I'd mostly forgotten about this mashup until I started paging through old GHOST RIDERS, There's a good reason I forgot it, as it's a pretty formulaic encounter of the Ghost Rider and the Werewolf By Night. About the only interesting thing is that the Rider is more monstrous than the wolf-man.
There are fourteen English-language collections of the manga series NURSE HITOMI'S MONSTER INFIRMARY, but reading the first didn't fill me with the desire to check out any more. The titular Hitomi is a cyclops who works as a high school nurse-attendant, in a world where various monsters just pop up every once in a while and all the norms just accept their presence. The stories in Volume 1 are all about the same: a teenager is at odds with his or her developing monster-nature-- invisibility, an elastic tongue, turning into a giantess or a Thomasina Thumb-- and Nurse makes it all better with reassuring words. Not much humor or horror.
Just reviewed this Mexican monster-mash, mentioning that it includes "not only such usual suspects as a nummy, a wolfman, a tophatted vampire and a "Franquenstein Monster," but also a human-sized Cyclops. There are also a couple of female vampires running around, one of whom tries to seduce Santo, but they're excluded from the fight-scenes."
Thus far I haven't found any monster mash earlier than the 1933 cartoon MICKEY'S GALA PREMIERE, although to be sure this is what I would call an "incidental mash." Mickey goes to a film premiere, where a lot of Hollywood celebs are parodied, including three movie-monsters of the period: Dracula, the Monster, and Mister Hyde. They're only on screen for less than a minute, so if you want a "mash" that has *substance,* you've got to go with 1934's "Waxworks." ("Incidentally," another "incidental mash" I'll probably never devote a post to is the Mighty Mouse cartoon "Bad Bill Bunion," in which Dracula and the Monster make tossed-off cameos.)
Offhand I don't know if any other Disney productions used monster-mashes, but 2021 debuted one that qualifies as more than incidental: A TALE OF TWO WITCHES. It's mostly about two lady witches, Minnie and Daisy, learning magic from Mistress Clarabell, and fighting a spectre named "Pete the Ghost." Mickey, Pluto, Donald and Goofy all appear in monster-forms but have very little to do in the story-- though at least they're around for more than simple cameos.
I've tried to listen to online episodes of the seventies series HILARIOUS HOUSE OF FRIGHTENSTEIN, but it's just a little too "twee" for me. I don't know if the vampire and the werewolf were ever on camera together since they were played by the same actor, but apparently a witch and a sea serpent were included-- so I guess HHOF qualifies as a mashup.
I'm still working on early issues of UQ HOLDER, in which a vampire protagonist meets a whole "Yakuza" full of "Yokai." May not turn out to be a big factor in the whole series, though. So far in my reading of the first few collections, most of the characters continue to look like ordinary super-powered humans, and don't switch to the "transitional forms" one sees in, say, ROSARIO + VAMPIRE.
And here is my review of the DTV animated feature HULK: WHERE MONSTERS DWELL. Though the Hulk is more "hero" than "monster," a point which the movie itself dwells upon more than once, he and fellow hero Doctor Strange are accompanied for four "good monsters:" Man-Thing, vampire Nina Pryce, War-Wolf, and a zombie version of Jasper Sitwell. There's some "mashi-ness" on the antagonist side as well, when villain Nightmare brings into being three monsters based on early sixties Jack Kirby "kaiju." None of the three adapted-- Rorgg, Sporr, and Zzutak-- have to my knowledge showed up in any medium since their respective Silver Age debuts.
Back by no further demand at all, I'm exploring the subject of allomythicity once more.
I should start out by quoting myself from this OD essay on the matter of crossovers:
A crossover features at least two characters who have established-- or will establish-- the "mana" that has or might make them popular. In the above example, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed has one type of "mana," while Quatermain has a different type. It is this "clash of energies" that I believe readers enjoy in crossovers, a clash that is radically different from the normative encounters of a hero and his villains.
