It's nuts, I know, but this 2-parter is among my favorites of this run.
JIMMY OLSEN #142 / Oct’71 – “
THE MAN FROM TRANSILVANE!”
“It’s the VAMPIRE bit! But like you’ve never seen it before!” --it says here. No kidding. On the cover, Supes faces the GOOFIEST-looking “vampire” ever seen, while a really, REALLY shaggy-looking “werewolf” is pawing poor Jimmy. It’s a
JIMMY OLSEN comic, after all, not
HOUSE OF SECRETS—or
CREEPY. Hey—
SUPER FRIENDS should have been THIS good.
A bit of background... the Comics Code DEMASCULATED comics in the mid-50’s, and between it and the “witch-hunt” that spawned it, nearly destroyed an entire once-thriving industry. Well, 15 years had come and gone, and it was decided to make some changes in the Code. One of those changes was to allow vampires, werewolves, mummies, and the like, all figures of “horror” which, originally, the Code had been apparently designed to stamp out! (They still refused to allow zombies—you had to draw the line somewhere, you see.) And so, there was a mad race by both Marvel & DC to be the FIRST to feature a vampire. Marvel had planned a
DRACULA comic, and Gene Colan wanted it real bad. With the Code prohibiting vampires, it was planned as a B&W magazine. But when the Code was revised, and with the initial failure of
SAVAGE TALES, they changed their plans, and decided to make it a regular color comic instead. However, the art needed to be re-formatted, and somehow, it must have seemed easier to put together a vampire story somewhere else.
Thus it was that while Stan Lee took a vacation from writing for a few months, Roy Thomas stepped in with “
A Monster Called... Morbius!” in
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #101 (Oct’71). He just barely beat Jack Kirby (And DC) to the punch by a month or two (as I’ve realized, Marvel’s cover dates were 1 or 2 months ahead of DCs). Marvel’s
TOMB OF DRACULA #1 finally debuted 6 months later, with an Apr’72 cover date. The writing was AWFUL—at first. The art was INCREDIBLE. Eventually, the writing would catch up. But that’s another story.
If Morbius was a “superhero” version of a vampire, Count Dragorin was more like a Saturday morning cartoon version-- like something you might see on
SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? This comparison is quite valid, because you see, Jack Kirby, as possibly the single most creative person the comics biz has ever seen, had this amazing ability to take any idea, no matter how mundane, no matter how derivitive, and do something innovative and unexpected with it. And so it was here. As Jack puts it right on page 1, “
But WAIT!!!!—Your writer advises you to expect something MORE than the same old routine”. See?
“
The night is the SAME on any world, eh, Lupek?!! Ahead lies the city—and the ONE we seek!!” This is one strange-looking vampire—and strange, period, as beams shoot out from his eyes and strike the sleeping Laura Conway—leaving twin punctures in her neck. That’s not how Bela Lugosi used to operate!
The next day, Clark & Jimmy are once more being put off by Laura when they try to see Morgan Edge (who still has a lot to answer for, namely, trying to kill BOTH of them). But they sense something is wrong—her face has changed, her make-up has gotten weird, he teeth have become POINTED—and after she collapses, Clark, holding her in his arms, notices she’s not casting a reflection in a mirror! So when a BAT flies in thru the window, they’re not exactly surprised when someone calling himself “Count Dragorin of Transilvane” materializes in front of them. After using his power to knock Clark & Jimmy senseless, the Count awakens Laura, and begins asking of her the whereabouts of one Dabney Donovan, who Laura used to work for. All she knows is the NASA Science Research Center, which Dragorin suspects must have “records, files—a trail!!” “Donovan is an evil, clever one! But I’LL hunt him down!” Laura says she never met her previous boss, and only knew him by a voice on an answering machine. Just then Clark lunges, but Dragorin vanishes in a puff of smoke, leaving Laura her completely her old self again.
