Steve Does Comics

I've only encountered DC Comics' version of the Frankenstein monster twice. One was in the backup strip of Phantom Stranger #28, and the other was in the main strip of Phantom Stranger #26 in which the monster and the book's star sort of unite to do battle with the forces of darkness.

As a child, the former of those two encounters didn't impress me in the slightest. For one thing, the monster was wearing a cape - and it wasn't even a flattering cape. For another, he seemed a very passive and spiritually anaemic being. Reading that tale, it was hard to see him as a creature who'd tear the head off Victor Frankenstein's bride in order to send his creator a message about parental responsibility.

But the latter tale was a whole different matter. Drawn by Jim Aparo and written by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, this time, he was a far more rugged, dynamic and driven individual who seemed to be permanently on the lookout for a chance to inflict some damage.

Admittedly, you still couldn't see him tearing an innocent woman's head off but you could at least imagine him tearing a guilty woman's head off.

So, forty-odd years after first reading that tale, what will I make of it this time round?

The monster's out to reanimate a man called Victor Adams who, it seems, is responsible for the monster himself having been revived. Showing the spirit we all want from him, the creature's not doing this from gratitude but in order that it can inflict maximum torment on him. Mary Shelley would be proud of her boy.

But, to do it, he needs a laser gun.

To be honest, I don't have a clue how a laser can bring the dead back to the life but it's the 1970s and, in the 1970s, we have more faith in such technology than people in the 21st Century have.

The only problem is that, before he can do it, he's promptly possessed by two demons who get him to not only steal the laser but also abduct the wife of Dr Thirteen from the hospital bed in which she's currently comatose.

With stuff like this going on, it's not long before the Phantom Stranger shows up and he and Dr Thirteen set out to stop the creature.

Not that they actually do stop the creature. In fact, for all his big talk, the Phantom Stranger's about as much use as a chocolate fireguard when it comes to achieving their aims.

Fortunately, that's when the demons - who've now possessed Victor Adams and Mrs Thirteen - make their big mistake. They decide to try and kill the monster, Thirteen and the Stranger by blasting them with moonlight.

Suddenly the Stranger's up against something he can actually handle, mostly because it involves just standing there and waving his medallion around. By this means, he deflects the moon's light at his Hellish foes and incinerates them.

Then everyone's who's still alive leaves, seemingly having learnt nothing at all from the night's events.

To be honest, because I haven't read any of the issues which lead up to this tale, it's an extremely confusing read for me. I don't have a clue who half the people in the tale even are. Who is Victor Adams? Who is Rachael Adams? Why is Mrs Thirteen in a hospital bed? How does Dr Thirteen already know the Spawn of Frankenstein? Who are the demons? What do they want? What is the big house the story centres around?

All of this is mystery to me.

But, in fairness, my confusion doesn't really matter that much because the tale has two things going for it.

One is that it moves at a high pace which propels you ever onward.

The other is that it's drawn by Jim Aparo whose pencils and inks impose maximum dynamism into every panel, meaning comprehension's an optional extra, rather than a necessity. It's true that sometimes you can read a comic just for the pretty pictures.

So, there you go. That's my verdict. It's baffling, it's great and, like anything drawn by Aparo in this era, it's well worth the read.

It also has a Mike Kaluta cover, so that's an added bonus.

Suffering shads! It's the return of the feature that's left the internet in tatters, as I once more drone on randomly about comics I've owned.

Just what'll be turned up by this veritable Pick and Mix?

Only a rifle through Steve's Lucky Bag of Confusion can tell us...


Superman's definitely in need of a good slap on this cover.

Inside, Hawkman quits the Justice League, and Eclipso might be involved.

Other than that I can recall little of the contents.

It's always nice to see a Nick Cardy cover though.

It's one of the few Original X-Men stories I ever liked, as the merry Marvel mutants find themselves on trial in the court of Factor 3.

I seem to remember that Ross Andru drew this issue, which could explain why it appealed to me more than their tales usually did.

Some bloke builds a big gun to commit crimes with and Thor has to stop him, in a tale of squabbling siblings.

The issue that introduced me to DC's man of mystery.

From what I can recall of this tale, the Phantom Stranger's called in to try and help establish whether a defendant's plea of insanity is genuine or not. Needless to say, there's a twist at the end.

