Not So Famous Publisher Of Filmland!

James Warren is one of the most important people in the history of comic books, who as it turned out never published a comic book. Rather he published magazines, larger more up-scale items which in dynamic black and white presented a somewhat more sophisticated attitude about the graphic storytelling beneath sometimes admittedly pretty garish covers. He didn't start out wanting to be Stan Lee, though he did come to regard Marvel's maven as his primary competition.

James Warren wanted to be Hugh Hefner, the prophet of sexual emancipation who in many ways defined the pop culture of the 50's,60's and 70's. To that end his first publication was a Playboy-like magazine called After Hours. There were a lot of publishers who wanted to be Hugh Hefner though and the newsstands were stuffed with magazines featuring naked and semi-naked dames to quicken the libidos of America far and wide. So After Hours did not last and left Warren casting about for another way to make hay as the sun glimmered on the robust publishing business set to meet the needs and desires of the burgeoning baby boomers. One thing they seemed to like was monsters.

So Warren collaborated with a science fiction fan with a penchant for horror named Forry J Ackerman to create Famous Monsters of Filmland, a magazine that became the bible for the up and coming "Monsterkids" who gobbled up every morsel about monsters, both classic and new. The first cover for FMoF above shows James Warren under a Frankenstein mask alongside a buxom dame, giving off signals to both the Playboys and the "Monsterkids" at the same time. It seemed to work because the success of this presumed one-shot triggered the Warren Publishing empire. Here are some of the magazines of that "empire". 

Warren Publishing seemed in some ways like a small outfit, and in many ways it was. A limited staff but able to reach out to some of the best talent in the industry, both domestically and overseas. Warren wanted to be Hugh Hefner, but to this fanboy that would've been a waste. We already had Hugh Hefner, what we needed was James Warren. 

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Smoking Doesn't Pay!

I imagine most of us have seen Frank Frazetta's famous "ad" from vintage Warren magazines preaching the defects in the then quite common practice. I read recently that this was Frazetta's final piece of "comic art" of any kind and that it was specifically commissioned by James Warren for his magazines despite the profound loss of revenue rejecting smoking ads meant that the time. As it turns out comics were common device to sell cigarettes, so I guess it's only fair to use the format to present the counter view. Below are some vintage cigarette ads which use the comics format.

Don't fall victim amigos. I am lucky not to have the craving, though I will confess to having enjoyed the rare cigar from time to time. These days I've given it all up completely. 

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The Beast Of Hollow Mountain!

The Beast of Hollow Mountain is a flick I've been wanting to see for many many years. I never caught it on television in its original form and never seemed to find it on VHS or DVD. Finally I took the plunge and picked it up on Blu-Ray (alongside The Neanderthal Man) and fulfilled my desire to see this Willis O'Brien inspired cowboy-meets-dinosaur "epic".

It's a B-movie right from the start with an evident smallish budget but blessed with a lovely Mexican landscape. They make the most of the landscape and right across it many times, many many times. We have two ranchers (one a gringo played by Guy Madison) who run afoul of the local thug and cattleman and most of the movie's time is spent detailing how these two factions cannot get along all the while both seem to wish to romance a local lovely played by Patricia Medina.  Cows are missing and each side blames the other There's an obligatory kid, a comedic old man, and other long-standing movie tropes that help to fill out the running time. And frankly the movie gets downright dull before any real dinosaur action gets underway. We have a few attacks from the "Beast's" perspective but we see nothing of it. 

But in the final reel it kicks off and doesn't let up. The "Hollow Mountain" of the title is separated from the rest of the territory by a deadly swamp but a drought has made the swamp less of an effective barrier and in these times the "Beast" roams. The "Beast" is a T-Rex fashioned in the classic mode, fitted with a flickering tongue and at times quite fast, surprisingly so for stop-motion. So while this is a film from a Willis O'Brien story, O'Brien had nothing to do with the effects (aside from perhaps maybe planning some shots) which aren't bad really given the limits of the time. They don't equal what Harryhausen will do with The Valley of Gwangi a decade later, but that was expected. My advice if you want to watch this one, is to linger for the first hour but pay close attention in the last fifteen minutes. It's a hoot. 

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The Vanishing Shadow!

The 1934 movie serial The Vanishing Shadow from Universal has lots of intriguing details, some which are claimed to be the first ever on film such as the first ray gun on screen. It's a science ficiton yarn that does its absolute best to be as mundane as it can possibly be.

The Vanishing Shadow gets its title from the main gimmick used much in the first parts of the serial, a machine which worn by the user renders them invisible save for their shadow. It's a pretty decent effect and for the company which had given the world the cinematic version of the H.G.Wells classic The Invisible Man a worthy one. The invisibility gag is an invention of a sometimes mad scientist who wavers between good and evil throughout the story but who mainly uses his inventions to aid a handsome young man fend off a predatory gang bent on making him sign over valuable stocks and  such. Also helping him is the daughter of the leader of the villainous gang who insists her father will reform and keeps the events out of the hands of the police long after you or I would've contacted them.

