shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 15, 2015 7:54:23 GMT -5
While Moench doesn't have any new scripts published in September of 1972 (aside from a one page interior cover story, but I don't count those as they don't give him much room to utilize his craft), he does get his first two reprints, as both Fate's Cold Finger and I am Dead, Egypt, Dead get re-run in Vampirella #19 and Eerie #42. Considering that Moench is about to have two new stories published by Skywald (coming up in Nightmare Annual #1 and Psycho #9, both two months from now), I wonder if those stories were scripts Warren rejected, publishing reprints in their place.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 15, 2015 8:30:47 GMT -5
"Eye Opener" (from Vampirella #20, October 1972) art by Rafael Aura León ("Auraleon") my grade: B Plot synopsis: A salesman taking a long road trip stops at an old house, requesting a place to stay for the night. He is captivated by the young girl living there and haunted by the blind grandmother who lives with her. The grandmother claims to "see" through her deceased husband's eyeballs, which she keeps in a box. The salesman sleeps with the young girl, and the grandmother, claiming to have seen it all, curses him and demands that he leave. On the road once again, he is haunted both by the eyes and (more importantly) by what the eyes saw in him, and he becomes so distracted as to drive right into a truck, painfully dying before his eyes magically appear alongside the deceased husband's in the grandmother's box.Whereas Moench has been given a different artist for every story up to this point, we're now seeing Auraleon do his pencils for the second story in a row (fourth, if you count the one page interior cover stories I'm not including in these reviews). They'll be teamed up again for a one pager next issue. Random luck? One requesting the other? Or perhaps it's the fact that Auraleon was now proving to be a steady and quality contributor, just as much as Moench had now been for a full year, and thus pairing the two made sense. For the story, itself, Moench has clearly been trying to experiment with his approach to storytelling as of late, and I like what he arrives at here. In both I am Dead, Egypt, Dead and Won't Get Fooled Again, we saw Moench try to incorporate elements of crime noir into his horror writing with mixed results. This time, though, we have a noir protagonist, complete with jaded internal narration and a desire to use everyone he sees, become the victim in a more classic style of horror story. And, like the classic Atom-Age horror stories, the victim is karmically deserving of his fate. It's a well blended marriage of the genres. And Moench incorporates a clever visual premise, as well, in which the supernatural element is an old blind woman who sees with the eyeballs of her husband, which she keeps in a box. The visual concept becomes clever because, ultimately, not only can the eyes see into other rooms and across the house, but, in beaming images of the salesman into his head at the end, they cause the self-serving protagonist to metaphorically "see" himself for what he is before tragically crashing his car. There might also be some subtle commentary about the fact that the man had left his wife (leaving her a letter that said, "Gloria, please drop dead. Love, Sollie"), contrasted against the grandmother still having a weird connection to her husband beyond the grave. Art-wise, Auraleon does a nice job once again, employing some of the gothic tone Moench had been pushing so heavily earlier on, but also bringing a surprising warmth to his pencils, whether in the aura of an electric storm or the face of the young girl. It feels very life-like at times. The scan below doesn't quite do justice to it. And yet, the panel arrangements are remarkably constrained and unimaginative; not at all in keeping with the breakdowns Moench had been providing to his artists prior to this point. Two stories back, I assumed Esteban Maroto just wasn't following Moench's breakdowns when he did this on Cross of Blood, but maybe it's Moench who has changed, trying to downshift from the heavy atmospheric pieces in favor of new experimentation. Or maybe he'd stopped providing breakdowns at this point.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 15, 2015 10:23:23 GMT -5
"Wedding Knells" (from Creepy #49, November 1972) art by Jose Gual my grade: A Plot synopsis: A man takes his new wife out to a cabin in the woods for their honeymoon, bringing along his new dog. The wife is jealous of his affection for the dog. Meanwhile, terrible killings have been occurring in the area, seeming to be done by a werewolf, and the townsfolk are quick to recognize these killings began exactly when the honeymooners came into town. The man, learning this, rushes home to make sure his wife is safe, securing the two in the cabin by nailing the doors and windows shut. It then occurs to him that everything adds up to her being the werewolf. Terrified for his life, he kills her, only to realize far too late that the werewolf was, in fact, his dog.Moench returns to familiar territory with yet another horror story where the monster/murderer is revealed in a surprise twist ending, and yet the break away from these kinds of stories in the past few months has served him well. This is arguably the best story he's written yet. For one thing, the writing is masterful. While Moench has backed off a bit from laying the vocabulary on thick (and, along with this, his breakdowns have either become more traditional or Moench isn't providing them anymore), this script hits just the right balance of powerful narration where its needed, and sparse wording otherwise, telling more with less. Use the page below as an example. The last two panels feature a lot of extremely well written moody narration, but the three panels before that are simple, conveying tremendously important information without using many words to do so. "Yes, it's nice having a wife as desirable as Nancy..." "...And a dog as fine as Bruno..." It pretty much tells you everything, and with resonance. No eloquent paragraphs necessary. But the other genius of this story is the mystery of who the werewolf is. Moench is far more clever than usual, first repeatedly dropping the hint that the protagonist is a heavy sleeper (but no, he wouldn't be the werewolf. Too easy) and then forcing us to invest in this drama of the wife and dog both competing for the husband's affection, either of which could prove to be the werewolf. Typically, Moench dangles one obvious solution in front of us (the husband) and then has one other less likely choice that he ends up going with. This time, he offers us two, and either result would make for a fascinating ending, rich with emotional consequence for the protagonist. This is the first time I found myself flying through the panels, truly hungry to see which ending Moench would go with. I wasn't disappointed. Gaul's artwork, meanwhile, is decent. Neither memorable nor problematic. I do miss those more dramatic, expressionistic panel arrangements, along with heavy shadows and darkness, that Moench had been perfecting across his stories. I continue to wonder if he's stopped providing breakdowns to his artists, or if those breakdowns have simply grown more conservative.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 18, 2015 7:24:42 GMT -5
