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Post by Phil Maurice on Jun 5, 2015 15:30:17 GMT -5
I didn't realize that Man-Wolf and WBN debuted the same month. I don't think that's what Kurt is saying. Rather, he states that Buckler's Panther work appeared in '73, the same month that Man-Wolf debuted (ASM #124, Sept. '73). The first WBN, Marvel Spotlight #2 has a cover date of Feb. '72. |
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Post by Phil Maurice on Jun 5, 2015 16:02:06 GMT -5
I try never to miss a chance to trot out the great Joe Maneely's work on WBN:
Totally unrelated to the '70s series, of course. Stan's memory being what it is, I wonder if he recalled this story from 1953 when he suggested this to Roy Thomas as an alternate title to "I, Werewolf." |
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Post by berkley on Jun 7, 2015 21:14:54 GMT -5
I loved Mike Ploog's artwork but for me the writing in Werewolf by Night never really took off until Doug Moench took over. Although the initial set-up was good - I liked the mystery of Jack Russell's family history and the Book of Darkhold and all that stuff - the series always seemed to struggle to find a coherent direction. Even Marv Wolfman, who was doing such great work on Tomb of Dracula around the same time, didn't really turn it around, though his run did contain some isolated high points, like the introduction of Topaz. And Moench himself took a few issues to get going - it wasn't until Don Perlin started inking his own pencils that everything, artwork and writing, seemed to gel.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jun 8, 2015 9:07:49 GMT -5
I didn't realize that Man-Wolf and WBN debuted the same month. I don't think that's what Kurt is saying. Rather, he states that Buckler's Panther work appeared in '73, the same month that Man-Wolf debuted (ASM #124, Sept. '73). The first WBN, Marvel Spotlight #2 has a cover date of Feb. '72. Oh, of course...I wasn't paying much attention to Spider-Man then, and I thought maybe the John Jameson Man-Wolf character had appeared earlier in the 70's. As long as we're discussing Man-Wolf, it's worth pointing out that the series didn't take on its ERB-esque flavor until fairly late in its short run, in its 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th installments. And here's a little-noted factoid: before the series (in Creatures on the Loose) debuted, it was teased in the Bullpen Bulletins, but in cryptographic substitution code. I didn't have the FOOM decoder, but I was smart enough to figure them all out on my own. But it seems the early take on this series was a little bit different than what was eventually published: And now, in closing, here’s our mirthful message in SPIDER_MAN CODE for the merry month of January – to warm the cockles of your heart with news of a Marvel longtimer who’ll be getting his very own series in the months to come. Like so:NFYZM NZBDOFV GTDODVQO – BY OFV, QMD BZV-KWFE!("Jonah Jameson Presents - My Son, the Man-Wolf!") (In researching the old Bullpen Bulletins to find this, I also see that the coded teasers promised that after a hiatus, Supernatural Thrillers would stop featuring literary adaptations and return featuring a new series called "The Victims of Dracula". Instead, we got "The Living Mummy". "Victims of Dracula" became "Curse of Dracula" in Giant-Size Chillers, which then just became Giant-Size Dracula, with nothing really distinguishing it from the regular Tomb of Dracula series except, as I recall, the absence of TOD's supporting cast. It makes me wonder what angle they had for that original "Victims" series--the sole "Curse" installment was the origin of Lilith, Daughter of Dracula.) |
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