These would've maybe felt like dad comics even at the time; feel like Marvel's marketing missed some opportunities.

I was being sarcastic on Twitter when I said Leonardo Manco drew about 90 different limited series for Marvel and I don't think any of them were huge books even if some of them probably should've been? I was 60% sure I had this series in the garage, but still bought the first two from a quarter bin the other day: from 2002, Apache Skies #1-2, written by John Ostrander, art by Leonardo Manco.

I had to research this a little, since I remembered Blaze of Glory getting a bit of a push from Marvel, but this would've been a couple years later. I also didn't remember offhand if the Apache Kid was a pre-existing Marvel western character or something created by Ostrander and Manco here: there had been an Apache Kid series in the fifties, although it may not have greatly resembled this version. That was okay, though: Marvel had long since established that the adventures of their western heroes were often adapted into dime novels, which explains why "historical accuracy" wasn't usually a buzzword for them. Regardless, this series opens with the death of the Apache Kid, and his wife Rosa and the Rawhide Kid are gunning to avenge his death, although neither knew the other at the start of their vendetta. ("Maybe you weren't so good a friend!" Rosa tells Rawhide, when that comes up.)

In the best western tradition, one of the skunks that gets gunned down is the son of a railroad baron, who starts a campaign of terror against Rawhide and Rosa; while Rosa had maybe a new mission to start on: to free the prisoner of war, Geronimo...!

I don't have Blaze of Glory right next to me, but I think this book was even better looking than that. I was mildly surprised this had been collected in a trade, but also feel like it would do better in a different format. Like, if it was a slightly smaller size, but shelved with other westerns, it might do some numbers. Also, while I know Manco did a long stint on Hellblazer, did Marvel make him sign a non-compete: it is a complete mystery why he doesn't appear to have done a Jonah Hex yet. Read more!

Conversely, it's probably a good idea to tell your girlfriend you're a werewolf, too.

Conveniently, this was pretty close at hand, from the latest big pile of random comics: from 1988, Werewolf by Night #2, "Life in the Fast Lane" Written by Paul Jenkins, art by Leonardo Manco. 

This was Jack Russell's short-lived second series, and he seems to have lost some of his supporting cast (and support system) and replaced them with booze. He also seems pretty tight-lipped about his condition, since he plays pool with a priest and later ducks out on his girlfriend when the full moon was coming; and neither had any idea. (His girlfriend's name is Roxanne, which made me wonder if he was seeing Johnny Blaze's girl...) Jack takes a little drive--with a bottle of bourbon as his co-pilot--to a creepy mansion in Texas, where he's turned away by an armed guard.

As Jack transforms in the woods, a cult in the mansion sacrifices a man, then the Werewolf smashes through a window, in a very nice two-page spread. The Werewolf tears through the cultists, as their wheelchair-bound leader attempts to flee, and takes a header down the stairs. Jack, seemingly in control, confronts him for information about the "wolfsblade," with which he could take complete control. But the wolfsblade is only one of three parts...

Later, at a carnival with Roxanne, while she goes to the bathroom Jack is greeted by someone claiming to represent parties that would like to work with Jack, and could show him where to find the other two pieces. They're in the "Ghost Train" attraction, which may actually be a gateway to hell. Jack is only given seventeen seconds to decide, but seems to just shrug and mosey on in.

I'm not sure I love the plot, but I always think Leonardo Manco should be a bigger name. He's a guy that always seems to understand the assignment!

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"The End" Week: Werewolf by Night #6!

As far as Marvel's horror characters go, Werewolf by Night had a pretty good first run, and has never been that big since. I think Morbius has had more relaunch success, and he didn't have much. From 1998, Werewolf by Night #6, "Love is Colder than Death, part 1" Written by Paul Jenkins, art by Leonardo Manco. It's not a good sign to see "part 1" when you're looking at the last issue...

Marvel had gone into bankruptcy the end of 1996, and I'm pretty sure the bloom was off the rose of the speculator market at this point; since I seem to recall this as a period when they would launch titles in little mini-imprint blocks, like M-Tech or this one, Strange Tales. Most of those didn't last twelve issues, Werewolf by Night only got six, then he and Man-Thing would get a whopping two issues of a new Strange Tales. The title for Man-Thing's story in that last issue is part one as well, although this Werewolf story might get wrapped up there. I'd never even seen that one before, though, so I suspect sales were not great.