In addition to the  invisibility machine there is a "Death Ray" and its counterpart an "Anti-Death Ray" as well as an impressive giant robot juggernaut who shows near the end of the serial. Now with a stalwart hero, a lovely dame, a genius scientist and his inventions, and a deadly gang of cutthroats you'd think you have a pretty rousing serial, but for whatever reason this one never gets out of second gear. Mostly that's due to the circular nature of the plot which has the characters retracing their steps over and over again. There's little narrative momentum, just furious action which is supposed to substitute.

It's a diverting misadventure for sure, an important one as serials go, but alas not the most exciting one.

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The Many Faces In Scorpio Rose!

Steve Englehart has been pretty frank about his comic book career in interviews and on his own website and such. In the collected Coyote the book is backed up by a few issues of a short-fused project by Englehart and Marshall Rogers called Scorpio Rose. It was meant to be a trilogy but only ever produced two comic books (both of which I remember buying at the time). They concerned themselves with a Romany mystic of a unusual lengthy life and of the demon who loved her at times. 

The saga was adapted and altered from scripts Englehar produced for DC for a projected Madame Xanadu series. The price for those scripts had been misrepresented to Englehart so he refused to turn them over and that was it for Madame Xanadu until some years later when we met her under the name of Scorpio Rose. 

The series went two issues then Rogers was unable to finish it. Instead of getting a new artist Englehart just left it unfinished but in this collection the layouts Rogers did for the final issue are printed with explanations as to how the story wrapped up. Frankly I found the stories very confusing even without an ending. It's not Englehart's greatest by any means, too much mysticism and Rogers art is  often hard to read. But the story is memorable for another reason which reaches back to Englehart's earliest days at Marvel and a character named Mantis.

Mantis of course was the Celestial Madonna (making a comeback perhaps when comics begin to publish again) and her saga unfolded over a very long time in the pages of The Avengers where she courted Swordsman and Vision and others while trying to understand her role in the universe. She gave birth to a child, also the child of an alien plant-person and supposedly this youngster was meant for great things indeed. Mantis disappeared when Englehart left the series. 

Englehart was attracted to DC by the call of better page rates and he took over the Justice League of America, bringing the same wonderful magic to those pages he brought to the Avengers. One issue introduced a green woman from the starts named Willow who was supposed to be Mantis, her story continuing with a new name and place. 

Then Englehart left DC and in the pages of Scorpio Rose from Eclipse Comics he gave us Lorelei, another green lady who was recognizably Willow and Mantis. She assists Scorpio Rose and we meet her child almost hidden in the shadows. 

Later Englehart brought Mantis back at Marvel, but I will always treasure the days when her story was bigger than any one company. For me it always will be.

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I Am Coyote Once Again!

If ever want to read something weird by two of best talents in comics then I recommend I Am Coyote by Steve Englehart and the late Marshall Rogers. It's full of enticing designs, offers a constantly twisting plot, and presents the world a character like few others its ever seen.

Coyote is an orphan, left in the desert by his parents for reasons we never learn and discovered by a geezer who claims to be a half-man, a creature of myth who lives in more than one dimension. Coyote is raised by the half-man and later gets a step-mother who claims to be a psychic vampire. His early life is a primitive one and he grows up a bit feral. He's at some point given access to some of the abilities of his adopted father though he himself is fully human (he says). He does this by means of Peyote. 

In this story which ran in serialized form in Eclipse Monthly (in black and white) the action starts immediately as Coyote runs afoul of what is called The Shadow Cabinet which has an underground bunker beneath Las Vegas and its suggested other places around the globe. Their mission to take control of the world's governments by covert means and present themselves as good guys but who have seen sunny words will not be enough to bring about the world they want. Their quick and casual use of murder undermines these claims.

Coyote infiltrates the base and meets Phyllida, a woman who leads the Shadow Cabinet but who seems to care for Coyote despite his penchant to adopt other people's faces. They go on the run from a deadly killer named "The Void" and Coyote is shocked to find someone else who can "dance" between dimensions as he does.

To say more would ruin the story and it's a pretty decent one. Once upon a time I had all the Eclipse Monthly numbers and originally read this story there. But more recently I located it in a trade which offers all of the Eclipse stories in a single narrative in color. The splash pages are included but the chapters actually flow together quite well. Marshall Rogers was a talented artist who had a knack for making pages which demanded you attention. He sometimes crafted some wonky and oddly stiff figures, but reading his stuff is generally pretty easy. I Am Coyote is a fascinating story.

It was continued by Englehart and other artists at Marvel in the early Epic line, but I only ever read a few of those and don't remember them fondly. But maybe some day I'll give them another tumble.

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