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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 4, 2023 9:26:24 GMT -5
My feelings about Man-Bat and Phantom Stranger are too complicated to get into in the middle of the night. (Have you ever read the two issues of Man-Bat from the 1970s? With the Steve Ditko art, and featuring the only time Ditko drew Batman? Geez Louise!) Anyway, it’s not just Kirk. It’s both of them. The Langstroms are a couple of freaks. Even the Dibnys shun them. Those two issues are so bad. And it's like they are from completely different runs of the two wildly divergent characters that happen to look the same. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 4, 2023 18:06:05 GMT -5
Okay...I'm listening, at least to the first part...so I'll live blog as we go along.
Let me state that I'm not a huge horror fan and I actively disliked horror as a kid, controlling for the Universal monsters.
I honestly don't see Morbius as a horror character. He's a super-villain/hero character with some minor horror trappings. Now, I'll admit that I'm not sure that I've ever read his short-lived solo series, but the dude started out as a Spider-Man villain. That just ain't horror.
There was no legal age restriction on selling Creepy and Eerie to minors. It's not like they were skin mags. Some sellers may have taken it on themselves to not sell, but it was definitely not a legal issue. Mad magazine was essentially the exact same thing and it definitely was being sold to kids. I know that (this was a few years later, admittedly) nobody was keeping junior high me or my friends from buying Epic Illustrated, Heavy Metal or National Lampoon.
Morbius and Man-Bat are definitely not the same character. Man-Bat is not even a science vampire. Man-Bat predated Morbius by about two years.
I'm not sure I buy Strange Sports Stories as horror. But I haven't read them in a very very long time.
The point of Man-Thing is that he's not reactive. He's a catalyst. That's the point.
It's been way too long since I've read Phantom Stranger...so...yeah. I still think it's maybe only horror adjacent, because of the overwhelming super-hero tropes.
The only thing I remember Baron Blood from is Invaders. Not horror.
I've never even laid eyes on a Dark Shadows funnybook. I do remember my Mom and my oldest brother watching it when I was little.
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Post by MDG on Oct 5, 2023 12:27:37 GMT -5
I honestly don't see Morbius as a horror character. He's a super-villain/hero character with some minor horror trappings. Now, I'll admit that I'm not sure that I've ever read his short-lived solo series, but the dude started out as a Spider-Man villain. That just ain't horror. Yeah, this reminded me of a point I wanted to make but forgot: I see most of the books you mentioned as monster books, not horror books. The same could be said for Charlton's Gorgo and Konga series and Swamp thing under Wein and Micheline (though not Moore).
That is, they follow the typical adventures of these characters and the folks around them as adventures. They are not really aiming to frighten or create a "sense of dread," though they may do so sometimes. But so did Ditko's Dr. Strange.
There was no legal age restriction on selling Creepy and Eerie to minors. It's not like they were skin mags. Some sellers may have taken it on themselves to not sell, but it was definitely not a legal issue. Mad magazine was essentially the exact same thing and it definitely was being sold to kids. I know that (this was a few years later, admittedly) nobody was keeping junior high me or my friends from buying Epic Illustrated, Heavy Metal or National Lampoon. This stuck out to me too (I was listening while driving, so wasn't taking notes). It may vary state to state, or, as Slam says, retailer to retailer, but in the 60s, comics were for kids, color or B&W. Checking the GCD, my cousin had a copy of Creepy #1 that he bought himself when he would've been 8 or 9 at the time; I bought #5 on my own when I was 6 and had no qualms about bringing it home, though I would have hesitated to walk in with an issue of MAD due to my mom's dislike of anything that seemed to show disrespect to adults (and the great Three Stooges purge of 1965).
(I knew better than to try to buy Vampirella #1, opting to read most of it at the magazine rack and, when I started buying Creepy again w/ #54, didn't leave them around due to the nudity in them. Ditto Lampoon.) (A couple years later, my sister narced on my underground stash, but by then my mom was trying not to be shocked by anything.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 5, 2023 12:47:54 GMT -5
Yeah, that was another thing I wanted to comment on. I grew up in a small town in central Indiana and I got my comics from the local drugstore in a town of 4000 people. In the 1974 to 1976 range, when I was 10 to 12, I bought a lot of issues of MAD and Famous Monsters, and I also bought Eerie and Creepy from time to time. One of the cashiers was an older lady who was sometimes a bit snippy about selling those magazines to kids, but she was also kind of snippy about the comic books too. We all avoided her. She didn’t usually work on the days the comics came out. And she didn’t usually work much past noon. I don’t remember any of the other cashiers giving us any problems. One of the cashiers had just graduated from high school. Her name was Karen and she had been my babysitter from time to time just a few years previously. She never had any problem selling that stuff to us. I’m sure if there was any kind of rule or law about it, she would have enforced it.