It's the story we all wanted to see, as Conan takes on Kull.

Red Sonja and Belit, meanwhile, continue their bickering.

It's one of my fave Marvel monster tales, as Grogg causes no end of bother.

Sadly, we still get no answer to the enduring mystery of where Marvel's giant monsters buy those underpants from.

It's the only issue of Swamp-Thing I ever owned. It's from after Bernie Wrightson left the strip but that doesn't mean it lets us down on the pictorial front, thanks to some lovely interior work by Nestor Redondo.

It had stylish artwork by Howard Chaykin but I always remember this as being one of the few American comics I had as a child that I could never get on with.

Quiver, mortals! It's time to cower once more before the raging power of nostalgia - because it's time for Part Two of my random look back at various comics I used to own when I was barely more than knee-high to a Kurrgo.


It's one of my childhood faves, as Superboy re-encounters a child genius with a knack for landing him in trouble.

I recall nothing of this book's contents. I do however still dig that cover.

But just what is the way in which the Flash dies?

Purchased from an indoor market in Blackpool, in the summer of 1972, this was one of the first American comics I ever owned.

As you can guess, it has the Angel vs Red Raven, as they meet in the latter's city in the clouds.

Yet another of my very earliest American comics, as Cap and Falc come up against a scientist who turns himself into a talking gorilla.

The gorilla was fine but I remember being most taken at the time by the colour scheme of Cap's costume.

A comic strip artist inadvertently creates a winged bad guy who I seem to recollect has plans to conquer the world.

Exactly how it all plays out, I don't remember. Did the artist foil the villain's mighty plans by erasing him/redrawing him/spilling ink over the paper he'd originally been drawn on?

The Phantom Stranger meets Frankenstein's monster.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for DC's take on the monster, I do remember enjoying this one.

I seem to recall there being some sort of demonic possession thing going on and some typically rugged artwork by Jim Aparo inside.

I believe the cover to be by Mike Kaluta.

I'm pretty sure this is the first colour Conan comic I ever owned, as our hero comes up against a gold statue of a scorpion that inconveniently comes to life.

The cover's always driven me up the wall. I'm convinced John Buscema borrowed Conan's pose from a Jack Kirby panel but I've never been able to work out in which comic that panel first appeared.

Hooray! Marvel's reprint mag gives us Kraa, who I seem to recall being surprisingly helpful in a crisis and coming to a sad end.

Poor old Kraa.

Follow me into strange worlds - for I am Steve What Does Comics, and many are the comics I never had as a child.

This time out, in the feature the whole world's talking about, it's The Phantom Stranger #29 that comes under scrutiny.

Keen readers of this blog'll know I was a bit of a Phantom Stranger fan, even though he hardly ever did anything apart from appearing from behind bushes to give people a futile lecture before disappearing again.

However, there was an issue of The Phantom Stranger that I always wanted but never had.

And this was it.

My finely honed senses tell me it features an evil doll.

In fact, the Grand Comics Database tells me it features, "The Devil Dolls of Dr Z," which implies there were more than one of them - and that none of them were very nice.

Speaking as someone who remembers, with the appropriate level of dread, the killer troll doll in Dr Who's Terror of the Autons, and thinks Karen Black's homicidal Zuni fetish doll in A Trilogy of Terror is a journey into fear that only the strongest can survive, I'm always going to be hooked by tales of evil dolls - even if I won't be able to sleep afterwards for fear of what my own treasured dollies might do to me while I'm insensible.

But rarely has a comic book cover flung such an air of malice and menace in the face of a potential reader as this one did. And rarely therefore have I felt so compelled to buy a comic as I would've done had it ever appeared in front of me, demanding to be bought.

It's the moment we've all been waiting for since last month's Phantom Stranger, the moment when Howard Lunge's supercomputer finally reveals who the Black Orchid really is.

And, after much whirring, clicking and ticking, the conclusion it comes to is...

...that it doesn't know.

And there was me thinking my laptop was useless.

What it does tell us though is that someone's been scanning it with X-rays in order to read its data tapes.

Undeterred by this, Lunge proceeds with his next planned crime, the murder of an old woman who's fighting her ex-daughter-in-law Cleo Barry for custody of Barry's child.