What follows must have surprised EVERYONE who read this comic originally. Clark & Jimmy go to the Research Center, long closed-down since its heydey in the 50’s (back when they made science-fiction horror movies more than old-fashioned horror movies). Their specialty was “simulating conditions that might be found to exist on other planets”, or, “reproduce the atmosphere of Mars—right HERE ON EARTH!” I never picked up on what Jack was doing until I read this the 2nd time. Following a battle with Lupek, in which Supes appears and save Jimmy’s life, the pair sift thru the leftover ruins of a lab and file room. Supes explains “
Anything that involves the SAFETY of man—involves ME!!” He goes on to say, “
Dabney Donovan is the closest thing to a MAD scientist that we have!” Supes knows Donovan had a rep for hiding things in plain sight, and on a photograph of an alien planet, “Transilvane”, finds, like a micro-dot, a note about “Bloodmoor” being destroyed on a certain date. As it happens, Bloodmoor is a cemetery, and racing there, they brifly spot Dragorin. In a hidden room underneath a mausoleum, they also find—incredibly—“
A SMALL PLANET! WELCOME TO TRANSILVANE, JIMMY!” And there, before them, is a miniature planet, about 20 feet in diameter, with what looks like film cameras—or projectors—aimed at it. The planet itself must be EVIL, too—‘cause it’s got HORNS!
Now allow me to explain what, to me, is the obvious inspiration for all this. A few years back, I was watching episodes of
THE OUTER LIMITS on late-night cable, and ran across one I’m not sure I ever saw before—“
WOLF 359”. From the IMDB: “
A scientist creates a tiny model of another solar system's planet, seeding it with life, to study planetary development. The miniaturization allows the simulation's evolution to advance much faster. A ghostly bat-like creature hovers on the in-closed model watching the humans, while emitting waves of fear terrifying them.” By the wildest coincidence, I was also reading my copy of
JIMMY OLSEN ADVENTURES, and the very next day, I got to THIS story!! I couldn’t believe it. A lot of Kirby fans are well aware of how, late in his run of
FANTASTIC FOUR, he did stories inspired by
THE PRISONER, and
STAR TREK episodes “
A Piece Of The Action” and “
The Gamesters of Triskellion”. And here, so blatent, so obvious I can’t believe nobody has ever mentioned it before, was a tribute to a 2nd-season
OUTER LIMITS episode. In many ways, this almost feels like it could be a SEQUEL to it!!
I mean look at this. You’ve got the research center, the miniature planet, the cameras pointed at it, the “bat-like creature”. And if that wasn’t enough, are you ready for this? One of the actors who appeared in it was DABNEY Coleman!!!
I bet nobody reading this comic expected it to start with Bram Stoker and wind up with Seeleg Lester (he wrote WOLF 359).
Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated sub-plot, The Newboy Legion reach the end of the underground river, find an opening with the help of Flippa-Dippa, discover a cylindrical elevator, and come up in the still-underground hideout of some gangland type, who, while talking on the phone (talk about INCREDIBLE timing), reveals that HE’s the one who shot and killed Jim Harper (the original Guardian). WHAT ARE THE ODDS??? Honest, the way the Newsboys sub-plots are plotted, Kirby’s entire run of
JIMMY OLSEN feels like one SINGLE storyline, rather than several smaller ones. Which kinda makes it tough to fit it in with any of the other Superman books.
You know, this issue actually LOOKS to me like the whole thing was inked by Vince Colletta... except for the Clark, Supes & Jimmy faces by Murphy Anderson, and the Superman figure on the cover by Neal Adams. Oh, and the rest of the cover was clearly inked by Mike Royer—who, shortly, was to REPLACE Colletta on the bulk of the Fourth World books.
There’s a 2-page back-up, “
Strange Stories Of The D.N.A. PROJECT!!”, this one, “
HAIRIE SECRETS REVEALED!!!” isn’t so much a story as a feature detailing The Hairies, The Mountain Of Judgement, and The Wild Area. This issue’s reprint back-up stars The Newsboy Legion and The Guardian in “LAST MILE ALLEY”, from STAR SPANGLED COMICS # 8 (May’42).
(7-5-2011)