Many monster mashups are not crossovers, but even those that are not depend on their appeal for a "clash of energies," or more precisely, an "interaction of conceptual energies." This interaction is also strongly related to the concept of allomythicity, the idea that the characters have distinct histories, or tropes that suggest such histories, which in turn generate said conceptual energies. However, there are one or two exceptions to this general rule for which I should account.
The most fully articulated example of a highly allomythic monster mashup is one in which the characters involved have starred in their own features, in which they have established their own backstories. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN is my paradigmatic example here. However, it's also possible to have a mashup in which one character possessed a fairly involved backstory-- i.e., Toho's original Godzilla-- while the other, his opponent King Kong (the Second), has been patterned after an established character but is not actually coterminous with said character.
Then there are mashups in which neither character has ever appeared before, but each of them is separated by the other by a separate "mythology of origins," even if that mythology is implicit, rather than explicit as with FMTWM. The script for THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE barely articulates the nature of its two monsters-- the vampire Armand Tesla and his unwilling werewolf servant Andreas-- beyond a few basic tropes about such creatures. But the interaction of disparate character-concepts still takes place.
Yet origin-implication can become even more paltry than this. RETURN is like a treasure-trove of monster-tropes compared to the kids' film MONSTER MASH. The "Horrific Trio" in this flick seem more like plush-toy versions of monsters than dangerous predators, even in comparison to other comic takes on such figures (the default here being the creatures from ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, who retain their minatory power despite the ludicrous plot-circumstances). I'd almost go so far as to compare the monsters of this 2000 flick to be "floating signifiers" that suggest the idea of monsters without actually having any monstrous traits.
All of these characters have some "origin myths," however paltry, which are articulated largely because they are the starring characters of their respective narratives. That said, in the previous two essays in this series, I began considering that non-starring characters could generate their own myths, which could in turn play off those of more established characters. Hence I reversed myself on on whether or not the story "The 60 Deaths of Solomon Grundy" qualified as a monster mash. It included Swamp Thing (who may or may not have enjoyed a feature at the time of the story's publication), Solomon Grundy (who had appeared in several stories as an antagonist to various heroes, but who had never been a "star" as such) and Superman, whose presence was irrelevant to the mashup-subject.
But given that Armand Tesla and Andreas sustain the mashup-vibe even without having appeared in any previous form (despite Tesla's resemblance to the Universal Dracula), obviously two creatures can also sustain the vibe without either having a backstory from an earlier appearance. At the conclusion of Part 2, I mentioned a story from JUSTICE LEAGUE #45, which debuted both the Shaggy Man and the Moon Creature. Of this story I wrote:
Had there been but one new monster, of course, I would have labeled that character just another isomyth. But an allomyth is generated by the interaction of the two monster-types, even though said interaction lasted only for that issue, since to my knowledge the Moon Creature never appeared again, and though the Shaggy Man did, he was just another superhero sparring-partner and didn't cross conceptual paths with any monster-types.
Usually the difference of myth-origins is the main criterion, in whatever form it may take. However, I make an exception for characters who may share the same basic origin but who have generated famous narratives. In an earlier commentary on a particular DOCTOR SPEKTOR story, I wrote:
The main character is an expert on the supernatural who runs around investigating spooky stuff, even though he's not really a man of action and has no supernatural powers himself. After meeting versions of Mr. Hyde, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Mummy, and an "original" vampire antagonist named Baron Tibor, Spektor has an encounter with a group of vampires. Technically this can't be a mashup since all the vampires share similar origins, but it's worth noting simply because it teams up the best-known literary vampire, Count Dracula, with three others from prose lit: Sir Francis Varney (VARNEY THE VAMPIRE, Mircalla Karnstein (CARMILLA), and Lord Ruthven (THE VAMPIRE). Baron Tibor gets involved, but on Spektor's side.
But even though the backstories of the four famous vampires aren't explored in the depths during the course of "Dracula's Vampire Legion," and even though one presumes that all four (and original comics-creation Tibor) shared roughly the same genesis, the author's reference to other established histories promulgates the same "mashup-vibe" that I found in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, and so the short story also attains a certain degree of allomythicity. I might consider that degree comparable to all figures who are technically isomythic but who LOOK as if they arose from different sources, as per the many monsters Spektor encounters in the dream-fantasia of issue #9.