We've seen work by artist Leonardo Manco multiple times over the years: among other things, he did Druid and Hellstorm and seems a perfect fit here. Still, the utter nineties of this one struck me: sort of a monster-goth gloom that both seems of the period yet completely unreal, like a rave on a CSI-type show. And that's even without the actual monsters. And even though this was written by Paul Jenkins instead of Manco's previous collaborator Warren Ellis, there are a couple bits that seem similar: the psychic girl investigating a murder sees dead people. I assumed she was recurring WbN supporting character Topaz, but her name wasn't given. And Jack has to chat with current ruler of (a) hell, Ghost Rider, tying into the then-continuity on that series that we just saw.


Although it feels unlikely that Disney-owned Marvel is ever going to give him a big push again, there's still enough love for Jack that he'll still get a one-shot every so often to keep the copyrights fresh; or he'll guest-star, usually with some monster friends. And I know he made a somewhat surprising appearance in Deadpool #17. (Or a Deadpool #17. Frickin' Marvel numbering. Ugh, I think Deadpool's had like eight last issues since last I looked...)
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Spring for the collection, or keep running down the singles...tough call.

A $75 price tag is a bit steep, especially since I already have Druid, but Warren Ellis's Hellstorm is being collected. I already have some of it, but not all. Like the second-to-last issue here! From Hellstorm: Prince of Lies #20, "Femme Fatale" Written by Warren Ellis, art by Leonardo Manco; and "Fur Bible" Written by Ellis, art by Martin Chaplin.

This reminded me of British comics, in that the lead feature was a mere 18 pages, even though the letters page obliquely hints the next issue was the last. And nothing seems to be headed for a wrap-up here: Satana puts insane detective Gunyon under her power, then sets him on a mission of "mass murder." In San Francisco, Daimon's girlfriend and partner Jaine Cutter is attacked by Gabriel Rosetti, who steals her Breathing Gun, a weapon designed to murder the supernatural. And in Normandy, a journalist interviews an aristocratic writer of coffee-table magic books, who tells a surprising story of LaVoisin, her possible ancestor, inspiration for her pen name, and witch. And the story closes with the writer sending a message to Daimon: she was going to have a boy...

Also this issue: ads for Stridex, X-Men 10-inch figures, and hockey, basketball, and football cards! All of which are jarringly out of place in this book.
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Continuing an unintended theme this week, we've got another western comic, albeit one I've had before: from 2000, Blaze of Glory #1, written by John Ostrander, art by Leonardo Manco.

The story opens with "There is the West of fact. There is the West of legend. This story falls somewhere in between." And it's largely set in my home state, Montana! Which puts it squarely into legend, since literally nothing ever happened there. (A slight exaggeration, but still.) But this uses historical fact, cameos from Buffalo Bill and others, with Marvel's stable of western heroes, including the Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, and Gunhawk.

There may actually be a few Gunhawks here: Reno Jones is the lead hero of the story, a former slave, Confederate soldier, and former gunslinger with his erstwhile childhood friend/owner Kid Cassidy. Although he had been the subject of a dime novel, in reality the "Gunhawks" broke up when Jones had been forced to shoot the increasingly cruel Cassidy, then flee town to avoid a lynching. When the Klan-style Exodusters attack the town, I'm pretty sure Cassidy ends up being one of them, but another Gunhawk turns up at the end of the issue, a bounty hunter on the trail of Kid Colt. And I'm noting it here, because I always forget: the Two-Gun Kid was the kid that was stuck in the 1970's for a bit around Avengers #144.

I had this whole series, but lost it several years back when my basement flooded. A couple of weeks ago, I got this at a dollar store--along with another copy of Ironwolf, and the reprint tie-in to this series, Gunslingers--at a dollar store. They were bagged with randomly picked trading cards, and a "How to Collect Comic Book Collectors Guide." Send in four proofs of purchase and $3.99 to get "3 Vintage Era Superhero Comic Books All Over 25 Years Old!" That's smack dab in the middle of the 90's, kids; there's quarter-bins full of those!
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Not an Ellis issue, but all right:

It actually is the issue before Warren Ellis took over the book: from 1994, Hellstorm: Prince of Lies #11, "Life in Hell" Written by Len Kaminski, art by Peter Gross Leonardo Manco, per the GCD.

