Monsters Meet

Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman were among the first monsters who crossed each others path, and while they didn't during the run of Monsters Unleashed...

...here are a pair of covers with one of each, and a good enough reason to review what's past.

Monsters Unleashed #6 (June, 1974) has a cover by Boris Vallejo, and the Frankenstein Monster made it onto the covers for these previously covered issues of Monsters Unleashed.

A werewolf is about to take out the tomb robbers on the cover of the Monsters Unleashed Annual of 1975 (with art by Ken Bald), with werewolves being the feature of previous covers here.

The last issue of Monsters Unleashed, #11 (April, 1975) has art by Frank Brunner and Dick Giordano, featuring devil hunter Gabriel, who would likely have no problem battling Man-Thing or other monsters as well, exorcising this month of monstrous coverage.

Werewolf Monsters

A couple of covers from Monsters Unleashed featuring werewolfs, as things get a little hairy under the full moon!

Monsters Unleased #1 (June, 1973) has a cover by Gray Morrow, and Monsters Unleashed #4 (February, 1974) is illustrated by Pujolar, incredible covers from the age of Marvel magazines.

Remembering Artist Gil Kane

What would be the best way to remember the monstrous talent of Gil Kane (April 6, 1926 to January 31, 2000) on his birthday?

Why, with some Giant-Size covers by Gil Kane from the 1970s with some of Marvel's greatest monsters!

Giant-Size Dracula #3 and #5

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Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 and #5

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Giant-Size Werewolf #2 and #4

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BONUS! (because these Spider-Man books featured monsters....including Morbius, Man-Wolf and the Lizard!)

Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 and Giant-Size Spider-Man #5

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Creature Commandos Tales Two By Two 1

What happens when you take a vampire, a werewolf and a reanimated man, force them to live and work together, and see what type of friendships develop as they get real?

Who knows?

This isn't a reality show, this is World War II, with a battle hardened Lieutenant gathering together 3 men, who have been scientifically altered into horror architypes, who will fight evil as....

....The Creature Commandos!

Here is a look at their first two adventures!

The Creature Commandos

The adventures begin in Weird War Tales #93 (November, 1980) by J. M. DeMatteis, Pat Broderick and John Celardo, all under a cover by veteran war artist, Joe Kubert.

Starting at a secret briefing, with Lt. Matthew Shrieve of U.S. Army Intelligence, as he addresses an audience of distinguished generals, admirals and senators...

...about the dark realm, and things which influence men on a basic level....monsters!  Using Project M (for Monster), scientists were able to take three military men...Warren Griffith, a 4F Oklahoma farmboy who thought he could turn into a wolf, which they induced a real transformation into a werewolf (though it is unstable in duration)....Sgt. Vincent Velcro who volunteered to avoid a thirty year prison sentence, being injected with the blood of a rare Mexican bat to get his vampiric powers, and marine Private "Lucky" Taylor, who was blown to bits in a battle on a Pacific island, only to be put back together as an enormous creature, reanimated to life, but without a voice to express his gentle soul.  These three then surprised the room, with a general declaring them the worst monsters he's ever seen, and to sent them to battle the Nazis immediately. 

The crew ended up in France, storming Castle Conquest, where the Nazis had been building robots to replace the world leaders.  Shrieve set explosives to destroy the base, which would have gone off if the Creature Commandos had gotten out or not, proving the Lieutenant to be the most heartless monster of them all.

The Faceless Enemy

The monster squad and their leader return in Weird War Tales #97 (March, 1981), under a cover by Ross Andru and Romeo Tanghal, with story by J. M DeMatteis and Fred Carrillo.

This time around, the team was sent to retrieve a Doctor Frederique from the Nazis in a storm covered area of occupied France.  

Velcro complained as he took the orders, while Taylor silently went into battle, following the changed Griffith.  The team freed the doctor from the Nazis, finding the doctor to be a she!  Shrieve got to know her, with Frederique worrying about seeing people as people, even the Nazi monsters, as the troop headed for what they thought was safety (facing a few menaces along the way), but as they arrived, the doctor revealed herself as a plant, with this whole mission being a trap to catch the Creature Commandos.  

The lady wasn't a doctor, but she died saving the Lieutenant as one of the faceless masses, as the other three decimated the Nazi forces.  When it was over, when asked if they should bury her, as Shrieve seemed to be growing close to her, he declined, as she was only the enemy.

The creatures survived these battles, but more were to be had....and, with luck, to be covered here soon!

