Karen: With the loosening of the Comics Code in the 70s, Marvel went bananas and flooded the market with a ton of monster comics and magazines - there was Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf By Night, The Frankenstein Monster, The Living Mummy, Man-Thing, Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed - and on and on. While many of these titles eventually fell to the wayside, some had a fairly decent run, and Tomb of Dracula in particular is well-regarded.Karen: So what say you? Did you dig these books, or did you want to drive a stake through their hearts?
When I was a kid, monsters were as relevant to me as super heroes, Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek. Happily, the House of Ideas addressed all that was en vogue with me at the time (and frankly, still IS). Wolfman's Dracula is an acknowledged classic, but so, I believe, are Moench's Werewolf and Gerber's Man-Thing. Let's face it: with so many Marvel characters monsters themselves, how could Famous Monsters not fit into the equation.
ReplyDeleteI never minded monsters being part of the MU, werwolves , vampires, zombies, etc.....but the inclusion of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster never seemed like a good fit, IMO, because i guess I always imagined Peter Parker or Johnny Storm lived in a universe where they had read the books, and seen the movies just like i had. I could see Spidey fighting Morbius, or a guy dressed up like Dracula (like a Scooby-Doo villain) but not the "actual" Dracula of legend.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, the little me avoided most of them - maybe picking up an occasional issue of Dracula or Werewolf. One reason was that a friend gave me an issue of Swamp Thing when I was in about the 2nd grade (probably a Wein/Wrightson story but I really can't remember) and for whatever reason it really freaked me out and put me off of monster/horror comics for quite some time. I later learned to appreciate them, however, and now have, say, the Man-Thing and Tales of Zombie essentials (plus Moore's entire run on Swamp Thing in TPBs).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think Anonymous above makes a really good point about having literary figures like Dracula and Frankenstein becoming actual MU characters. And one thing I really, really hated was when Claremont had Dracula appear in the X-men for a few stories - the Gothic horror mystique surrounding Dracula just does not mix well with the X-universe.
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ReplyDeleteWell I guess you'd be really unhappy with the vampire mutant stuff going on in X-Men right now! But I do agree with you Edo; I remember when Dracula met the X-men and I just thought it didn't work.
I guess I'm on the fence about having Dracula and Frankenstein in the Marvel Universe. it really depends on how it's handled. For example, I thought the Dr.Strange stories by Roger Stern where the sorcerer supreme was fighting Dracula were pretty darn good. But I didn't care to see the Frankenstein Monster hanging out with Spidey in team-up.
Karen