Just picked up $130 worth of early Moench stories at Motor City Comicon this weekend. I now have almost every story he wrote up through his first year at Marvel. Additionally, as my personal life is starting to become less complicated (fingers crossed it stays that way), I hope to be updating this thread A LOT more regularly and getting to some stories and titles that you non-Warren folk will know and enjoy. Stick with me
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2015 14:32:06 GMT -5
Just picked up $130 worth of early Moench stories at Motor City Comicon this weekend. I now have almost every story he wrote up through his first year at Marvel. Additionally, as my personal life is starting to become less complicated (fingers crossed it stays that way), I hope to be updating this thread A LOT more regularly and getting to some stories and titles that you non-Warren folk will know and enjoy. Stick with me Hopefully you give us a rundown of what your convention haul was in the What have you purchased lately thread -M
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shaxper
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Posts: 22,813
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Post by shaxper on May 18, 2015 15:34:33 GMT -5
Just picked up $130 worth of early Moench stories at Motor City Comicon this weekend. I now have almost every story he wrote up through his first year at Marvel. Additionally, as my personal life is starting to become less complicated (fingers crossed it stays that way), I hope to be updating this thread A LOT more regularly and getting to some stories and titles that you non-Warren folk will know and enjoy. Stick with me Hopefully you give us a rundown of what your convention haul was in the What have you purchased lately thread -M Already incorporated it all into my collection and lost track
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2015 15:43:35 GMT -5
Hopefully you give us a rundown of what your convention haul was in the What have you purchased lately thread -M Already incorporated it all into my collection and lost track Boo hiss! -M
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 18, 2015 15:45:50 GMT -5
Already incorporated it all into my collection and lost track Boo hiss! -M Heh. Well I can try to work from memory: Nearly all the remaining Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella issues that Moench is in, a handful of early Marvel Moench issues (Ghost Rider #5, Creatures on the Loose #30, Fear #25 and 26, etc) and then a whole bunch of Avengers issues I still needed. In short, my want list is very light at the current moment
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2015 16:33:58 GMT -5
Boo hiss! -M Heh. Well I can try to work from memory: Nearly all the remaining Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella issues that Moench is in, a handful of early Marvel Moench issues (Ghost Rider #5, Creatures on the Loose #30, Fear #25 and 26, etc) and then a whole bunch of Avengers issues I still needed. In short, my want list is very light at the current moment Damn you and your efficiency -M (looks around at piles of stuff still needing to be integrated into boxes and shelves)
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 18, 2015 20:35:52 GMT -5
"Bright Eyes!" (from Eerie #43, November 1972) art by Richard Corben my grade: A Plot synopsis: The story is told from the point of view of a barely cognisant zombie working on a cotton plantation among many other zombies for a master it worships and affectionately refers to as "Bright Eyes." The master is a cruel profiteer, but something about the zombie enchantment causes the narrator to view him as a benevolent god, even when sent on an errand to murder the master's competitor. Complications arise when the narrator's long lost brother shows up from out of the blue, seeking him out and discovering what the master has done with him. The brother ultimately kills the master, causing all the zombies to decay into corpses, leaving the brother horrified.This is, by far, my favorite story in this thread yet, and yet it absolutely does not feel like a Moench story. The final twist ending isn't much of a surprise, there's absolutely no visual premise (unless you count the master's bright eyes, I suppose), and it just doesn't feel like Moench's style at all, especially having the story narrated by a character with limited awareness. Moench's protagonists are almost always inordinately intelligent and verbose. In fact, this story is far closer in tone and approach to the "Child" stories which Richard Corben will begin penciling about two years from now. Now, it's been my understanding all along that Moench is living in Chicago, Warren publishing is in N.Y., and Moench is working freelance. Thus, I've assumed that collaboration between writer and artists should be pretty well impossible in this kind of a situation, and Moench has confirmed that he rarely, if ever, communicated with his artists. But it sure seems like Corben might have had a hand in co-plotting this story. On to the story itself, there's so much that's brilliant about it. For one thing, I can't get enough of stories that are told from the perspective of a being with limited understanding and, at the same time, tremendous innocence. It's exactly why both one of Corben's Child stories and one of Steve Gerber's Simon Garth stories topped my list of all time favorite horror stories for the CCF Long Halloween list last year. This is very much on that same level of quality. And yet, the story doesn't stop and rest on its laurels there. It goes so far as to draw a heavy allegory about slavery, in which one brother being made into a cotton picking zombie, contrasted against his successful and career-minded brother from the North, clearly has a deeper subtext. The most upsetting part of this allegory is that the zombie brother doesn't want anything more than he has; completely unable to comprehend that he can be any more than he is. In the end, it isn't his tragedy; it's his successful brother's, forced to look upon this life that could have been his if not for his endless drive and tenacity because, as the story makes abundantly clear, though slavery is legally gone, it still exists economically in parts of the country (especially the South). Talk about true horror. This was only 1972, after all. Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington was a mere nine years in the past. There are really only two things I don't adore about this story: the boring panel arrangements after the first page (Moench MUST have abandoned providing layouts at this point) and a single panel in which far too much tries to be explained, ultimately making no sense at all. We didn't need to know that the Northern brother ran away from home when he was only ten, but if you're going to throw that in to the story, and also explain that the zombie probably wouldn't recognize him because it's been that long, then we have to wonder how in the heck he immediately recognized his southern brother in a dark closet full of zombies. Oh well. No script is perfect.