Creature Commandos Invade The War That Time Forgot

Chocolate and peanut butter are two great things.  Each of them are made better by combining the two...and the same can be said about series set in World War II.

Two of the oddest features of World War II combined for an issue, when the Creature Commandos ended up on Dinosaur Island, fighting the War That Time Forgot in Weird War Tales #100 (June, 1981) by Mike W. Barr, Bob Hall and Jerry Ordway (under a cover by Joe Kubert).

Creature Commandos

But, first, a little history, starting with the premier of the Creature Commandos from Weird War Tales #93 (November, 1980) by J. M. DeMattteis, Pat Broderick and John Celardo, with the U.S. government via a group called Project M (for "Monster") created what would be the Creature Commandos...

...taking convicted con man Sgt. Vincent Velcro and injecting him with experimental chemicals including the blood of vampire bats until he manifested the ability to turn into a bat, with a desire for human blood (though no weakness to the sun or religious iconography); Warren Griffith, a 4F young man from Oklahoma who suffered from the belief he was a lycanthrope, and giving him treatments to make him change into a wolfman at random (not controlled by the moon) and Private Elliot "Lucky" Taylor, who stepped on a land mine on a Pacific island, yet was reassembled as a super-strong, silent patchwork man; with these men turned monsters led by Lt. Matthew Shrieve (whose lust for battle could make him the most monstrous of them all).  

The group continued as the main feature of Weird War Tales after this issue, missing only a few issues, adding a Dr. Medusa to their ranks, as well as teaming up with both versions of the G.I. Robot, right up until the end of the series with Weird War Tales #124 (June, 1983), where they were shot into space (later to be picked up by Brainiac and returned to Earth by Superman).

The War That Time Forgot

Dinosaur Island premiered in Star Spangled War Stories #90 (April-May, 1960) by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito (though the island didn't get that name until later in the series), and started a series of loosely connected stories featuring soldiers versus dinosaurs during World War II, but with some regular sub-features that it introduced like...

...G.I. Robot (in Star Spangled War Stories #101), the Suicide Squadron (WWII's inspiration for the Suicide Squad, which came first, but this version started in Star Spangled War Stories #110) and the Bird-Man (who fought enemy forces on pterodactyls, starting in Star Spangled War Stories #129), with the series ending in Star Spangled War Stories #137 (February-March, 1968), though Dinosaur Island could still be found, being visited once by the crew of the Haunted Tank, then a few stories in Weird War Tales before the team-up (and a few after)...

...with Dinosaur Island "settling" post-Crisis to be a part of Warlord's Skartaris (and even being a place where Bat Lash and the Enemy Ace fought Vandal Savage in the 1920s before these stories....).

But, back to the task at hand....

 

Dinosaur Convoy

The Creature Commandos were assigned to follow up on missing recon patrols near a series of Pacific Islands, looking for a Japanese convoy.  

There, they encountered Japanese troops (as well as plenty of dinosaurs), with both Shrieve and the Japanese commander realizing that the dinosaurs could have uses as troops as well.  

 

The Creature Commandos reluctantly fought the dinosaurs, dispatched the Japanese troops, and even helped rally the dinosaurs to take out the Japanese convoy, with Shrieve taking pictures to document how the dinosaurs could be used by the government against the Japanese.  

Lucky (the patchwork man) destroyed Shrieve's camera, with Velcro (the vampire) explaining that he wouldn't let them exploit the dinosaurs, who were just mindless creatures, unlike the "monsters" of the Creature Commandos they already have in service.

 

Arrgh!

For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything to write. And it made me go…Arrgh!



And, Arrgh! was a 5 issue horror spoof comic from the Marvel Comics Group, and it ran from December 1974 to September 1975.

A Horror Spoof

Marie Severin drew the first couple of covers…Alfredo Alcala the third, Tom Sutton the fourth, and Ross Andru and Mike Esposito the fifth (who also did the interiors of #5…

...interior artists for some of the other issues included the early Justice League of America artist Mike Sekowsky and Sub-Marinerr creator, Bill Everett, as well as Tom Sutton, Howard Post, Joe Maneely and Jerry Grandenetti; some stories reprinted from the humor magazine of the 1950s, Crazy).

It was some light-hearted fun at the Universal Monsters' expense...

…and some goofy humor you could use to pass a slow afternoon…or fill a column when you have writer’s block, the scariest monster of them all!

So there, writer’s block....a little fun, and Halloween related as well!