Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

As a comic book fan... one gets used to the notion (eventually; whether grudgingly or otherwise) of being somewhat "out-of-synch" with the rest of the world.

The realization first begins to settle in, I think, as grade school segues with smooth, silent inevitability into the junior high years.

While the attentions of your fellow classmates and peers begin to subtly shift away from those shared realms of the fantastic which are the especial province of children (gutsy, battle-hardened war sergeants; monosyllabic "loner" gunslingers; and so on, and so forth), and towards the more studiedly practical and mundane concerns of impending adolescence, and beyond...

... the comics fan, by way of comparison, never quite manages to tear himself (or herself) away from the slow, steady tug of that meta-fictive gravity well. Mightily-thewed, sword-wielding barbarians and spandexed savants remain integral components of the comics fan's inner landscape; their codes and codicils helping to inform a worldview, in turn, which is (more often than not) as stiff-necked and rigidly moral as it is luridly romanticized.

Hence "out-of-synch."

At some point during the mid- to late 1970's, however... Unca Cheeks (oh, look! The conversation has turned itself back towards me, again! How wonderful!) found himself positioned at a 90-degree attitudinal away from even his fellow comics fans, in one particular and telling instance; rendering him the proud (if somewhat perplexed) ruler of one gawdalmighty exclusive storytelling "domain."

Simply put most (if, indeed, not all) of my favorite comics from said period were -- in fact -- black-and-white magazines.

The Marvel Comics "black-and-white boom" of the mid-'70's was occasioned by a variety of factors the (then-)recent success, sales-wise, of such horror-oriented fare as Werewolf By Night and The Tomb of Dracula; Marvel's own (perfectly understandable) desire to expand its presence and influence from the standard comics "spinner racks" to the more prestigious (and profitable) magazine racks, alongside (say) Rolling Stone and Newsweek; and an overall "loosening" of the restrictive "Comics Code," overall, making more "adult-themed" material possible for ambitious writers and editors alike.

As it was in the horror genre that the Marvel Comics magazines of the day made their most successful (and most consistently interesting, in mine own humble opinion) meta-fictive forays... we'll start with these, and make our way along from there.

A particular favorite of mine, from this period, was the black-and-

white DRACULA LIVES! magazine; an anthology title which featured some of Marvel's cleverest and most innovative writers (Marv Wolfman; Doug Moench; Roy Thomas; etc.) yoked in creative tandem with such artistic worthies as Gene Colan; Alan Weiss; Paul Gulacy; Dick Giordano; and Neal Adams.

The DRACULA LIVES! series -- wisely, I think -- took decided storytelling advantage of the all-but-immortal nature of its lead character, with single-issue, stand-alone tales taking place in every epoch and locale imaginable.

(A few of the more intriguing [and noteworthy] conceits Dracula acts as an unseen manipulator, behind the scenes, during the Salem Witch Trials [Roy Thomas]; Dracula stalks a "ham" actor who has portrayed him ineptly, in a "Z"-grade horror film [Marv Wolfman]; Dracula finds himself dueling Robert E. Howard's Puritan adventurer, Solomon Kane [Thomas, again]; a despairing Dracula shudders and crawls through the horrors of heroin withdrawal, after [inadvertently] battening upon a nameless junkie [Gerry Conway]; and a delicate, evocative multi-issue adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, lushly illustrated by Dick Giordano ).

The DRACULA tales -- both within the black-and-white magazine and its four-color counterpart -- proved popular enough with the readers of the day to initiate several "spin-off" titles and one-shots of varying note. Of these, the most successful, story-wise, was Chris Claremont's sixty-four page Blade, the Vampire-Slayer opus, within the pages of "try-out" title MARVEL PREVIEW. [See cover reproduction, below]

Utilizing a Marv Wolfman-created character originally conceptualized for (and exhaustively explicated within) the aforementioned monthly TOMB OF DRACULA comic, the sullen and arrogant young "vampire-slayer" is forced to confront a nightmare scenario of his own (inadvertent) devising, after he allows himself to grow too careless and cocksure in the course of his self-imposed "war against the undead"...

... and -- in so doing -- ends up murdering an innocent (and all too human) twelve-year-old girl, by means of one of his own signature weapons.

(There, now you see...? Your mother always told you and told you "... you keep running around with those silly things, and you're going to put someone's eye out." Mothers always just know, don't they...?)

