Thought for sure we must have a thread for Marvel’s Monster Mags, but if so, I couldn’t find it. I know we’ve had tangential discussions of them in other threads (like the recent ‘Morbius, The Living Vampire’ one) but I think we really should have one dedicated thread for the whole line.
To refresh everyone’s memory:
Back in the early 1970s, Stan Lee wanted a piece of the B/W comics market, which at the time was dominated by James Warren’s three horror mags. Marvel had previously failed to successfully crack that market with a B/W Spider-Man mag (which was cancelled after only two issues) and SAVAGE TALES, featuring Conan The Barbarian. In 1973, they tried again, this time directly targeting Warren’s niche genre, Horror Comics. In true Marvel fashion, they flooded the zone with no less than four new magazines: DRACULA LIVES, MONSTERS UNLEASHED, VAMPIRE TALES and TALES OF THE ZOMBIE, later joined by a fifth, THE HAUNT OF HORROR.
The quality level of the ‘Marvel Monster Group’ mags was very hit and miss, but I kinda love them, warts and all. I’ll do deeper, more detailed analyses of the individual magazines in future posts.
Meanwhile, here’s the place to share your thoughts on Marvel’s mighty monochrome monsters. Tell you what, if you’ve got an opinion of ANY of Marvel’s B/W books, we can talk about those too. Did you think the Sons of the Tiger were too blatantly a rip-off of Lee, Saxon and Kelly? Were Doug Moench’s ‘all-new’ DOC SAVAGE stories better than the adaptations of the novels in the four-color series? Wasn’t Alex Nino’s artwork on MAN GODS FROM BEYOND THE STARS all kinds of awesome? Was it kinda pointless to do a HOWARD THE DUCK magazine without Steve Gerber? Were Remo and Chiun so popular that they really expected THE DESTROYER mag to fly off the shelves? In 1989?!? Simonson inked by Alcala on RAMPAGING HULK — two great tastes that go great together or was it like putting ketchup on licorice? Do you have a favorite ‘funny’ word balloon from Stan Lee’s MONSTER MADNESS?
To refresh everyone’s memory:
Back in the early 1970s, Stan Lee wanted a piece of the B/W comics market, which at the time was dominated by James Warren’s three horror mags. Marvel had previously failed to successfully crack that market with a B/W Spider-Man mag (which was cancelled after only two issues) and SAVAGE TALES, featuring Conan The Barbarian. In 1973, they tried again, this time directly targeting Warren’s niche genre, Horror Comics. In true Marvel fashion, they flooded the zone with no less than four new magazines: DRACULA LIVES, MONSTERS UNLEASHED, VAMPIRE TALES and TALES OF THE ZOMBIE, later joined by a fifth, THE HAUNT OF HORROR.
The quality level of the ‘Marvel Monster Group’ mags was very hit and miss, but I kinda love them, warts and all. I’ll do deeper, more detailed analyses of the individual magazines in future posts.
Meanwhile, here’s the place to share your thoughts on Marvel’s mighty monochrome monsters. Tell you what, if you’ve got an opinion of ANY of Marvel’s B/W books, we can talk about those too. Did you think the Sons of the Tiger were too blatantly a rip-off of Lee, Saxon and Kelly? Were Doug Moench’s ‘all-new’ DOC SAVAGE stories better than the adaptations of the novels in the four-color series? Wasn’t Alex Nino’s artwork on MAN GODS FROM BEYOND THE STARS all kinds of awesome? Was it kinda pointless to do a HOWARD THE DUCK magazine without Steve Gerber? Were Remo and Chiun so popular that they really expected THE DESTROYER mag to fly off the shelves? In 1989?!? Simonson inked by Alcala on RAMPAGING HULK — two great tastes that go great together or was it like putting ketchup on licorice? Do you have a favorite ‘funny’ word balloon from Stan Lee’s MONSTER MADNESS?
statistics: Posted by ByronOrlok — 2:33 AM - Today — Replies 3 — Views 138