I just completed this review of the kids' show THE MONSTER SQUAD, in which three of yesterday's monsters become three of today's (in 1976-7) campy crimefighting crusaders.
While I'm at it, I may as well link to my review of that other SQUAD, whose title applies to a bunch of kids who get together to battle mostly fiendish foes. I don't know if the later production paid off the makers of the TV show to let them use the title, or if the TV people just didn't bother to take legal action because it was such "petty larceny."
Some writeups for the Prize Comics FRANKENSTEIN series have alleged that following the patchwork monster's initial outing as an obsessed fiend, he was changed into a kinder, gentler, and more comical monster by his creator Dick Briefer, and that during this period the creature began having more regular encounters with other monstrous types, rather than just one-shot battles. The first of these appears in issue #44 (1944), when the Monster runs into a pair of vampires, Zora and Rollo. The story seems poised to return Frankenstein to his earlier, more savage incarnation, for after Zora befriends the Monster, she secretly casts a spell on him to make him turn evil again. However, the spell proves incomplete, so that for the space of one adventure, the Monster only becomes vicious at night, and reverts to his gentle giant persona in the daytime. However, by issue #45, Briefer drops the whole persona-switching idea and moves Frankenstein, Zora and Rollo into their own hotel. At this point in my reading, other vampires have moved in, so it's not a multi-monster rally like HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA. However, the addition of Zora and Rollo as part of Frankenstein's regular cast (even though Rollo never does anything) transforms the strip into a one-monster show to that of two monsters-- but only up until issue #49, when the hotel, Zora and Rollo disappear and the big guy's on his own again.
Until now I've tended to suppose that 1943's FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN was the first true monster-mash, but as I've recapitulated in this review, Walter Lantz got there first in 1934 with his cartoon short "Wax Works." There was also a 1933 Mickey Mouse cartoon that predates that one, and that technically gets pride of place, though "Wax Works" is the one that really gets major mileage out of the creature-crossover concept.
Just reviewed CARRY ON SCREAMING here, which boasts a couple of very hairy Frankensteins, a living mummy and an ersatz Edward Hyde.
From SUPER DUCK #35 comes one of the most peculiar creations I've come across, Ugh Lee Heap, a fat Indian-type who has a long tail and prehensile-looking feet. The story makes it sound like he's appeared in an earlier story (though GCD shows nothing else for the character-name). In this scene he uses his tail for sleeping arrangements.
To recapitulate the substance of the preceding post, I've determined that the format of the particular type of "crossover story" known as the "monster mashup" takes two broad forms of the "isomyth" and the "allomyth." In this sense myth refers to "the totality of the mythic tropes used in a given narrative," and the characters who are potentially "mashup monsters" conform to one of those two forms. My primary insight in the earlier essay was to establish that every character is used more than once-- one example being the DC monster-character Solomon Grundy-- begins to establish a "narrative myth," a myth not present in characters who only appear in one story.
Now, on THE ARCHIVE, even though I generally use "mythicity" to mean something other than "totality of tropes," I also judge each narrative's mythicity on a "good/fair/poor" spectrum of development. On this blog, with this different but complementary usage of the mythicity-term, I will assert that the two forms of the isomyth and the allomyth further subdivide in "high" and "low" levels for both, because I judge this division to be a good means of distinguishing the "mashup" from the "anti-mashup."
HIGH ISOMTHICITY-- This type of narrative is almost never associated with the "monster mashup," even though the various creatures in the narrative in question may have some significant physical differences between one another. I gave prominent mention to Wells' ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU. All of the monsters in ISLAND are natural animals who have been artificially altered by the mad scientist, and thus, even though each one belonged to a different species originally, now they all share the same "species," having become "of the same species" of the Beast-Men.
