I was buying Creepy and Eerie (and the Spirit) around this time, but didn't enjoy a lot of it. I know they were horror books, but a lot of the stories were relentlessly depressing and nihilistic. Also, a lot were weakly, if not barely, plotted. Wrightson and Corben (with occasional Severin, Wood, and Crandall) kept me buying them for a while, though.

I Also wasn't a fan of ongoing series in these books, but I think Bill DuBay (was he still editor at this time?)made an explicit decision to keep them short and not plan on milking a character for as long as possible.

Wow--I had both these books, being a Corben completest at the time, and never associated either with Moench. I remember the promo sheets at the NYC convention headed "Fantagor 5 will not be published" and announcing that Corben's work for the book would be in Hot Stuf' so I made a point of picking it up--don't remember if it was available at the con or if the sell sheet had mail order instructions. I do remember thinking that the Perez story, written by and "starring" the publishers being transported to "barbarian times" was the worst kind of fan tripe and marred what was otherwise a slick and professional-looking book.

"Medieval" stories like this were all over at the time, especially in the fan press, and too often in Warren books for my taste. They were both a precursor and a fall-out of Smith's Conan run.

But you're right that Colon does a very nice job on this. I can't seem to find any examples on the web, but for a while he was doing a series of wordless strips called doodlemovies that were very good.

"Pinball Wizard" (from Creepy #66, November 1974)

art by Richard Corben

my grade: A+



Plot synopsis: A local mob man is shaking up an old store owner, forcing him to take in some of his expensive vending machines that the store owner clearly does not need, beating the man in front of one of his most loyal young customers. The young customer, looking up to the store owner like a father, expects him to stand up to the mob man, but when he does so the next day when the Mob man wants him to put in a pinball machine that will crowd his aisles, the mob man kills him. The boy, discovering this, makes a pact with The Devil so that The Devil will spend eternity playing the mob man as the ball on a pinball machine in Hell.


I was starting to expect that we'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel with these final backlog stories, but how'd this one get in there? It's brilliantly deranged and, best yet, it's another Moech/Corben collaboration! And, once again, this Moench/Corben team-up has a distinct kind of energy you don't normally find in Moench scripts.

Ever since their first team-up on "Bright Eyes" (November 1972), several of us here have been engaged in speculation as to how much involvement Moench and Corben shared in the conception of these stories. Was it all or mostly Corben? Only half Corben? And then, by the time we got to "The Slipped Mickey Clip Flip" (July 1973), we had quotes from Moench himself indicating that Corben was given his scripts after they were already completed and that he only recalled speaking with Corben once to discuss writing a story for Grim-Wit (though I'm reasonably sure they spoke at least twice -- Corben getting Moench the Hot Stuf' gig).

Anyway, this story supports Moench's assertions that he wrote these pieces on his own. First off, it carries so many distinct signature Moench elements, including the clear visual premise (a guy pushing pinball machines gets turned into one) as well as a central concept borrowed from a '70s rock song (we even get the lyrics to Pinball Wizard in that final panel):



And, most importantly, Moench stopped writing for Warren a full year ago by this point. If he and Corben had created this together, I can't believe Dubay would have sat on a Corben piece for this long without publishing it.

Sure, this story continues to share themes and elements that we more commonly associate with Corben than Moench -- the sense of absurdity, the shocking amount of violence, and the disturbing contrast of childlike innocence and great evil



(seriously, who expected the sweet little kid to be an adept Satan worshipper???)

but I'm beginning to think Corben picked up these scripts because they contained those elements rather than having helped to put those elements there himself.

And, of course, it's always possible Corben made changes to the scripts as he penciled them, but considering that Moench has stated that Esteban Maroto was his absolute least favorite artist because he never followed his instructions, it seems odd for Moench to then call Corben his favorite artist to touch his stories (1) if he was making even more drastic and intentional changes to the stories than Maroto.


But even beyond those strange surreal elements that are standard fare for Moench/Corben team-ups, Moench's characterization is just absolute top notch in this story, from the amount of pathos he evokes for this child:



to the subtle verbal mannorisms of "Pop," the store owner:



You can barely hear the affectionate Eastern European accent behind those overly carefully arranged words and sentences.


And, thus, the tragic turning point of this story is all the more powerful, as well as brilliant in its visual understatement:




This story is a true masterpiece; one of the best of Moench's career thus far.




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

The twist certainly wasnt the best part, but I didn't see it coming, and that's rare for this genre.

As for the kid being a satanist, I found it delightfully twisted and disturbing.

But we do agree that the characterizations were the strongest part of this piece. And that's what made it so memorable for me.

shaxper, Roy Thomas needs you. I've already sent him the URL for this thread.

---

Begging time again... though as usual paying off with all the fanzines
you can eat. Doing a Doug Moench interview (mostly up through the
mid-70s) for ALTER EGO #146, out next April, and could use (along with
Marvel stuff I most have accounted for) art from the following material
written by Doug back in the day:

Skywald stories (PSYCHO and NIGHTMARE)

DC - he did a few back then for HOUSE OF MYSTERY and/or HOUSE OF SECRETS

Warren - did a number, including the first 2-3 "Spook" stories in, I
think, EERIE... also other, non-character stories, of course

(Also need splash of a story written by Bill Dubay with the title
"Spearchucker Spade," because Doug and interviewer Richard Arndt discuss it)

CREEPY #54 - "The Slipped Mickey Click Flip"

A Corben-drawn story, "The Last Spark of High Heeled Noise"

Not that I'm not open to other things you may run across that aren't
specifically mentioned in the interview...

