's too bad Moench didn't spend that much time writing horror stories for Comics-Code approved books. This little four pager demonstrates that he possessed the ability to do it remarkably well.

Fringe Benefits (from Vampirella #26, August 1973)

art by: Jose Bea
colors: ?

my grade: A-



Plot synopsis:

A woman waiting for a delivery opens the door to be greeted by a ghoul who stabs and kills her without explanation. The husband then arrives home in time to see the ghoul, struggles with him, discovers it's just a robber in a mask, and chases him out into the street, where the robber is hit by a car. He wakes up in the hospital, believing he got away scott free, but the surgeon who will be operating on him reveals himself to be the husband.


Jim Warren is still working to publish as many Moench stories as he can, but even two stories in this issue (three stories total across all three Warren titles this month, which has become the average ever since Moench's confrontation with Jim Warren) aren't even close to meeting the quantity of work Moench is generating at this point. As a result, we'll see two works published by DC in this month, and another by Skywald.

Nevertheless, Warren really is rolling out the royal treatment for Moench here, making "Fringe Benefits" one of the very first stories to appear in full color in a Warren mag (a feature introduced only last month).

The color is brilliant (even if I feel both Moench and Bea's talents are better suited for the striking contrast of black and white), but, as one would hope in a review thread devoted to the writer, it's the story itself that stands out most.

As with "Special Sale: Canned Death 1/2 Off", Moench discovers there's sometimes more horror in telling a tale devoid of the supernatural -- something that could occur in the real world. Sure enough, the monster glimpsed on the title page surprises us by obsessing over silverware and hidden cash after stabbing his victim, only to later reveal himself as a burglar with a mask, and, believe it or not, that adds to the terror of this tale.

What really makes this piece work is the amount of time Moench spends on one horrific incident. Usually, a writer working within a 7-10 page limit, jumps from murder to murder as quickly as possible. It keeps the focus on the murderer and gives us safe distance from the victims, but Moench removes that safety, first giving us time to know the victim:



Then spending a supremely uncomfortable full page watching her slowly die, aided by brilliant narration describing the thoughts and sensations keenly, and then having the just as endearing husband arrive home early, stumbling upon the murderer.



It all feels so supremely REAL as Moench goes through great pains to describe their reactions, thoughts, and feelings, and learning that the murderer isn't some deranged ghoul, but rather a desperate and amoral burglar, absolutely adds to that reality and removes most of the reader's ability to distance themselves from it. This FEELS real, and it absolutely COULD happen to you.

Had the story ended there, after four pages, that would have been enough. But, perhaps falling upon his Atom Age horror influences, Moench feels some need to provide closure and karmic retribution in this story, having the murderer get injured while escaping and then find himself on the surgery table with the husband as head surgeon. It's not bad, but it lacks the power and terror of the first half, reassuring us that justice gets served when the first half did a far better job of convincing us that the world is a terrifying and unfair place.


Minor Detail:

Whoever colored this (I don't feel like it was Bea) occasionally changes the color of the murderer's hair. It's jarring in an otherwise seamless piece.