At the same time, monsters who actually belong to different species may still be isomythic depending on their context. In the 1933 KING KONG the big ape fights a T-Rex, a pterdodactyl and a giant snake. They're all typical representatives of these fictionalized animal-types, but they lack myths of their own for the same reason as the sparring partners of Gamera: they're intended only to be used as one-shot opponents for a principal monster-character, and so they generate no mythic narratives.
LOW ISOMYTHICITY-- The characters in these narratives also share the same myth-origins, but they APPEAR to look like characters who do not share such origins. In the DOCTOR SPEKTOR story entitled "She Who Summons the Dark Gods," an evil sorceress causes the titular hero to fall into a dream where he encounters doppelgangers of his "real-world" enemies. All of the dream-images of Dracula, Frankenstein Monster et al, share the same origins, but they LOOK LIKE the real creatures of Spektor's world.
In fact, these faux-monsters don't even have to be copies of characters who share the monster-persona. In SCOOBY DOO 2, the Great Dane and his buddies contend with artificially created copies of their old enemies-- none of whom were literal monsters, but rather villains who dressed up as marauding monsters.
LOW ALLOMYTHICITY-- This would apply largely to what I've called a "monster of the month" situation. Godzilla faces a number of one-shot monster-opponents-- Ebirah, Megaguirus, Biolante-- and although they are allomythic in comparison to Godzilla, their stories end in their debut tales, and so they do not sustain their allomyths beyond a low level of intensity.
HIGH ALLOMYTHICITY-- This is the most flexible of the categories. Some characters may stem from separate narratives, as did FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, where both are monsters. But one may also have high allomythicity in a narrative where two or more monster-types appear for the first time against any type of persona, monstrous or not. This is seen in the one-shot film MONSTERS VS, ALIENS, wherein the four heroes are modeled upon four "classic movie monsters," and they join forces to contend against a villainous alien. The reverse also applies in a comic like JUSTICE LEAGUE #45. Here a group of non-monstrous heroes fight not one but two newly debuted monsters, the Shaggy Man and the Moon Creature. Had there been but one new monster, of course, I would have labeled that character just another isomyth. But an allomyth is generated by the interaction of the two monster-types, even though said interaction lasted only for that issue, since to my knowledge the Moon Creature never appeared again, and though the Shaggy Man did, he was just another superhero sparring-partner and didn't cross conceptual paths with any monster-types.
Since I spent a certain amount of time deciding whether or not a Swamp Thing/ Solomon Grundy crossover counted as a mashup in my system, and decided in the affirmative, it just makes sense to include it now in the mashup list.
About the only noteworthy thing about the issue is that the situation shown on the cover actually takes place in the story.
I'm not yet finished with the long-running Quality feature "The Death Patrol," but so far its Native American member "Chief Chuckalug" (top panels) seems to be the only Real American in the mix. All of the members of the Patrol were broad ethnic stereotypes, whether red, black or white.
In a story entitled "The Auction" in BORIS KARLOFF'S TALES OF MYSTERY #12, professional auctioneer Bentley is commissioned to preside over an auction at lonely Lochshire Castle. To his consternation, the items being auctioned are full of black magic associations, and the bidders appear to be nothing less than "the living dead."
Bentley identifies only two species of spectre, "ghouls" and "vampires," though there's no telling what the artist had in mind when he drew the above images of a colorfully clad dwarf and a bald guy with pointed ears. Vague as these "modern-day spectres of evil" are, there's just enough diversity there to judge them "allomythic."
However, the more interesting aspect of the story is the writer's catalogue of weird objects. Not everyone would deem "occult artifacts" to be "monsters" in their own right, but I would invoke the famed short story "The Monkey's Paw" as precedent. Bentley's evil auction-items mentions only one artifact that arises from traditional myth, a "Medusa shield" which is based on the aegis of Athena, a shield donned with Medusa's head. Other items include a hangman's rope, a pierced knight's helmet, and a black panther that may or may not be alive, all of which are apparently capable of being used for evil purposes. I've seen just two examples of "catalogues of famous weapons" in literature. One is the 12th century Welsh story "Kulwych and Olwen," in which King Arthur boasts of four great weapons, and the 17th-century allegory "Pilgrim's Progress," in which the protagonist enters an armory full of weapons from the Bible, such as Samson's jawbone-of-an-ass, et al. But "The Auction" might be the first mashup of monstrous artifacts.