The place was called Moore’s Drugstore, and I’m sure Mr. Moore would’ve been a bit peeved if he knew the older woman was refusing to take anybody’s money for magazines.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 5, 2023 16:08:31 GMT -5
I honestly don't see Morbius as a horror character. He's a super-villain/hero character with some minor horror trappings. Now, I'll admit that I'm not sure that I've ever read his short-lived solo series, but the dude started out as a Spider-Man villain. That just ain't horror. Yeah, this reminded me of a point I wanted to make but forgot: I see most of the books you mentioned as monster books, not horror books. The same could be said for Charlton's Gorgo and Konga series and Swamp thing under Wein and Micheline (though not Moore). That is, they follow the typical adventures of these characters and the folks around them as adventures. They are not really aiming to frighten or create a "sense of dread," though they may do so sometimes. But so did Ditko's Dr. Strange.
We actually get into this a bit in Part 2. I think it addresses your thoughts, here. As for Morbius, the solo Morbius I've read felt a lot more horror-aligned than superhero-aligned, but if you only know him as a Spidey villain, inevitably you'll see it differently. [/quote] I really want to know more about people's experiences buying these books in the 1970s, as I wasn't there. I've heard stories like George's before, but were they at the owner's discretion or was it a statewide thing? It certainly doesn't make sense to me that comics had to abide by an internal regulatory agency when magazines on the racks right next to them were equally accessibly to kids. Certainly, the existence of the code implies that comics were more accessible to kids than magazines were. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 5, 2023 16:52:57 GMT -5
The only thing I remember Baron Blood from is Invaders. Not horror. While I think your sense of horror and mine are probably pretty similar, you must accept the idea that one's definition of horror is inevitably relative. I generally don't consider a superhero villain to be horror, but I get why George does. The Phantom Stranger, though...even DC labelled it as horror, using that iconic bat emblem in the top left corner:  |
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 6, 2023 22:41:25 GMT -5
Well, shaxper , I had no trouble buying Warren magazines in the 70s, but then I had started picking them up a few years before, when I was 13. Never an eyebrow raised in my direction. Eerie 14; Creepy 19; and Famous Monsters 49 were my first ones. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 7, 2023 8:12:19 GMT -5
I wanted to share this cool drawing by McGuire.  |
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Post by MWGallaher on Oct 13, 2023 16:33:32 GMT -5
One last note: one of my first Marvels was a coverless copy of Spider-Man 100 or 101 or whatever that I found on the sidewalk (yes, that used to happen) Indeed it did! That's how I obtained BRAVE & BOLD # 93, featuring Batman in the House of Mystery, in 1972 or '73. It was just lying on the sidewalk, right about here:  |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 13, 2023 17:40:21 GMT -5
One last note: one of my first Marvels was a coverless copy of Spider-Man 100 or 101 or whatever that I found on the sidewalk (yes, that used to happen) Indeed it did! That's how I obtained BRAVE & BOLD # 93, featuring Batman in the House of Mystery, in 1972 or '73. It was just lying on the sidewalk, right about here: I'm just impressed that you remember the location well enough to google map it! Of course, I found an X-Men #94 on a wet basement floor once, and I definitely remember where that happened.  Store owner sold it to me for $4! |
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Post by MWGallaher on Oct 13, 2023 18:34:00 GMT -5
My wife's always incredulous that I can remember specific places I got particular comics. I've always assumed that most of us collectors have such memories of at least some of our collection. But it's really only a few out of the thousands that I can conjure up such detailed memories. The funny thing is that they're not all remarkable favorites, they're really quite random. For instance, I can pinpoint where I got GIANT-SIZE CREATURES #1, WESTERN TEAM-UP #1, neither of which were all that big a deal for me.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 13, 2023 19:01:26 GMT -5
The funny thing is that they're not all remarkable favorites, they're really quite random. For instance, I can pinpoint where I got GIANT-SIZE CREATURES #1, WESTERN TEAM-UP #1, neither of which were all that big a deal for me. I suspect it's more about the meaning of the moment than the meaning of the issue, if that makes any sense. I'm the same way. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 13, 2023 19:09:26 GMT -5
MWGallaher and ![]() ... Marcel Proust would like to offer each of you a cookie.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 13, 2023 19:25:28 GMT -5
MWGallaher and ![]() ... Marcel Proust would like to offer each of you a cookie. Were he still alive, I think he'd owe this entire community a free pizza at the least. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 14, 2023 8:03:47 GMT -5
Q: Use "Madelyne Pryor" in a sentence.
A: I'll have the madeleine prior to the pizza.
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