After a failed attempt to storm the gates of Heaven; Daimon Hellstorm has been cast down into the fiery pits of Hell. There, he's given a walking tour of the place by a chap by the name of Simon Garth. Daimon recognizes the name, and you might as well: he was the Zombie, and says while his "mortal shell" was cursed to walk the earth, he was cursed to do the same in hell. They examine both the changing form and natures of Hell, and Garth describes it as "a mirror for the collective unconscious" as well as completely without justice. Sometimes the innocent are punished, sometimes the guilty rewarded, and souls are sent to heaven or hell more due to "flavor and texture" than sins or virtures. Of course, this may all need to be taken with a grain of salt, since Daimon realizes "Garth" knows more about hell than he should...

There's also a U.S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation, which means someone was getting Hellstorm in the mail at one point. Weird, huh? The average number of issues sold the previous twelve months was 123,453; with the actual number of the single issue closest to the filing date was 77,310. Hellstorm was a lower-tier book in the hundred or so titles Marvel was grinding out a month around 1993, but per the January sales numbers, nowadays those sales would be good enough for #1 or just behind #5, respectively.
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Batman versus zombies...will be seen tonight!

Even though Blackest Night involves zombies of a sort, it's a little surprising that there isn't a full-on Batman against the living dead story. Day of Judgement looked like it was going to, but was a bait-and-switch. This one's closer...but still not quite there, although it does have a couple things going for it; mainly a great Brian Bolland cover and art by Leonardo Manco, in Batman: Gotham Knights #29: "The Mortician, part two: Zombie Zero." Written by Devin Grayson.

We enter this one mid-story, as Batman rescues a young thug and his zombified friend, from the aforementioned Mortician and his zombie horde. Well, it's probably a couple dozen zombies, so not quite a horde per se. Also, most of the zombies are a bit on the lethargic side, even for zombies: scary-looking, but not that active.

Elsewhere, a young boy has a more lively zombie, that he's been using to kill his rivals--that's how this issue puts it, and without seeing the prior issue, I can't say rivals for what. Kept in the boy's closet, it turns on him, and chases him out of the house.

Batman researches the blood samples of the zombies, while the Mortician is trying to bring back more corpses, with the aid of his zombified dad. He then tracks down the boy's zombie (while the disbelieving police tut-tut the boy's story) and then finds the Mortician's cemetery workshop, which really seems like a no-brainer. Not like he's going to be holed up in the abandoned joke shop or flower store, now is he?

Giving the Mortician an antitoxin, Bats explains that the boy's zombie wasn't dead when he was embalmed with contaminated fluid, and will "live out the rest of his days as an imprisoned, poisoned, inhuman host body." This is another one of those situations where Batman's code against killing seems like abject dickery; but then we do get a neat two-page spread of Bats fighting the zombies. And...that's pretty much it: Mortician injects his zombie folks with the antitoxin, returning them to plain old dead, and the rest apparently just die off-panel after Bats beats them up.

Tough to call without the prior issue, but this one does seem to end pretty suddenly. Still, that art helps it a lot. This issue also features a black-and-white story from Paul Kupperberg and John Watkiss, involving the Riddler and an escape artist that trained Batman. It's not bad, but there's a death in the end that isn't clear if the Riddler committed murder, or an accidental homicide; like a lot of Riddler stories, it doesn't seem sure if he's a mad-dog killer or a neurotic attention-seeker with a gimmick.

I prefer him to be a bit more of both, truth to tell.
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Druid #1, or why didn't Marvel have it's own Vertigo branch?

Before we get to the meat of this one, a little link trail: from Comics Should Be Good's Chad Nevett's Random Thoughts, to his list of top 25 Warren Ellis comics. Now, I'm a pretty big Warren Ellis fan, even if I know I'm missing a few like Aetheric Mechanics, No Hero, Anna Mercury,or Crecy, or Lazarus Churchyard. Huh, have I read Lazarus? I know I've read part of Crecy...and I tradewaited No Hero since Black Summer took forever to wrap up.

I didn't care for Reload, Down, or his Hellblazer run as much as some others on the list. And I would've got Two-Step and Switchblade Honey in there somewhere. But the list got me thinking of some books that didn't make the top 25. Mostly, I thought about some of his early Marvel work. His run on Excalibur I love because I like the characters, but you can see bits of things that would turn up later in his bigger books like Authority. He did four issues with the Starjammers that are smarter than anything they've been in before or since. In Doom 2099, Ellis takes Doom to the logical conclusions, but he leaves the character in an untenable spot for continuing serial adventures: on top of the game, and too smart to make the same petty mistakes again. Ruins is a little harsh for my tastes, but it's a solid two issues, and they were wise enough not to make a four-issue deal of it.