Here are two examples of groups of allomorphic monsters who all share the same origins and are therefore "isomythic."
The first appeared in BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY #12, in which a typical American town plays host to a convention of club-members who call themselves "Kreepers" and who appear to be wearing an assortment of monster-masks. Big surprise, the Kreepers are all real monsters. The unbilled writer never supplies any origin for the disparate creatures but there's a loose solution that they're some "parallel race" that's existed on Earth for centuries.
The second appears in issue #30 of the same title, in the story "Produce Me a Monster." A reporter investigates the secret of Karlarka, a Hollywood producer who makes horror movies with incredible makeup effects on his monsters. The reporter follows Karlarka to a remote island, and finds out-- yeah, you guessed it-- all of Karlarka's "actors" belong to an isolated race of allomorphic monsters, as does the movie-maker himself. I think this is the only story in BORIS KARLOFF in which the name of the comic's "host" is transparently parodied.
Just reviewed the 1973 Andy Milligan film BLOOD, which deals with the acrimonious marriage between a mad scientist who's a part-time werewolf, and his vampiric wife. There's also a man-eating plant, but I don't count this as a "monster," just a tool used by the mad wolf-scientist.
I've been rethinking my classification of monster mashups on this blog, and here are the fruits of my meditations.
I think that in my early formulations I was too quick to speak of *centricity* as a factor in determining what was or wasn't a monster mash. This concentration came about because I was trying to find a rationale to disinclude all stories that simply pitted one monster, particularly one in a serial format, against a "monster of the month:"
I'll assert that in general one cannot have a "monster rally" if one has just one type of monster versus another type of monster. Examples of these would the meeting of "werewolf star" Waldemar Daninsky with assorted vampires in FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR, or the encounter of the Big G with one-shot nasty insect Megaguirus in GODZILLA AGAINST MEGAGUIRUS.
In this essay, I also specified that any such rally/mashup ought to emphasize monsters that were significantly different from one another. I used the term "allomorphic" ("allo"= "other," "morphic"= "related to form") to make that specification.
Yet there are a couple of examples of "groups of monsters" that appear allomorphic while sharing the same basic background. Case in point: the beast-men of H.G. Wells' ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU. These creatures are animals whom Moreau has altered into quasi-humans with his techniques, but the various freaks-- wolf-man, dog-man, panther-woman-- are as "allomorphic" with respect to one another as they were when they were all different animal species. Yet I would never consider Moreau's beast-men to be a mashup. I could, however, easily imagine a mashup-story which combined a wolf-man and a panther-woman who enjoyed some separate origins, along the same lines as the supernatural beasts in "The Pharaoh's Zoo."
It's recently come to me that the real criteria is not that of different form, but different narratives behind the form. A combination of creatures who all share the same origins, like the beast-men or Anne Rice's vampire variations, would be *isomythic,* in that all of the characters, despite physical differences, are derived from the same mythic origins. In contrast, real monster-mashups are those in which two or more monsters derive from different mythic backgrounds, making them *allomythic* to one another.
(I'll note that this use of the term "mythic" is somewhat at odds with the way I use the term in my ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE writings, where "mythic" indicates "symbolic complexity." In this essay alone, it means more like "the totality of the mythic tropes used in a given narrative," rather like the way Northrop Frye uses the term. I plan to show how the two usages may complement one another, but that will be in a separate essay, probably on the ARCHIVE.)