Happily, the Black Orchid's on the case, disguising herself as the old woman's nurse and replacing the old woman with a robot that apprehends one of Lunge's lackeys while she deals personally with the other one.

Having thus foiled the murder attempt, she calls in the cops who take Lunge away, only for the Orchid to drop the final bombshell - that his client Cleo Barry never existed. She was just the Orchid in yet another  mask.

Much as I love the Orchid for her mysterious and over-complex ways, I am slightly baffled by certain elements of the tale.

For one thing, I don't understand why one of the would-be assassins takes along a mask to disguise himself as the old lady, when, as the plan unfolds, at no point does the plan appear to require it. I also don't understand why the Orchid goes through such a complicated subterfuge, involving her adopting at least two fake identities, acquiring a huge house to stage her plan in, and getting her hands on a robot. After all, she knows about Lunge's computer and its data tapes, so, as far as I can see, all she has to do is smash her way into Lunge's HQ, chin him one with her super-strength and hand the tapes over to the authorities. I suppose that's why just I'm a humble blog writer and she's a bona fide super-heroine.

I'm also curious as to the naming of a character Cleo Barry. As all lovers of fine comedy know, Cleopatra in the legendary British film Carry on Cleo was played by Amanda Barrie. Was the naming of a character as Cleo Barry coincidence or was writer Shelly Mayer a Carry On fan? Then again, the tale also features a character called Howard Lunge and a character called Dubbish, names that themselves seem to have stepped out of a Carry On movie.

Still, all other matters tied up, we're left with the question of who the Black Orchid is.

Well, in the style of Sergeant Sidney Bung of the Yard in Carry On Screaming, let's recap on yesterday's evidence. She's a woman who can fly, has super-strength, is invulnerable and can only be described as "fit". This issue we learned she can scan things with X-Rays, has access to life-like androids and, according to Lunge's supercomputer, she may be an alien. I'm sorry; I don't care how you cut it, she still seems to be Supergirl.

I suppose all we can say in light of such a revelation, and this issue's events, is Carry on, Kara.

I don't like to moan but I can't help feeling disappointed with my laptop. It cost me £400 from Currys and has never once shown its gratitude by conceiving the perfect crime for me to commit.

Howard Lunge's 1970s computer, on the other hand, enables him to commit intricately plotted felonies that leave no trace of his own involvement. And, in Phantom Stranger #35, he uses it to frame a young man called Dubbish for murder.

What his supercomputer hasn't accounted for is the existence of the Black Orchid.

Almost as soon as the frame-up's been performed, the Orchid's on the tail of Lunge's chief lackey Mr Flint but, before she can stop him, the crook burns the mask that's the only evidence of his subterfuge. To make matters worse he's then shot  dead by his own accomplices. Now how can our plucky petal wearer foil her foe's fiendish finagling?

But that's not all. As we leave Part One of this two-parter, Lunge orders his supercomputer to calculate the true identity of the Black Orchid. This is bad news. Computers are infallible. Could this be curtains for our flowery femme?

The Black Orchid does come across as a curious mix of the infallible and the inept in this tale, somehow knowing all about Lunge, his plans and his supercomputer but also giving his man Flint the time to burn the only evidence, and letting Lunge's other lackeys get away scot free.

On the upside it's as beautifully drawn as ever by Nestor Redondo who gifts it an atmospheric style that helps overcome the strip's noticeable lack of depth and characterisation.

All of these concerns are secondary of course. The real question is will The Phantom Stranger #36 finally do it? Will it finally tell us the truth about the Black Orchid? Will it reveal the real name of a beautiful woman who can fly, has super-strength, is a genius and bounces bullets off her as though they're no more than peas? For some reason my own supercomputer's flinging the name Linda Danvers at me.

It couldn't be.

Could it?

To be Steveinued.

Phantom Stranger Quote of the Day: "Death -- the final arrogant act in a play too often taken for granted. But just who may bring down the final curtain? Who has the right to end life not earned, but given? The solutions to these riddles are not easily found -- for they lie hidden, lost within the forgotten labyrinths of the human spirit."