And then there's Druid. God, it's a brutal book. Not just in the violence and squalor, but it's a pretty unflinching look at a man who sought power, got just enough of it to get beaten down by those with more power, finally lucked into the power that was always his, and then the things he would do to try and keep it.

I thought Druid read like Marvel told Ellis, "use this character up and throw him away," but per comments from editor Marie Javins in the last issue's letters page, it seems like it may have been intended to be an ongoing series, not a four-issue limited. And that may not even necessarily be a bad thing: there is always going to be those whose ambition far exceeds their talents or ability, and get themselves in over their heads for it. I'm not spoiling anything to tell you Druid comes to a bad end; but Ellis makes it natural, as opposed to trotting Dr. Druid out during some big crossover, so this year's Big Bad can brutally murder him in order to look like a contender.

The book starts with the status quo from Ellis and artist Leonardo Manco's prior book, Hellstrom, where Daimon has apparently been elected Satan or something. He's the real deal, and doesn't take kindly to being summoned by kids playing Iron Maiden records backwards, or in this case, one of Druid's hangers-on. (I didn't get the feeling that Daimon was 'evil' or malicious, just that he was completely unwilling to put up with any crap.) Druid had picked up an entourage before the term was in vogue, an assortment of "friendly little parasites...dabbling in the occult for wrong fun." (I'm curious to see if this will turn up in Dr. Voodoo: magic groupies, fanboys, wanna-be's.)


The expression is, 'how the mighty have fallen,' but Anthony Druid, born Ludgate, was never that mighty in the first place. He had been a Celtic scholar, devoted to discovering the secrets of pre-Christian Druidism; no small feat, since the Druids had an oral tradition and didn't write important things down, and then were killed off by the Romans in the second century. Ludgate thought all magic may have derived from the Druids, and the monks of Tibet still had an oral tradition, so he went to see what he could find. The Ancient One, of Dr. Strange, experiments on Ludgate for his own reasons--Ellis makes him seem much more creepy and manipulative here. He opens Ludgate's mind to ancestral memory, unlocking some (but not all) of the Druids' secrets, and probably driving him insane.

The brutality starts after the break!
Ludgate takes the last name Druid, fakes a better story for his origin, and joins the superhero crowd...for years of utter failure. Prior to this story, Dr. Druid was best known for joining the Avengers, becoming hypnotized or infatuated with Nebula, and running the team into the ground. He faked his own death to get out of the Secret Defenders, and now was a bitter, drunk failure.

His shabby treatment at the hands of Hellstrom was the last straw; not because Druid failed to prevent the death of his charge, but the final blow to his ego. He invokes rituals he had never dared to before, a secret ritual of change, to beg to learn the true secrets of power. Druid gets his wish, but immediately learns, as a tree grows through him, the old Druids weren't new-agey crystal peacenik types, and no change comes without pain.

As the fat melts of Druid's body, he is shown glimpses of the present, and the future: an earth with no oceans, and no oxygen, nothing but death. As realization dawns, terrifyingly, Druid tries to tear out his own throat before speaking the third and final part of the ritual; to no avail. He is told by the "Triple Goddess of Celtica" that to the Druids, the end of the world isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that he is "the beautiful destroyer...open your mouth: taste the debris of your sacrifice."

Outside Druid's room, his entourage is mildly surprised that Druid is still alive, but it's indicative of how damaged they are that they don't run upon hearing this:
Druid rises, but immediately changes his name back to Ludgate: "I'm not kowtowing and cuddling up to you bloody colonials any more!" He declares himself to be the Last Druid, and that he will never be beaten again...and looks a lot more together than he did before. Crazier, too, but there you go.

While I enjoyed this series, I don't know that I would've liked to see it go longer than its four issues: Ludgate isn't just a bastard, he's a vindictive, unlikeable bastard, who is completely hung up on getting the respect he thinks has been wrongly denied him. Maybe it doesn't deserve to be in Ellis' top 25 either, but it's still a good read, if you can stomach it. I'm not sure Druid was ever collected, either, and it's disconcerting to read it with bright, cheery ads for DevilDogs, Kool-Aid, and Malibu Comics...

Druid's death is in Marvel continuity as well: it's mentioned early on in Busiek and Perez's Avengers; which is fine. But I think Hellstrom may have benefited more from being left alone; and of course this predates Marvel MAX.

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