As we already know, in November of 1972, Moench had a confrontation with Jim Warren over Moench wanting to submit to other publishers because Warren wasn't buying and publishing enough of his material. Moench literally told Warren to "f*** off". In response, the usually tough talking Jim Warren sent Moench a box full of gifts and published an unprecedented four Moench stories in a single magazine issue (Eerie #44) the next month as a means of trying to win Moench back.
I bring this up now because, one month after Moench tentatively quit Warren to accept a job at Marvel on a trial basis, Warren once again published four Moench stories* in Creepy #57, presumably in an attempt to lure Moench back once more.
"Hope of the Future" (from Creepy #57, November 1973)
art by: Jaime Brocal
my grade: A-
As a result, while this is far from a perfect story, it's a damn good one, especially if you like Post Apocalyptica. Hi All!
First of all, my first post here, so sorry if I should have gone elsewher to make the introduction first :DIt's Jaime Brocal Remohi's son here. Nice to see dad's work here and so well treated. Yes that was a nice story, and honestly did not know about the story's author. Unlike the MUMMY, which I always knew was due to Steve Skeates' pen, I asumed this one was written by my dad.Curiously there was, in Spain, an interesting film called "Who can kill a child?" the story is quite much the same, though the man is not alone in this case. It's based in the novel "El juego de los niños" by Juan José Plans. It'd be interesting to have asked the late author if he had read or seen the original Warren story. Not strange, as it was published in Spain too. I also recommend the film. Freakin and terrorizing regards to all JBC
Last Edit: Aug 9, 2018 9:12:36 GMT -5 by brocalremohi
Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 9, 2018 5:47:06 GMT -5
Welcome, Jaime!
Great work on the above page.
_________________________________ People in white coats is where I put my humorous science cartoons. Roquefort Raider is where you can see some of my more serious stuff. Feel welcome to drop by! Éditions Roquefort is my publishing house.
Post by brocalremohi on Aug 9, 2018 9:14:48 GMT -5
Thanks, double, Roquefort Raider, Yep, dad was agreat artist! And this one's good, though his work on THE MUMMY was astounding! Freakin and terrorizing regards to all JBC
Thanks, double, Roquefort Raider, Yep, dad was agreat artist! And this one's good, though his work on THE MUMMY was astounding! Freakin and terrorizing regards to all JBC
Well it took me two frickin' years, but I have FINALLY totally restored the images in this thread after the great Photobucket Debacle of 2017--and just in time for Doug Moench's birthday this Saturday!
I do plan to return to these reviews very very soon. In the meantime, feel free to revisit the 112 reviews that are already here and now restored to their former glory
Coincidentally, I just got to the point in the Omega Men run I am reading where Moench takes over as the regular writer and was thinking about you and this thread when I read the first issue he did.
Coincidentally, I just got to the point in the Omega Men run I am reading where Moench takes over as the regular writer and was thinking about you and this thread when I read the first issue he did.
Missed that Jaime Brocal post until now, very nice to see the response from the artist's son. And yes, what beautiful artwork. When I first started to hunt down back issues of the Warren mags quite a few years ago now, at first I was looking only for those issues featuring certain artists I was already familiar with from the few scattered issues I'd read as a kid (e.g. Esteban Maroto, Gonzalo Mayo). As soon as I flipped through a few of those back-issues, I realised that Jaime Brocal was another artist to add to that list.
Script: Gerry Conway (pages 1-14); Doug Moench (pages 15-32) Pencils: Paul Gulacy Inks: Al Milgrom Colors: George Roussos Letters: Dave Hunt
Grade: B (for Moench's contributions), C- (over-all)
I'd previously observed how much of Moench's early transition into becoming a regular bullpen writer seemed to correlate with Gary Friedrich's departure. Now, it's hard to miss the fact that Moench gets his shot at three of his best remembered runs, all in the span of a single month, and all due to Gerry Conway being shuffled around. Conway was originally slated to start Werewolf by Night, Planet of the Apes, and (here) Master of Kung Fu. How different would Moench's career trajectory have looked if Conway had remained on those titles? It's staggering to consider.
