I'm envious.

There is no creator, alive or dead, that I'd rather meet. Bill Finger is a close second.

I've had that kind of interaction with plenty of live creators too, so...

Though I've yet to read either, I wouldn't be surprised to find myself in your corner on that one. My distaste for Byrne is nearly as strong as my adoration of Moench.

"Dethslaker" (from Eerie #37, January 1972)

art by Ernie Colon

my grade: C



plot synopsis: A mysterious avenger invades the castle of an evil king, reveals that he carries a magic sword enchanted by a great wizard killed by the king and his wizard, conspires with a concubine to kill them both, does so by unleashing the wizard from his sword, and is then himself murdered by the rabble that invades the castle, mistaking him for the king he just overthrew.


I'm beginning to get a better sense of how Warren must have worked. Whereas I once assumed the majority of their contributors were regular staffers, with Moench as the odd freelance, I'm gradually starting to get the sense that much of Warren's talent was freelancing for it. That becomes increasingly apparent in this issue, where Moench's contribution is suddenly and unexpectedly from the fantasy genre at the same time that another fantasy feature leads the issue and letters have been coming in from fans over the past few months debating as to whether the Warren titles should venture into the fantasy and sci-fi genres. Sure seems like, rather than just submitting stories and seeing whether they'd get published, Moench was taking editorial direction as if he were a full time staffer. Anyone know more about Warren then I do? Was that their game: save money by having most of the staff work as freelance talent while still wielding a bullpen level of control over them?

Not that I suspect Moench would have minded. I know from the little autobiographical info I've seen him write that he did not want to leave Chicago, so getting regular work from a New York publisher without having to move there must have been a pretty good setup.

So, whenever and however it happened, at this point Moench seems to be functioning as a regular staffer, which helps to explain why his work will run in the Warren mags like clockwork from this point until his move to Marvel in 1974.


As for the story, itself, there's such a mix of greatness and garbage in this one. The concept, itself, of a rogue with an enchanted sword possessed by an awesome wizard seeking vengeance, is fantasy brilliance. This easily could have been its own ongoing premise, rivaling the immensely successful Marvel Conan series (to which Warren's recent shift towards fantasy was inevitably a response), as well as Elric of Melnibone (by which this story feels partly inspired). I also love the blending of genres here, as Moench employs the familiar Atom-Age horror twist-ending in a fantasy story.

And Ernie Colon was an insanely talented young artist with tremendous potential, as can be glimpsed in the page below, where his unorthodox panel arrangements draw increased contrast among the more traditional panels to the left, the photo-realistic panel at the bottom right, and the panel bridging them that, in the style of Kirby, blends comic book image with actual photograph.




But the rest is downright clumsy. For one, Moench's narration is repetitive and laborious in over-emphasizing the simple absolute he has created of an evil, selfish king deserving to die, and his dialogue is just as stilted, serving the plot but doing nothing else to suggest character nor tone. This is, by far, the least eloquent his writing has felt.

And, on top of that, Colon's art is a mad whirlwind that refuses to slow down enough to serve the script. Look at how crammed the writing is on that title page, or look at the panel below, in which the art completely ignores the script's clear description of the concubine being startled and frightened. Worse yet, we get the description of the moment only after the image has already been presented.

(note: spoiler tags are used since this image is NSFW)




In fact, it's often difficult to tell the order in which to read things on Colon's pages. The images have only a loose relationship to the placement of the words.

But perhaps the clumsiest marriage of script and art comes in this early moment where our protagonist encounters the king, not knowing who he is. The entire significance of this scene rests upon the protagonist not knowing it's the king, yet Colon gives the king a big old crown.




In short, though this concept had a lot of potential, and Warren clearly put stock in it, giving it a whopping 11 pages, it ends up being Moench's roughest published work to date.

I have seen some of those panels taken out of context and while they look weird that way, in the story they make sense. Wasn't it a possessed Franklin that was making Reed hit Sue? Been a long time since I've read that one, but I remember well the "mad god" story, the Negative Zone story, and Firefrost & Ebon Seeker.

Nice artwork by Ernie Colon there,. I like the soft shading, different from his usual style.

"Quavering Shadows" (from Vampirella #15, January 1972)

art by Jose Bea

my grade: A-



plot synopsis: A husband explains to his wife that his friend has moved into an old castle and begun believing in ghosts while a serial strangler is loose and making news. The husband ventures out to visit his friend and convince him that ghosts aren't real, but the experience quickly turns surreal and dangerous. After his friend appears to try to kill him (but was it his friend?) he runs home to his wife, only to learn that the strangler attempted to kill her before being caught by the police, and the strangler was, in fact, his friend from the castle (or was it?)


In my mind, this issue marks a critical transition point for Moench. Whereas most of Moench's previous stories felt quite deliberate in their execution, making them sometimes overly rigid and unpoetic but ultimately functional, this story flies in the face of all that. One of Moench's later trademarks as a writer is his fascination with night. Beyond the obvious creation of a character called "Moon Knight," Moench also gave us Nocturna, the villainess so in love with the night time as to believe it had a transforming effect upon oneself and, perhaps, all of reality. As she states in her first appearance (Batman #363):



Nocturna viewed the night as a time of enigma and poetry, not structure and solutions.

Consider how apt this is in Moench's own life as a writer. By this point, he was working for the Chicago Sun Times, running the teletype machine from 1am to 9am. He would write his stories while attending to the machine in those wee hours of the night, wrapping up around dawn to deliver the teletype stories to the news desks before heading home to bed. As a sometimes writer myself, I learned long ago that writing so late at night, when no one else is around and the world feels transformed, loosens up your writing into something more stream of consciousness and poetic, but also less structured and meticulous. That's exactly what happens here in this story, as Moench's words suddenly come alive in a way that, though similar to much of his later writing, doesn't match anything that had come before. In fact, Moench continued to be a nocturnal writer for at least a few years after this, continuing this writing schedule while freelancing through 1973, and then writing at night while assistant editing for Marvel by day in 1974. It's likely that his deepest, most eloquent writing was, itself, shaped by his writing schedule.

And Moench appears aware of all this, using the transformative power of darkness as the visual premise for this story, which begins with generic conversation and images by day, but which slowly transforms into vibrant narrative and brilliant imagery as night descends in the story.







Moench began with heavy exposition that seemed intent on meticulously building a mystery with a twist at the end, and you can almost begin to see where it would have gone, but when night falls, the story fundamentally changes, and while what we get at the end makes precious little sense, who cares? The marriage of Moench's prose and Jose Bea's art is positively enthralling; the kind of work I've been waiting for in beginning this review thread.

How tragic that Bea didn't go on to do more mainstream work. He was clearly brilliant and deserving of far more acclaim than he enjoys today. Would have LOVED to see him team up with Moench in the Marvel bullpen. Unfortunately, his career was stopped short prematurely.

According to wikipedia:




Too bad. This was one brilliant piece. I need to seek out more of his work.