I've always been of the opinion that the correct thing to do upon encountering a person about to throw themselves off a bridge is to fake a heart attack - on the grounds that, no matter how much my fellow man might be suffering, I alone, should always be the centre of attention.

Sadly the Phantom Stranger lacks my wisdom and, upon encountering a young woman about to top herself, appears from nowhere to give her a lecture.

Now, you or I, upon enduring one of the Phantom Stranger's meaningless speeches, might be more tempted than ever to jump.

But not this one.

Instead she abandons the attempt and settles for knocking him unconscious.

It turns out she works for a mad scientist called Seine whose wife, thanks to his irresponsibility, is on her deathbed. Seine reckons that by feeding a bunch of demonic creatures the Phantom Stranger's soul, so they can enter our dimension and kill us all, he can restore his wife to perfect health. Needless to say his well-thought-out scheme soon goes more belly-up than a constipated goldfish, as his wife drags herself from her bed to free the Stranger and end forever her husband's plans.

After all those other Phantom Stranger tales where the titular twaddler gets to do nothing but annoy characters with his interminable philosophising, it's a refreshing change to see him actually at the centre of things, and I love Gerry Talaoc's art on the tale, which has that scratchy, twisted raggedness that really does make the world seem a dangerous and unpleasant place filled with spiritual decay and paranoia. Admittedly, in his rare chance to shine as a man of action, the Phantom Stranger proves to be a conspicuously futile derring-doer, managing only to get captured and stand around as Seine's wife does all the actual heroics, but still...

"Uuuuuuuuu"?!? Quickly! Someone put 10 pence in the Phantom Stranger's meter! He's finally run out of flannel!

More importantly than even the Phantom Stranger though, this issue contains something else that's of far more interest to me. Could it be in the letters page? Could it be in the back-up strip?

Only time - and my next post - will tell.

So, journey with me, Reader, into the eerie realms we know as Comicdom. For, tomorrow night, I venture into a land of madness undreamed, and no one can know if I emerge from the venture with sanity intact.

To Be Steveinued.

What do you do if you're immortal and the people around you start asking questions about why you never get any older?

Well, if you're me, you slap them round the ear and tell them not to be so impertinent as to question their betters.

If you're a comic book villain, however, you keep faking your own death, returning a few years later as your own descendant and killing anyone who might discover the truth about you.

If you're blessed with magical powers, like the Phantom Stranger, you might feel moved to do something about this. But if you're the Phantom Stranger you have a bigger problem to worry about.

Redundancy.

It can't be easy to be a super-doer and know you're not wanted in your own comic but by this stage in the thing's run, the Phantom Stranger was only popping up here and there to nag people before disappearing.

Phantom Stranger Quote of the Day. "Look! Look deep into the whirring, flashing pinball game that is the mind of man! See what drives its wild workings! You'll find three engines -- the lust for gold, the thirst for power and -- fear of the unknown!"

And so it is with this tale, as nosey librarian Carol James sets out to discover the truth behind a series of minor but local witchcraft-related incidents that may be the fault of Mary Haggerty, an old woman who frequents the library where Carol works. After a fire that almost kills the old woman, Carol unearths the truth - that her boyfriend the dastardly mayor's out to get rid of Mary so she can't use her knowledge of the occult to uncover his secret.

I'm not sure why he's that bothered if she uncovers it or not. The last I heard, being immortal wasn't a crime. Setting fire to people however is and he therefore seems to be putting himself at risk of imprisonment for no good reason.

The truth is that, thanks to the Phantom Stranger's near absence from the tale, it feels more like one of those 1970s American made-for-TV "horror" movies than a Phantom Stranger story but it's pleasing enough, however cliched, and Bill Draut's artwork has a cunning simplicity that, early on at least, bears vague but surprising hints of Alex Nino.

If being immortal isn't a crime, what definitely is is imitating the Black Orchid and pretending to be her in order to frame her for a robbery you've committed.

That's what a latter-day Bonnie and Clyde have got up to in this issue's back-up story. Needless to say the bulletproof battler's soon on their tail and quickly wraps them up for the police to take away.

For once there's actually a reason for the Orchid to use her traditional subterfuge rather than her super-strong fists to deal with the bad guys, as she goes undercover to trick them into confessing. But of course, much as we all love the Orchid, the real star of the story's Nestor Redondo whose artwork's as beautiful and fluid as ever.