Moench's start on Master of Kung Fu is a tricky thing to pin down. He'd already written one Shang-Chi story in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #3 and would continue with that run for some time to come. He wrote that issue as a fill-in writer, with no specific awareness that he'd be continuing with the feature. For this cover date of September of 1974, we have him again writing a story for Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, nearly the entire Giant-Size Master of Kung-Fu #1, and half of this issue, as well. Mike's Amazing World claims this issue saw publication first. My own feeble speculation is that Moench wrote this first, taking it over at the last minute (half-way through being scripted by Conway), then busted out scripts for issues #4-11 of Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, as well as some scripts that ended up being backup features in Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu, over a couple of sleepless nights (I explain this theory here) and finally wrote the lead feature for Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu, now knowing he was assuming creative control of the franchise and having some more time to consider how he wanted to handle the character and property.
Thus, while you can look at either Deadly Hands #3 or this story and anxiously await the beginning of a legendary run, Moench is still just playing filler writer here, fleshing out the second half of a plot conceived by Gerry Conway.
That being said, Moench does bring his unique style to this story in several noteable ways, the first of which is his lush, prosaic narration, which was wholly absent in Conway's half of the story. Moench's first three pages begin with this description of the villain's floating casino: "It is gray, and alien...a cold hard intruder to the grace and serenity of that which it displaces...seen here in the silent darkness deeper than night...seen here, below the tranquil...water...above the sea...it rises...to form a platform of grassless land buoyed by the sea...a floating island unclaimed by the Earth...where man may govern its purpose in the tapestry of life."
And that multi-panel progression of action that Moench first picked up from his collaboration with Rich Buckler in Astonishing Tales #25 continues to surface here, as it has in nearly every script he has published in the past month:
Again, Moench thinks visually, often providing descriptions and/or storyboards to his artists. I wonder if he actually got to sit down and collaborate with Gulacy on this one. Certainly, they will be working together by the time of Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #1, published later this month.
One last thing I enjoyed about this story, which may have been suggested either by Conway's plot or Moench's finished script, is how utterly direct Shang-Chi is, first walking right past guards to the point that they don't even know how to respond to him, and then walking directly up to the mob boss who has been hiring men to kill him.
It's almost funny at Shang-Chi's expense, even while showing just how sure he is in his own abilities.
Incidentally, I review this story more in terms of Conway's plot and within the context of the Shang-Chi continuity prior to this story here, in my old Master of Kung-Fu from the Beginning thread.
Seven Moench stories still to review for September of 1974, including Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #1, more Werewolf by Night, more Gabriel: Devil-Hunter, and Moench's first work on Iron Fist!
Script: Doug Moench Pencils: Tony DeZuniga Inks: Tony DeZuniga Letters: John Costanza
Grade: B-
Yet another title Moench inherits from Gerry Conway between August and September of 1974, only this is the first time I'm not sure it's a great fit. By this point, Moench has written a plethora of vampire stories in his career, and yet (by my count), exactly two of them do not end with the vampire being utterly tormented because Moench enjoys playing with the rules of how to kill them. Sometimes, it's a deliberate ploy on the part of a scheming human:
And that makes him an unusual fit for writing one of Marvel's hottest characters at the time, who also happens to be a vampire. It starts off well enough, Moench bringing his best prose narration to the table (as usual), setting up an encounter between Count Dracula and a beat police officer on his final night out:
but their first encounter results in the cop accidentally injuring Dracula when he falls on the guy's splintered night stick, and things get even more ridiculous when Dracula comes back later for his revenge:
Generally speaking, when you write a vampire story, you can make your own rules, ignore ones you don't like, and dredge up obscure ones that fit your cause, but Dracula is an established property, and (maybe I've missed something here) I don't recall his ever being vanquished by the sight of silver before.
