I mean, seriously, how many issues of this comic did I have?
More to the point, how many issues did I have that I have no recollection of?
Well, I can tell you. I had eight issues and I've managed to forget the contents of all of them.
But there are special issues of Werewolf by Night. Ones where not only can I not remember their contents but, up until blundering across their covers on the internet, I had no memory of ever having possessed.
The comic in this post is one of them.
And, Reader, I'm convinced that this is the most forgettable of them all.
Who on Earth was the villain? And was he really lumbered with the name, "Fire Eyes?"
Massive amounts of Googling tell me that he was indeed lumbered with the name Fire Eyes and he did indeed appear in this issue.
Unfortunately, massive amounts of Googling also tell me nothing else about him whatsoever. Was he human? Was he alien? Was he mutant? Was he robot? Was he demon? Was he god? I have no idea.
I was going to ask, given his notoriously poor fighting skills, how did the Werewolf beat him but I'm going to guess that he didn't because I can't remember the Werewolf ever beating anyone in a fight.
Therefore, I shall assume someone else beat him, possibly a group of good guys doing something with incantations and magic goblets. Possibly there was an altar. Possibly there was an ancient tome. Possibly there was smoke. This is a pure guess but I would not be surprised if this was the case and that, subjected to such activities, Fire Eyes simply melted like a candle or some such misfortune, never to bother any werewolves ever again.
This issue is a bit of a mess and not writer Doug Moench's finest hour. There are some cosmic shenanigans with demons, the werewolf's girlfriend is turned into a harpy, the villain is the underwhelming Dr. Glitternight and even Brother Voodoo turns up. Oh, and Fire Eyes only appears for three pages and is killed by a buzz-saw made of light. Of course. There's some nice artwork by the ever-reliable Don Perlin and captions like this:
ReplyDelete"Inside an enormous black egg, the amazing Dr. Glitternight opened his cage of light."
Ah, the '70s...
Cerebus is far too kind about this comic, giving the impression that it has some slight entertainment value as 70s kitsch.
ReplyDeleteBut even to a 12 year old Marvel zuvembie such as myself, who was a total sucker generally for the more way out B-list Marvels of the period - the Englehart-era Dr. Strange, Starlin's Warlock and so on - it was still obviously total rubbish. And I liked the glam-Conan version of Man-Wolf!
-sean
Thanks for the info, both of you. I am impressed that there are people out there with such knowledge of later Werewolf by Night issues.
ReplyDeleteI must confess that I preferred Man-Wolf as well, mostly because he looked like a wolf, whereas, as I think I've said before, Werewolf by Night looked more like he was half man, half coconut.
Sounds like the only thing missing is Abbot and Costello from this comic!
ReplyDeleteI do remember Groucho Marx making guest appearances in Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, which always baffled me. So, who knows, maybe Abbott and Costello might have shown up in Werewolf by Night if it had lasted long enough.
ReplyDeleteYou ever see Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein and the Werewolf? Quite entertaining!
ReplyDeleteI saw it a very very long long time ago, back in the mid 1970s but remember almost nothing of it.
ReplyDeleteSteve, Steve, Steve...
ReplyDeleteGot to get you back into the groove! Go watch Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein again! It's a hoot, a stich, old tyme fun!
And while you are at it, go out there and watch the Youtube video of Disco Demolition Night at White Sox Park!
As I read your list of unmemorable comics I recall there were so, so, so many clunkers published in the day...
I remember that scene where they are unpacking the crate, discover the monster, and without a word start re-packing it again.
ReplyDeleteI think that's how it goes, anyway. It's been a few years since I've seen it.
I just got done watching Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, which I taped off some cable channel.
Probably inferior to the Golden Voyage of Sinbad, but it's Harryhausen monsters were nothing to sneeze at. Minotaun and the Troglodyte sure spooked me when I was a kid.
M.P.
Charlie, I watched a video of the Disco Demolition the other day. I remember seeing footage of them destroying the records at the time. I hadn't previously been aware that it had led to such shambolic scenes in its aftermath.
ReplyDelete