I do worry about the quality of villains the mid-1970s was producing though. The pair seem to be under the impression that if you're going to flee the country and live in Rio de Janeiro, you have to learn to speak Spanish. D'oh!

As I'm sure you know, I often venture into weird worlds. Not only that but I'm in the habit of hanging around behind bushes, eavesdropping on other people's conversations and then leaping out from behind those bushes to hand out a quick lecture; "David Smith, if you use an ordinary screwdriver to secure your garden gate, instead of a Phillips screwdriver, your mind will never know rest from the eternal torment that only the foolish can know! Repent your ways now, lad, before it's too late! Steve knows!" I do it all the time. I have the black eye to prove it.

A man with two black eyes to prove it is of course my role model in such ventures, the Phantom Stranger and, in Phantom Stranger #36, he's at it again as some poor secretary finds herself in the jungle with her tyrannical boss Mr Capehart. Mr Capehart's on a mission to find a crashed plane he reckons contains a bucketload of Nazi gold lost since the end of World War Two.

Of course he finds it and, when he verbally abuses his secretary one time too many, she decides to leave him to drown in some quicksand he's just fallen into. This prompts the Phantom Stranger to appear and give her a lecture about how it's wrong to stand there and leave a man to drown. Clearly he's not noticed the irony that, in order to deliver this lecture, he's just done exactly the same thing. Maybe at this point he should start giving himself a lecture, possibly with the aid of a Phantom Stranger glove puppet employed to play the part of the other man of mystery.

Sadly, he doesn't. And so, now having the Nazi gold all to herself, our secretary ploughs on, dragging her ill-gotten gains with her, finding the load increasingly difficult to pull as she gets more and more lost and more and more exhausted in the jungle. As she gets weaker, so she has to leave behind ever increasing amounts of gold until, exhausted and delirious, she has just one gold bar left, one she's determined to hang on to at all costs.

Phantom Stranger Quote of the Day: "Man, if nothing more, is a creature of symbols. He will stake his eternal soul on concepts as tenuous as the mists that fade before a dawning sun. And yet, it is often this very dedication that blinds him to the true values behind the tokens he so cherishes."

Needless to say the Phantom Stranger doesn't bother to lend her a hand, seemingly having decided he's happy to stand and watch two people die - as opposed to the secretary who was only happy to watch one. I should say a word here about the art which is great. I feel a need to mention it purely because all Phantom Stranger letters pages of this period seem to be full of people complaining about Gerry Talaoc's work. For me, with his ragged and paranoid style, the man was perfect for the strip, and the complaints are a bigger mystery to me than the strip's titular character.

But what of the secretary? Finally, still clutching her gold bar, she has a heart attack and dies, at which point her bar rolls off down the hill where it's found by a young boy and his grandfather. The boy, being a boy, is impressed by its shininess but his grandfather points out you can't eat it, wear it or hunt it so it's worthless and only a fool would think otherwise. Perhaps at this juncture the Phantom Stranger should leap out from behind a bush to point out you can't eat, wear or hunt your wife, so where does that leave the old duffer's argument? Inevitably, our be-trilbied philosopher does nothing of the sort.

Despite that, as a fourteen year old I was so impressed by this ending that I stole it and plonked it on the end of a story I wrote in one of my English lessons. The rest of my tale was about two astronauts on a planet where the only other living thing was a sarcastic plant. Quite what the ending had to do with the rest of that tale, I have no idea. Maybe at that point I needed the Phantom Stranger to leap out from behind a chair and give me a lecture about the stupidity of using such an ending on a story that had nothing to do with it.

And did he?

No he didn't.

That was the odd thing about the Phantom Stranger. He was always giving advice but it was never advice that was any use for anything.

Then again, I seem to remember getting a good mark for that story, so maybe he did right.

And maybe he's still there, still behind that chair, waiting for the right moment to leap out, little realising the time's long-since passed.

Follow me into weird worlds -- for I am Steve Does Comics.

I always thought the Phantom Stranger was the comic book equivalent of those tin foil trays that meat pies come in. You always think you should do something with them other than just throw them away - maybe wear them as a hat or something - but in the end, you can never decide on just what.