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Post by thwhtguardian on May 18, 2015 21:41:50 GMT -5
I think you're right in thinking this story feels more in line with Corben's work than Moench, in fact I've often wondered if Moench meerely came up with the concept of the story and let Corben just run with the ball.
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Post by MDG on May 19, 2015 11:23:38 GMT -5
I think you're right in thinking this story feels more in line with Corben's work than Moench, in fact I've often wondered if Moench meerely came up with the concept of the story and let Corben just run with the ball. Or Corben came up w/ the story and Moench provided dialog. This is one of the few Corben Warren stories i don't think I've seen...
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 19, 2015 15:02:22 GMT -5
I think you're right in thinking this story feels more in line with Corben's work than Moench, in fact I've often wondered if Moench meerely came up with the concept of the story and let Corben just run with the ball. Or Corben came up w/ the story and Moench provided dialog. This is one of the few Corben Warren stories i don't think I've seen... Also possible that Moench was given the finished art, along with notes, and told to script it.
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Post by thwhtguardian on May 19, 2015 19:24:50 GMT -5
I think you're right in thinking this story feels more in line with Corben's work than Moench, in fact I've often wondered if Moench meerely came up with the concept of the story and let Corben just run with the ball. Or Corben came up w/ the story and Moench provided dialog. This is one of the few Corben Warren stories i don't think I've seen... That's possible as well, and I was in the same boat as you until a few years ago when I read the big Creepy and Eerie Present Richard Corben hardcover which had all kinds of gems like this story.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 19, 2015 19:49:00 GMT -5
"Beauty is Only Blood Deep" (from Nightmare Annual #1, November 1972) art by Fred Carrillo my grade: A- plot synopsis: A French countess clearly inspired by Elizabeth Báthory has been murdering young girls in Post-Revolution France and bathing in and drinking their blood as a means of maintaining her beauty and youth, aided by a deformed servant who adores her. One particularly strong-willed abductee who had been looking to rescue her sister from The Countess escapes into the deep catacombs of the castle, only to be abducted again by the close. At this point, the Countess determines that the only way for the blood treatment to last this time is if the victim is killed without any injury done to her beauty. She orders her servant to find a way to kill the girl without physically harming her. Upon later bathing in the victim's blood, the servant brags that he used rat poison to do the job, at which point it becomes apparent the poison has now moved into the Countess as well, and she dies horribly.Moench's second story purchased by Skywald (see the first here), and it seems, once again, like Warren is rejecting his best, most Moench-like stories, as we see his moody atmospheres and densely eloquent narration return in spades whereas both had been notably absent from his more recent Warren stories. Fred Carrillo is no Jose Bea, Pablo Marcos, nor Luis Garcia, but he has moments where his artistry begins to meet Moench's dense descriptions and foreboding catacombs setting halfway. We see the return of those clever twist endings once again as well. And even if you saw it coming, it's still a pretty clever concept. Really, there are only two weaknesses to this otherwise strong offering. One is Carrillo's art, which is adequate but not on par with Moench's writing. And the other is Moench's tendency for the second story in a row to randomly drop far too much background info on the protagonist, mid-story, where it is neither necessary nor congruent with the present action. This time around, we really didn't need half a page of the protagonist recalling getting hammered, stumbling the streets of Paris, and insulting the Henchman before he had a chance to abduct her. I'd criticized Moench's early scripts in the past for featuring characters that were often uni-dimensional and good only for moving the plot along, but this isn't the kind of fleshing out that's needed. As a minor detail, beginning the story with one character and then turning the main action of the piece over to a sibling looking to rescue him/her was just used this very same month in "Bright Eyes!" (see previous review).
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