Thanks for the clarification. DAK himself accused Doug of being a liar when the link to that review was shared with a facebook group. I suppose what Doug is claiming is that the idea for those stories was his, even if he wasn't the one who ended up writing them. Whether that's true, false, or the product of foggy memories I won't pretend to know. History, I suppose, is on DAK's side with this. I'm not aware of Moench being a liar or a credit-taker otherwise, but I've certainly caught a few of his mis-rememberings as I've combed through research for this thread. I suspect that's true of most creators, answering questions on the fly about a multitude of works created in a flurry of deadlines over the course of several decades.

Not apologizing for Moench if he's taken credit for someone else's work. Just explaining that this may not have been done with a sinister intent.

I've been giving this comment a lot of thought, especially as I have found myself compelled to return to Astonishing Tales #25 on two occasions since reviewing it two weeks back. The images tell every bit as much of the story as the words; I've never seen anything quite like it. It reminds me a bit of Kirby or Moebius, but in an entirely different way.

Such a shame Moench and Buckler didn't collaborate more. Did I hear that they are not on good terms these days??

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #3



"Web of Bleeding Vipers!"

pencils: Paul Gulacy
inks: Al Milgram

grade: C-

Moench's first work on Shang-Chi, and, much as with Monsters Unleashed, it seems likely that this was assigned as a rush filler job, Moench having no idea that he'd be receiving full creative control over the character/franchise soon afterwards.

It's tempting to get excited about this first collaboration with Paul Gulacy, the artist with whom Moench would eventually be most associated, but if my theory is correct, then this (and possibly all of Moench's b/w features) were written at home in the wee hours of the night and then later assigned to an artist. It's unlikely Moench and Gulacy had any contact or collaboration for this story.

And it isn't much of a story.

While Moench grew up with a love for all kinds of comics: humor, adventure, war, horror, and superheroes, and while he was a massive fan of late night horror reruns, he had no familiarity with, nor interest in, the Kung Fu genre (1), and that makes for an awkward first outing. As I've argued extensively in this thread, Moench was a visual writer who often conceived of one visual premise around which to build a story, and whereas one would expect that visual premise to be action-intensive in a martial arts comic, it instead appears to be a spider within a van, symbolizing freedom vs. captivity:



It's...interesting. Almost deep, though far too labored.

So I guess Moench figured Martial Arts fans were attracted to the Eastern Philosophy/spiritulaity component of Kung Fu, and not the more obvious dimension. Whatever the case, this is the first time we see Moench get truly introspective with a character, even if Shang-Chi under Jim Starlin was a pretty simplistic character intentionally lacking in self awareness, as he was on a journey of self-discovery.

Moench missed that, somehow, and labors intensely and repetitively over Shang-Chi's philosophical views of the events surrounding him:



It is often obnoxious and semi-nonsensical.

Still, it marks the beginning of a new approach for Moench: a more character-intensive approach to writing. Many of Moench's later protagonists will be similarly introspective, but the quality of their contemplations will grow stronger, more restrained, and less obnoxious with time and practice.


Plot synopsis: Shang-Chi is visiting China Town in an attempt to reconnect with his past but is vastly disappointed, he stumbles upon thugs abducting a fleeing woman and intercedes, only to get captured by them when they hold a knife to her throat, but Shang-Chi is able to escape and rescue the woman, killing the thugs and their leader; the woman explains her name is Linda Fong and that her would-be murderer was her own father, The Adder, a drug lord that she had just uncovered and had fled in horror, so Shang-Chi appears to find connection with her in that they both learned terrible things about their fathers and felt the need to oppose them, leaving Shang-Chi to decide that "the past is best...forgotten"




Note: I reviewed this issue from the standpoint of Shang-Chi continuity here a long while back as part of my Master of Kung Fu from the Beginning thread.






(1) Source: Cooke, Jon. "Doug Moench's Memories." Comic Book Artist Collection. Vol. 3. Raleigh: Twomorrows, 2005. 22-36. Print

Of all the Marvel b/w magazines, this is one I would never expect to warrant an omnibus edition. Is it reprinting the non Shang-Chi features as well?



I am a huge fan of the Marvel b/w magazines. Deadly Hands and Doc Savage are the only ones that never really impressed me. Planet of the Apes, Dracula Lives!, and Haunt of Horrors were probably my favorites.

Vampire Tales #6



"Blood Death"

art: Alfredo Alcala

my grade: B

It remains fun to remember how these black and white B-stories were written. All Moench had to do was provide a title for a horror story in order to receive advance payment from Marvel with the promise that he'd write the story later. Thus, when a title is called "Blood Death." you know Moench had no idea what this would be -- it's as generic a filler title as you can get.

The story itself isn't bad, but, like much of the other work-for-hire stories Moench churned out in his first weeks at Marvel, it relies almost entirely upon those Pre-Code style unexpected twists and little else. In this case, an anti-hero character is actually wishing to be bitten by a vampire so that he can escape his mundane existence and live forever. He tells his wife to kiss-off, looks up a real-life vampire living in a shabby apartment, gets his kiss of death, and then gets an unexpected twist in an otherwise perfect plan:



If the idea of a protagonist actually seeking to become a vampire sounds original to you, it's not. Moench essentially recycled this from "Everlasting Mortality" (published two years earlier). The major difference is the means of the final twist: in the original story, the newly made vampire was destroyed by the cross on his tombstone. However, Moench has been using crosses as a means of unexpectedly killing his vampires A LOT as of late, and so this and the next story explore other unusual means of defeating them.



"The Color of Crimson Gold"

art by: Vicente Alcazar

my grade: B+

This feels like the marriage of two different concepts: a beggar who sells a treasure map to fools, knowing it leads to vampires who will eat the victim, pay the beggar for his work, and then return the map to him so that he can do it all over again, and the visual premise of using arrows to kill vampires because they are essentially just like wooden stakes.

As a result, we get the story of a gypsy (who a beggar tries to trick into being ambushed by vampires) summoning his tribe to take down the beggar and the vampires together. Despite the story's several weaknesses (especially the generic nature of the protagonist), watching a mob of vampires get massacred by the humans for once proves immensely gratifying.






You almost begin to feel bad for them.

The story than attempts to drive home an important message about our treatment towards immigrants when the gypsies who just saved a village from vampires is burned to death after being blamed for the crimes of the monsters they just defeated, but it all somehow manages to fall flat.

Like so many of Moench's late night work-for-hire scripts, this story feels rushed an in need of another few drafts, but that vampire massacre alone made it tremendously worthwhile all the same.

Only problem is I don't have a scanner. All my images are snapped with a low quality digital camera. Really wish I could be of help here. Heck, wish I could give the interview