My very favorite of the Marvel black-and-white horror series', however, had to be -- just had to be -- a wholly (and unjustly) overlooked little gem within the pages of the short-lived HAUNT OF HORROR magazine, entitled Gabriel Devil-Hunter. [See cover reproduction, below]

HAUNT OF HORROR began its existence as an ill-starred prose digest (chiefly noteworthy for its first-run inclusion of such well-crafted [if somewhat minor] short story offerings as Harlan Ellison's "Neon" and George Alec Effinger's "Heartstop"). Distribution so spotty and slipshod that it resulted in the first two issues actually being seen by fewer people than those who picked up Andrew Ridgely's post-WHAM! solo album resulted in a frantic, last-minute change to the more easily-distributed B&W magazine format. (Even I -- I, your dutiful [read obsessive] Unca Cheeks -- have never actually seen the digest-sized issue #1. So we're talkin' Scarce City, here... all right?)

In any event Gabriel Devil-Hunter was the auctorial inspiration of (then-)Marvel Comics mainstay Doug Moench (who would often end up penning anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of many a Marvel B&W, all by himself, back in the day; a happy talent he'd picked up, doubtless, during his years as a prolific contributor to the Warren Magazines B&W horror line [CREEPY; EERIE; VAMPIRELLA; etc.]

A naked and shameless attempt to cash in on the "demonic possession" craze which had swept the nation just a year or two earlier (in the form of both William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel THE EXORCIST, and the William Friedkin-directed film derived from same), Moench's Gabriel was nonetheless an eerily effective (if lurid) exploration into the nature of supernatural evil, with such truly horrific scenarios as an old man and his sexually repressed daughter being tormented by a particularly sadistic (and incestuous) succubus-type invading spirit.

("Tonight... and every night... until your soul can no longer tolerate our foul ecstasy"...? Why am I imagining The Old Guy, in this particular scenario, doing a Olympic-caliber standing broad jump towards the nearest reasonably comfortable horizontal surface and proclaiming, in tones ringing and defiant "Wellllllll... it won't work, you daemonic diva! Not even if you were to use handcuffs! AND wear a black rubber Girl Scout uniform. Like the one in that closet over there! Please! Pleeeeeeaaaaase -- !")

... but enough fond reminiscings, re my high school prom.

As may readily be ascertained by the discerning reader, Ol' Gabriel -- a really, really lapsed Catholic priest -- was The Brooding, Melancholy Sort; and much given over to spending the overwhelming bulk of his personal "down time" in close, poorly-lit libraries, looking hag-ridden and cool.

("Lesse, now... Personal Inventory Time. Eyepatch...? Check. White streak snaking improbably throughout my hair, from front to back? Check. Spooky chick named "Desadia" with an absolutely killer rack to wander around in tight leather and shoot desperate, longing glances my way? Check. Gawd, but I rule.")

Said "brooding" and "melancholy" may well have had something to do with Gabriel's secret shame he'd allowed himself to be not only possessed, but corrupted, decades earlier, while still serving as a parish priest... and, in turn, utilized his peculiar influence to lead others within his flock to Damnation Eternal, as well. ("Please turn in your new hymnals to Page 523, my children... and let us raise our voices together, in sacred chorale "I write the songs... which make the whoooooole... worrrrrrrrllllllld... siiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnng... ")

It was (as aforementioned) one grand and gloriously deranged little series, while it lasted calculated; hysterically over-the-top; and (in all likelihood) about as doctrinally "sound" as the lyrics to "In-A-Gadda-Da-

Vida."

Debating as to whether or not any auctorial enterprise as crass and cynically motivated as was this one is "good" or "bad" is almost beside the point, really.

It was the '70's. Comics, in general -- and Marvel Comics, in particular -- were in unswerving, full-bore "fad" mode. Whatever was "hot," at that precise moment -- disco; kung fu flicks; CB radios; gratuitous Dukes of Hazard references; or (in this case) daemonic possession --

... well that's what the readers got, by golly "good," "bad" or what- have-you. (Remember this was the era of the Marvel KISS one-shot, after all. And THE MAN FROM ATLANTIS.)

Let's examine one of those "fads" a little more closely, on Page Two of this entry... shall we?

The MARVEL Black-and-White Magazines of the 1970's PAGE TWO

The MARVEL Black-and-White Magazines of the 1970's PAGE THREE

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