Dracula then flees in horror, conveniently swearing that he won't bother EVER coming back again because he has already exacted enough revenge on the cop. I rolled my eyes at this and was ready to write this tale off as a stinker, but fortunately Moench did save one last surprise for us at the close, where the cop realizes that the revenge Dracula spoke about wasn't anything done to him directly:
Now I am a little lost as to how a career beat officer, after twenty years of service, is going home to someone with the youthful, toned physique of a super model, but that's not really on Moench, I suppose.
It's still not a great story, but the second part may prove a worthwhile pay-off as an aging, worn out everyman is about to do battle with Count Dracula in a tale written by a dude who loves watching vampires squirm.
Last Edit: Feb 25, 2019 12:05:12 GMT -5 by shaxper
Now I am a little lost as to how a career beat officer, after twenty years of service, is going home to someone with the youthful, toned physique of a super model, but that's not really on Moench, I suppose.
I'd chalk it up to the artist's use of photo-reference.
By September of 1974, Doug Moench was the king of the Marvel black and white magazines, writing for seven of them concurrently, and writing the lead features for four out of those seven magazines as well. Moench appeared to have near total creative control over the directions of Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed, and Planet of the Apes. And here, with Haunt of Horrors, he's writing nearly all of the content of this sixty page issue (Larry Liebler getting in one 8 page backup, an atom-age reprint occupying another four, and Chris Claremont's transcript of a bunch of folks in the bullpen discussing the Exorcist rounds out the page count).
It really is a shame that this volume won't last beyond issue five, perhaps because it lacks a memorable, instantly recognizable character or monster at its core. Lead feature Gabriel: Devil Hunter is an amazing property, but I doubt too many fans were going to spring 75 cents on an unfamiliar property.
"House of Brimstone"
Script: Doug Moench Pencils: Billy Graham; Pablo Marcos Inks: Frank Giacoia; Mike Esposito Letters: ?
Grade: B-
I LOVE the new introductory caption Gabriel gets at the opening of this issue:
But the story, itself, is far less monumental than the introductory adventure Moench offered us last time around. Sure, we've got a keen visual battle between light and dark in a possessed home that (you can clearly see) was driven by Moench:
though someone (I suspect Marcos, perhaps due to the language barrier) gets a bit confused and has one of the key battles of this story occur amidst a completely white background, even while Desadia notices in the aftermath that the lights have just turned back on:
Oops.
But there isn't much to this story. An expert on demonic possession's own daughter becomes possessed, and he and Gabriel must fight to save her. Sure, it's dark and over-the-top perverse for a Marvel book at times:
and Gabriel is reminded throughout this adventure that his semi pre-cognitive assistant, Desadia, has foretold that he will fail this time around:
but it doesn't really invite Gabriel to become a better developed character this time around, and the way in which he "fails" by the close is only a semi-satisfactory solution to the building mystery. The expert, old, tired, and aware that the demon is about to try to possess him, kills himself so that the demon cannot succeed. I guess it's a "failure," but it really had nothing directly to do with Gabriel, and he succeeded in warding off the demon as a result of this.
Love the moodiness, love the small amount of shock value Moench offered this time around, but Gabriel was a far more complex, tortured, and fascinating character last time. For a tortured ex-priest, he's too un-conflicted here.
"The Restless Coffin!"
Script: Doug Moench Pencils: Pat Broderick Inks: Al Milgrom Letters: ?
Grade: D-
Possibly the most forgettable script I've ever seen of Moench. A young boy growing up in the country dreams of becoming a famous actor. He goes to see the village witch/fortune teller, and she informs him that he will become tremendously famous in America, but he will die at the height of his fame, and his soul will not be at rest until his body comes back home. So he ignores her and lives the prediction out in the most uncomplicated and uninteresting of ways.