One notion that brought about this re-orientation dealt with considering how characters, either in serial or stand-alone narratives, create their mythic backgrounds. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, one of the most influential mashups, garners at least some of its charm from combining the dissonant origins of the Monster, being born from weird super-science, and the Wolf Man, having arisen from a supernatural gypsy curse. This sort of cognitive dissonance is a great part of the charm of most mashups, even those in which the monsters actually arise from the same mythic origins but resemble entities who were separate from one another. For instance, the spook catcher Doctor Spektor never meets all of his monster-enemies in reality, but he does undergo a dream in which he's attacked by their respective spectres. The aesthetic appeal of seeing all the monsters together, even in dream-forms, is still communicated, since the reader will inevitably view the dream-shapes as extensions of either the "real" characters within the SPEKTOR series or of the original characters on which the comics-characters were based, such as movie-versions of Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster.
Often many "homage monsters" (such as those of the 2000 kidvid-movie MONSTER MASH are about as insubstantial as the figures in a real dream, being little more than bundles of vague associations taken from the original models. A film like this one holds more of a potential for myth than its actuality.
But given that I've decided to allow that such meager characters may quality as "allomyths," I must admit that their status doesn't depend upon their centricity within their narrative. I've labeled a number of stories "mashups" even though the main characters were heroes or demiheroes rather than monsters, not least JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #47-48.
In this story, the noble heroes of two Earths contend with two of the most brutish monsters of those Earths, Solomon Grundy and the Blockbuster. Neither of the two monsters had ever been central characters in any media-narrative (although I think Grundy got a short-lived series in relatively recent years), and so what makes the story's use of the two bruisers interesting is the way the narrative interweaves the different propensities of each creature. So neither had centricity-- but both did have "myths" built around their respective careers fighting superheroes.
Based on this line of thought, I have to reverse myself on my position in ANTI-MASHUPS (-1). I said that I didn't think that the crossover of Superman, Swamp Thing, and Solomon Grundy counted as a mashup for these reasons:
In the previous mashup post, I said that an issue of SWAMP THING, guest-starring DC's "THE DEMON," qualified as a mashup because both the main hero and his antagonist had once enjoyed their own features.
DC COMICS PRESENTS #8, though, is not such an example, because the formula is "good hero and good monster" team up against "monster who hasn't had his own feature," that is, Superman and Swamp Thing vs. Solomon Grundy (despite what the cover depicts)
But while that line of logic would have worked if Superman and Swamp Thing were facing some first-time monster-character, it doesn't work so well with a character who has sustained a myth though his repeated appearances. So now I would say that this story does count as a "monster mashup" because Swamp Thing and Grundy are allomythic toward one another.
My caution, then, was directed mostly at monster-characters who had only appeared once, for such characters are often throwaway types, like most of the gargantuan opponents of Gamera. None of these one-shot boogiemen sustain myths of their own to match Gamera's, and so they're basically like the "monsters of the month" that would be encountered by Swamp Thing in his own series.
Based on my JUSTICE LEAGUE example, I would tend to say that even if a monster-opponent has appeared only twice in a serial format-- and I believe Blockbuster had only appeared in two BATMAN tales before showing up in JUSTICE LEAGUE-- that the character then begins to generate a "mythic presence." Whether or not the readers welcome a given character, an author's attempt to keep a character going means that he must try, with whatever success, to put a little more effort in said character than he might with a one-shot. Then there arises the question of reboots. Toho Studio's "Rodan" is a familiar presence in several 1960s monster epics, but is he coterminous with the one who appears in 2019's GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS? I suppose the later Rodan would have at least as much mythic presence as, say, the lousy imitations of Classic Universal Monsters found in the aforementioned MONSTER MASH, so my answer is a cautious yes on that question.
And that's probably a good place to stop for now.
The DC humor feature ANGEL AND THE APE made one appearance in the company's showcase title, and then enjoyed three issues under that title. Apparently someone thought the word "meet" would be a grabber, for issues 4-6 bore the header "MEET ANGEL AND THE APE," and the last issue just read "MEET ANGEL." Though the characters never encountered any monster rallies in the stories, three covers included unflattering versions of Dracula and Frankenstein, possibly because the editors thought the JERRY LEWIS comic had done well by featuring Classic Monsters.
HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, reviewed here, feels in part like an oddball homage to FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. However, in the universe of MAKE A MONSTER, both the Teenage Werewolf and the Teenage Frankenstein initially have no existence save as fictional creations. Mad makeup artist Dumond then works his wizardry on two young actors wearing monster-masks, turning them into unwitting killers. So it's a monster-mash, though a referential one more akin to SCOOBY DOO 2.
"Transyvania Mania," an episode of the 1968 TV cartoon, "The Inspector," recycled some jokes from a 1950s Bugs Bunny cartoon but was still pretty good anyway. The Inspector (based on the Clouseau character from the live-action "Pink Panther" series) stumbles across an unnamed vampire who's also playing mad scientist, attempting to find a brain for his Frankensteinian creation. The vampire's Urg appears to be a commonplace thug, but he makes some remark about his master giving him a brain, so his status as a Franken-stooge makes this a monster-mash cartoon.
I saw just one episode of MONSTER FARM on Youtube, and it was more than enough. The young human in the center of the above illo inherits a farm occupied by funny-animal versions of classic monsters, including Count Cluckula (a rooster), Cowapatra (a cow-mummy), Dr. Woolly and Mr. Ewe (a sheep with a double identity), Frankenswine (a pig), Zombeef (a bull-zombie), and Goatasaurus Rex, some sort of dragon-critter who's the only one not clearly based on a well-known movie-monster. It's a minor curiosity in being one of many cartoons distributed by Saban, best known as the re-packager of the "Power Rangers" franchise.
The cover, appearing in 1965, sports a fairly early use of the term "monster rally," though as one might expect, the story inside has nothing to do with the opening shot. Not seen on the cover is a "Phantom of Loew's Bijou," and from left to the right we have a Black Lagoon refugee styled "the Beast from 1279 1/2 Fathoms," an unnamed mummy and "Vultura," a pretty clear Vampira spoof. All of them are life-size statues made from "monster kits" but given temporary life by some wacky aliens.
This wacky kid's film pits the two iconic folklore heroes against a motley mashup of monsters, which in this review I described as:
,,,a vampire, a Frankenstein Monster, a Siamese twin named “Two-in-One,” a boogieman, a guy with a carrot-head, a “Child Snatcher,” and a dwarf who can create hurricanes from his breath. Reigning over them all is the Queen of Badness, a dead ringer for the Queen from Disney’s SNOW WHITE...
Appearing in five issues of BLAZING COMICS, Red Hawk took on the evil Japanese, though the positive racial depiction of an American Indian hero was somewhat nullified by the anti-"Jap" slurs.
"Night of the Living Duck," an original 1988 cartoon short, was designed to be played in theaters with the compilation film DAFFY DUCK'S QUACKBUSTERS. The idea is that Daffy, an avid "monster kid," bonks himself on the head and dreams that he's singing (with Mel Torme's voice) for a club full of monstrous patrons. Most of the customers are familiar (but unnamed) faces except for a Godzilla parody, "Smogzilla."
That spoof-name pretty much captures the short's level of lame humor. Nice animation, and one of Mel Blanc's final voice-jobs, are the only attractions to this unfunny trifle.
I can't say I ever warmed much to Forge, the Cheyenne answer to Tony Stark. (Why so many Plains Indians, Marvel? How about a few Algonquins once in a while?) In addition to being a master designed of weapons, Forge also possessed some inchoate magical skills, which seemed to be gilding the lily. He's been around for a while, so he must've impressed more people than did, say, the Black Crow.
Not a lot more interesting Real Americans in the TOMAHAWK canon, but here's a curiosity from issue #87: Sergeant Witch Doctor, an Indian medicine man attached to the Rangers for one story. I guess the idea that an Indian guy would use the medical knowledge of his people on behalf of the American Revolution was well intentioned, though today it sounds a little condescending.
Here's another breed of anti-mashup. So far as one can tell from the cover of LAUGH #129, Archie and Veronica are about to go see a trio of rockers dressed up like "ghoul cats," not real ghouls in themselves. Included for curiosity's sake.
