MONSTERS ON THE PROWL #15 – Ben’s Horror-Comic-Athon October 2018 #10
In the spirit of Halloween, Ben is reading one horror comic every day. Will they keep him up? Or will they put him to sleep? We’ll find out…
It’s October 10th. They say not to judge a book by it’s cover . . . but what about BUYING a book because of its cover? I do that sometimes. Which is why I have this book in my collection . . .
ENTRY TEN:
MONSTERS ON THE PROWL #15: Marvel Comics; Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers, artists on “The Thing Called…It; Don Heck, artist on “The Man from Mars”; Steve Englehart, writer, and Sad Shores, artist, on “Terror of the Pterodactyl”; published 1983
Yeah. I bought this because it looked promising. Now, I’ve been burned before. And when I started reading this, I thought I’d been burned again.
The main story — the cover story — starts with a mad scientist who’s, well, MAD because his rival scientist gets all the recognition. So he decides to create a science-y magic plastic monster because, well, that’s what you do, right? But he can’t get it to come to life.
So I’m thinking it’s not a swamp monster. No biggie, but the cover made me think it COULD be. (If you listen to the podcast you know I like me some swamp monsters.) But then the mad scientist throw the plastic magic-science monster in the swamp . . . and the quicksand has the chemical missing to bring it to life. Or something. At this point . . . YAY, swamp monster sort of! And UGH, kind of stupid.
And so the mad scientist orders the monster to kill his rival and . . . his monster has come to life with morals. I love it.
All a tale like this needs to do is to give me something unexpected. This managed to lead me into thinking I was reading a story that was cliche and mediocre and give it a spin that delighted me until the ending that was . . . well, made little to know sense. But if this has a three act structure, act two was delightful.
The other two stories were nothing notable. “Terror of the Pterodactyl” had some GREAT art, but honestly read like an outline of any giant monster movie. And “The Man from Mars” also has excellent artwork, but an average story. The title reveals the ending.
You can read the rest of this series here: Ben’s Horror-Comic-Athon October 2018
While Ben’s not podcasting daily for the entire month, The Comic Book Time Machine will be going daily for a week at the end of October. Don’t miss our WEEK OF WEIRD, as we explore some weird comics from October 25-31!
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