He becomes famous (Moench doesn't even bother to depict how this happens), dies on stage, gets buried, gets unearthed in a flood, found at sea, and then buried again in his homeland, where the grimace that was on his corpse finally vanishes.
This three page story reminds me of high school essays where we had to make that one hundred and fifty word minimum requirement. That's the level of creativity Moench brings to this page-filler.
"Flirting with Mr. D" (text piece)
Script: Doug Moench Pencils: Billy Graham Inks: Billy Graham Letters: typeset
Grade: n/a
Moench writes four pages about Haunt of Horror's new head-liner, Gabriel: Devil Hunter. He seems to come to this with two agendas:
1. Convince us this stuff is so scary that he's actually being haunted while writing it.
2. Make it abundantly clear that he'd never seen The Exorcist prior to creating the character and that, having seen it since, he believes Gabriel: Devil Hunter is better.
Ever since James Warren invited Moench to write explanations of two of his stories a few years earlier, I've been aware that Moench tends to come off a bit...haughty when he writes about himself, even while trying to be self-depricating. It's weird. I don't have the sense from anything I know about him or have read about him that he has a particularly big ego, but he absolutely comes off that way here.
Fortunately, this piece does provide a few other details that prove useful to this review thread:
1. The original title for the Gabriel: Devil Hunter feature was to be "Blisters of the Soul," but Roy Thomas overrode it.
2. Moench and partner Deb (not sure if they were married yet) were friends with Gerry Conway and his wife and lived near them.
3. According to Moench, he was producing upwards of 36 pages per day while at the Marvel offices. That does not include what he was writing at home.
4. Moench discusses his urinary tract infection at disturbing length and depth. Okay, that's not as much useful as, say, worth noting. Proof, though, that Moench wasn't really beholden to an editor on these books. They were letting him write whatever the heck he wanted to, so long as he gave new properties compelling names. As Moench himself once commented:
"You had no editor looking over your shoulder at that time. The writers were more responsible. Don McGregor was his own editor, I was my own editor, Steve Gerber was his own editor, Steve Englehart was his own editor. Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas...we all pretty much wrote what we wanted."1
"Last Descent to Hell"
Script: Doug Moench Pencils: Frank Springer Inks: Frank Springer Letters: ?
grade: C+
The weirdest installment of the issue, it's likely a leftover from the initial backup story jobs Moench took on upon first moving to New York. In it, Death is walking through Hell, towards Satan's throne for one final confrontation after years of (apparently) working for the Prince of Darkness. Who knew?
Anyway, Satan discusses the matter with Judas (his right hand man) and draws up a strategy, which is depicted in parallel to Death just calmly walking through hordes of demonic defenders and wiping them all out with his scythe. Springer doesn't do much to make any of this look interesting, but Moench's characterization of Death is compelling enough to keep us interested:
Interesting that no one seems to care that Moench's depiction of Death is at odds with the character Friedrich and Starlin introduced in the pages of Captain Marvel over a year earlier. But, again, Moench seemed to be his own editor here.
Anyway, there is a building tension throughout this story as we await the inevitable final struggle between two beings that, by all rights, should be unstoppable. The Devil's plan is to subject Death to the souls of all the sinners he has collected, presuming that an excess of life will cancel out death (though how is it life if they are in the afterlife?), but things don't quite go as planned:
It's all a bit too much of a stretch for me to find it clever. Too bad, as I was really engaged in the story until the ho-hum climax.
1Vaughn, J.C. "A Writer on the Planet of the Apes." Comic Book Marketplace May 1999: 31 . Print.
Last Edit: Feb 25, 2019 22:20:20 GMT -5 by shaxper
I have both volumes of Essential Marvel Horror, which includes all of the 1970s stories featuring Brother Voodoo, Son of Satan, Satanna, Living Mummy, and a few other supernatural/horror characters, and I can say that the Gabriel stories are the only ones that can genuinely be described as horror. They are very dark, creepy and sometimes disturbing.