Thanks for listening!

Roy

Tales of the Zombie #7 (September 1974)



"The Blood-Testament of Brian Collier"

Script: Steve Gerber (pp.1, 32); Doug Moench (pp.2-31)
Pencils: Pablo Marcos (signed as Pablo Marcos) (pp.1, 32); Alfredo Alcala (pp.2-31)
Inks: Pablo Marcos (signed as Pablo Marcos) (pp.1, 32); Alfredo Alcala (pp.2-31)
Letters: Alfredo Alcala; ?

Grade: D


Attempting to determine an approximate order in which Moench wrote these stories continues to be problematic, especially with a story like this one which, while cover dated September 1974, seems like it almost had to have been written two months earlier than the other stories Moench wrote with the same September 1974 cover date.

By the time this issue hit stands, Moench already had eight other stories published for Marvel that month and had just unexpectedly assumed creative control of seven Marvel properties on almost zero notice. It seems unlikely that Roy Thomas would be asking him to write a last-minute fill-in story, let alone a two page filler piece about a Haitian voodoo legend, at such a time. It would make far more sense for Moench to have been assigned such things while he was still working as an assistant editor, but that work had seemed to end with cover date July 1974, as explained here. Was Tales of the Zombie produced so far ahead that this book would be hitting the shelves at the same time as comics written two months later? If so, why would Gerber and Marcos need a fill-in writer and artist in order to catch up on deadlines, as was the reason given for their absence in this issue?

As for the story itself, Gerber and Marcos provide a first and last page, conveniently showing how this fill-in story fits into the ongoing continuity of this title, Simon and Layla heading towards civilization in the aftermath of last issue, Layla randomly tripping and getting knocked unconscious, and Simon wandering off until she regains consciousness at the end of the story so that their adventure can continue. It's a little silly, but what follows is perhaps even sillier.

Asked to write a thirty page Simon Garth story on the fly, you can see Moench struggling. Moench's stories for Warren and Skywald prior to his time at Marvel were considerably shorter, so giving him such a long story to write, starring a character who neither speaks nor thinks, poses a unique challenge for Moench. He faced a similar challenge when he wrote the lead Frankenstein story for Monsters Unleashed #7, and I would argue it's one of the worst stories he ever wrote, a secondary character needlessly narrating an exceptionally poorly paced story for the mute protagonist:


from Monsters Unleashed #7


Moench went on to master writing for the Monster in the following month with Frankenstein #12 but, if this story truly was written around the time of cover date July 1974, then Moench hadn't written Frankenstein #12 yet. Thus, what follows feels disappointingly similar to what we got in Monsters Unleashed #7, as Moench needlessly and excessively narrates a plodding, poorly paced story:





Perhaps sensing his own limitations here, Moench veers abruptly to the left after a few pages and decides to make this story about an old-fashioned murder mystery that doesn't involve Simon Garth, who simply watches from the windows:



Moench has a habit of heavily borrowing stories and ideas from popular culture, usually songs on the radio and horror re-runs on television. Thus, depending on how you approach it, this story is either a loving nod to, or a shameless rip-off of every Cat and The Canary murder mystery ever filmed (and there were a ton!). The genre was extremely popular in theater of the first half of the Twentieth Century, and it made its way to film countless times between the 1910s and the 1940s. Moench steals all the familiar trappings: an eccentric millionaire who hated all of his inheritors and leaves an unorthodox will in order to torment them, a murderer among them, an uncouth investigating detective who is a mismatch with the wealthy family, the question of whether the deceased is actually dead, secret passageways and spy holes, etc etc.

But perhaps most disappointing is that this was supposed to be a Simon Garth story. From pages 6 thru 28, Simon is either not present, watching in the window, or wandering off for no apparent reason and then returning to the window again as the story remains fixated on the not particularly clever murder mystery. Really, the only part of this story that is at all fresh/interesting was likely also the visual premise that inspired this story (as most of Moench's stories seem to be inspired by/centered upon one visual premise from which the rest of the story is derived). In this case, it's a little girl staring out the window, and Simon Garth staring back:



Innocence contrasted against the morbid. It's nothing new to horror and was, perhaps done most famously in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), or Paul Wegener's The Golem: How He Came Into This World (1920).


from The Golem: How He Came Into This World (1920)

Moench uses it as Simon's motivation for finally intervening in the final act of this story, taking down the murderer(s) himself in an attempt to protect the girl. Not a bad idea, but the story never does come back to the girl, which is sloppy. She was never directly in harm's way, and we never see how her life or even emotional state is affected by Simon's intervention.

Essentially, this is a sloppy script in most respects; definitely not one of Moench's better stories. And maybe that's all one should expect from a fill-in story.

Fortunately, we at least get some amazing Alfredo Alcala pencils and inks:



Definitely one of my favorite inkers in all of comicdom. He'd drawn and inked several Moench stories back during the Warren years and will ultimately follow Moench to DC, most memorably working with Gene Colan and Don Newton on Moench's Pre-Crisis Batman/Detective Comics run. I wonder if he and Moench had any kind of working relationship at Marvel. Moench claims he never worked directly with any of his artists at Warren other than Richard Corben and Reed Crandall.



"Haiti's Walking Dead"

Script: Doug Moench
Pencils: Win Mortimer
Inks: Win Mortimer

Grade: n/a

A two page retelling of an alleged(?) Haitian voodoo legend that really isn't worth discussing in terms of writing. More the kind of assignment you hand off to an assistant editor than an established bullpen writer.