Monsters Unleashed #8 (October 1974)



Frankenstein Monster: "Fever in the Freak House!"
Pencils: Val Mayerik
Inks: Val Mayerik
Letters: Dave Hunt

Grade: C


The votes are in, and while most agree that Moench's first Frankenstein script two issues back wasn't very good, they still feel his writing style is a better fit for the franchise than the writers who came before, and they REALLY liked his B story:



I don't know how legitimate these polls were, but there's a good chance this was the first real feedback Moench got on his writing from actual fans outside of the bullpen. Additionally, Don Glut, the friend who inadvertently launched Moench's career, also appears in this issue writing mere filler content, so you've got to wonder if this wasn't all a massive ego boost for Doug.


the writing for this issue is far tighter than in the last one, but it still lacks so much of the pathos Moench elicited in his writing for the same monster in Frankenstein #12 last month. The plot is extremely simple, in which a deformed freak is gathering other deformed freaks (including the monster) to wage war on all beautiful people in the world, and the twist is really, really lame:



Fortunately, we get some great art in this story. This page feels very Moench to me:



(It's all about incremental progression and cinematic pacing)

whereas this outstanding page was probably all Mayerik:



(it doesn't really match anything we've seen in Moench stories previously)


Considering how much love Moench has for the classic monster films, as well as his repeated claim that the entire reason he agreed to write Deathlok was that Buckler called it a modern-day Frankenstein, it's a little surprising that Moench isn't sinking his teeth more into this property. Perhaps he was waiting for these lower-selling titles to be cancelled at any given minute, while Shang-Chi, Deathlok, and Planet of the Apes weren't going anywhere.



Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars: "A Martian Genesis!"
Script: Doug Moench; Tony Isabella (plot)
Pencils: George Pérez; Rich Buckler (breakdowns)
Inks: Duffy Vohland; John Byrne; Bob Layton
Letters: ?

Grade: C


It's not often that I stumble upon a Bronze Age Marvel property that I'd never heard of before, and yet this is the first I've ever learned of Gullivar Jones, a science fiction hero first written in 1905 who is a clear inspiration for the later John Carter. Apparently, he appeared in Creatures on the Loose #16-20 and then showed up in Monsters Unleashed #4, eight months prior to this issue. That doesn't seem to stop Moench from dropping us right into the action, as if we should understand everything that is already in progress:



Come to think of it, Moench hasn't been doing much of anything in the way of recaps across his stories yet. Hard to remember he is still brand-spanking new at writing ongoing features, even though he has now been writing comics professionally for three years by this point. I wonder if he is the reason Jim Shooter will eventually demand that every issue of every Marvel comic be totally accessible to the new reader.

Anyway, I digress.

Dropping us into the middle of the action, no explanations offered, is actually pretty exciting and almost draws me into the story, but Moench's need to write Jones himself as an almost forcefully mundane ordinary Earthman gets obnoxious fast:




Moench at least has a strong handle on this world and its characters:



...but that's likely the work of Tony Isabella, not Moench.


One final unique thing about this story is how symmetrically the twist ending compliments the twist ending in Moench's lead story:




The lead story, once again:



I wonder if Moench even knew this story would be appearing in this book when he wrote it, though.

I remember that a couple of issues later, the letters page actually apologized for the quality of the art in that Gullivar Jones story, which was apparently dashed together in a rush job by a trio including the still-quite-green Perez and Vohland. It's unquestionably amateurish by Marvel's standards of the time.

Looks as if Lt. Jones was also in Monsters Unleashed #4, and that this was his final Marvel appearance.

Yup. That was published only four months earlier and also featured a Doug Moench story.

Perez's stuff there suffers from the same lack of detail/linework, but less so than in Gullivar Jones.

---

According to GCD, Gullivar Jones and John Carter both appeared in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen v2 #1 in 2002, and in a 2012 limited seties, Warriors of Mars, from Dynamite.

That's a lot of words for the editor to avoid saying "I f*cked up."

Rich Buckler also had a bad habit. He tended to get on 4 series at the same time, and on a regular basis, blow deadlines on all of them at the same time. On FANTASTIC FOUR, often missing 2-3 months in a row as a result. At the time, I wished he would have focused on one book and gotten way ahead on that, before taking on additional projects.

I read somewhere some freelancer say that you just "don't" turn down offers of work from editors, because if you do, next time they won't ask you. But I still think it's worse to say "yes" and then be partly responsible for the whole system getting screwed up when deadlines get blown. (There's a similar situation in the Home Care field. The "General Manager" of my office once reminded me, "Once you take on a case, IT'S YOURS, until we can find someone else to replace you." You can't "blow deadlines", so to speak, in this job. People's lives are depending on you! I've turned down a LOT of potential cases, until a "right" one opened up.)

Now, I never read DEATHLOK-- but since that one series seemed more "personal" to Bucker (HE created it, after all-- in a better world, he would have OWNED it), I think he should have focused on that, and anything else would be just "extra" when he had spare time.

One of his assistants, George Perez, wound up filling in on FANTASTIC FOUR when Bucker blew one deadline too many. "Ye editor" apparently saw it and liked what he saw. Next thing, Perez became the regular FF artist-- and Buckler was PISSED off about it!

Perez, whose stuff was a lot more "fun" (when he wasn't doing hyper-violence), and who always had a habit of "contributing" to stories as much or more than most artists at the time, always managed to make ANY writer he worked with look better-- usually, better than they actually were. Personally, I would have much preferred if HE had focused on THE AVENGERS, not FANTASTIC FOUR. He was good on both books, but I liked his AVENGERS more.

Unfortunately, Perez picked up that bad habit from Buckler-- or getting on 4 series at once and eventually blowing deadlines on all of them, then missing multiple issues in a row before coming back.

At one point, Perez wound up blowing ONE deadline too many-- and somebody decided to FIRE him right out of Marvel entirely! He wound up at DC, where he decided to rebuild his rep. I remember when he debuted on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA-- starting with the 2nd part of a 3-part JLA-JSA-NEW GODS crossover. Dick Dillin-- who actually did more issues of JLA than Mike Sekowsky had-- PASSED AWAY suddenly after finishing part 1. What a place to come in.

I fondly remember the day Perez made an appearance at my comics shop, right around this time, and was talking about a new project he was doing with Marv Wolfman, which he kept referring to as "TITANS". For some reason, it took me a while before I realized what he was talking about. DC editorial preferred if they kept the name TEEN TITANS, and they compromised on THE NEW TEEN TITANS. Before long, Perez realized he needed to focus on ONE book or the other, so as not to repeat what happened at Marvel. After ONE fill-in (by Curt Swan!!), Perez decided to focus on TITANS... and before long, got 6 months ahead of schedule, and was able to do a 4-issue TITANS mini-series without any worries at all.

The amazing thing-- aside from this-- as good as he'd gotten before, his work CONTINUED to evolve and improve at DC. It was a wonderful thing to watch as it was happening.