MONSTER MASHUPS #49

"Bat's Tail" spins a short three-page tale of a human victim captured by winged vampires for food. Throughout the vampires keep nattering about a fearsome "beast-man," so guess who the innocent-looking human turns out to be?

Nice Russ Heath art and a predictable Stan Lee "gotcha" script, but this tale is one of the few times a werewolf is seen being the scourge of a whole group of vampires.

RAR #41: BLACK BISON

I recently reread the first appearance of the supervillain Black Bison in the FIRESTORM comic, and he seems as boring now as he did then: just another of Gerry Conway's poorly conceived eco-terrorist bad guys. I don't think anyone ever made anything of the 20th century character, though his 19th-century ancestor appeared to good effect in a Rick Veitch SWAMP THING continuity.

MONSTER MASHUPS #48

SPOILERS, but-- here's the big surprise in SUPER FRIENDS #10: a bunch of aliens who look like classic monsters are actually-- superheroes!

MONSTER MASHUPS #47

The cover to 1964's CREEPY #7 looks like it's going to invoke the standard images of vampire vs. werewolf in a big fight:

However, even the title of the interior story, "Duel of the Monsters," is a cheat, since it's just another extended EC-style joke tale, taking place in medieval Spain for a change of pace. SPOILERS before anyone reads the big reveal below.

ANTI-MASHUPS (-3)

Just screened the 1964 FLINTSTONES episode "The Gruesomes," and decided that this one does not meet my standards for a mashup. The three members of the Gruesome Family-- pretty transparently modeled on the Addams clan-- are all the same sort of green-skinned freakazoids, so they all belong to the same species of whatever-they-are, unlike, say, the Munsters.

The family does have a menagerie of monsters-- "crocosauruses," octopi, a killer plant, and even a couple of giant furry hands that may or may not have hairy bodies attached. But all of these are just various types of animal, not monsters, and so they don't register, any more than the various fauna of Skull Island register as distinct from the monsterhood of King Kong.

MONSTER MASHUPS #46

NEAL ADAMS MONSTERS (2004), according to the author's preface, is all about having his versions of the three major movie-monsters-- Dracula, the Wolf Man (in this case, a Wolf-Woman), and the Frankenstein Monster-- come together for a big battle not restrained by live-action cinema considerations.

The result is far from being the best monster-battle ever, even within the comics-medium, but it's a decent read if one doesn't expect too much.

MONSTER MASHUPS #45

I'd largely forgot this 1979 short-- broadcast as THE HALLOWEEN THAT ALMOST WASN'T, and retitled on VHS as THE NIGHT DRACULA SAVED THE WORLD-- prior to stumbling across it on Youtube.

Since I saw it in my twenties, HALLOWEEN was a little sophomoric for my tastes then, particularly with a jarring SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER joke at the end. But compared to some monster mashes-- particularly the 2000 animated feature MONSTER MASH-- at least HALLOWEEN "stakes" (ouch) out its daffy slapstick territory and doesn't venture outside those borders.

The short starts with Dracula (Judd Hirsch) calling a convocation of monsters in response to a televised rumor that 1979 may be the first year without a Halloween. The ghouls all come to his humble abode, including a "Frankenstein Creature," a mummy, Warren the Werewolf, a zombie called Zabarr, and a witch (Mariette Hartley). On top of that, Dracula has borrowed a page from the Universal Studios book by employing a hunchbacked servant named Igor, who in this context I would not consider a true "monster." But it hardly matters, since only two monsters get to do very much, beyond setting up jokes.

Dracula briefly considers the possibility that his favorite holiday may be doomed because humankind no longer fears him or his kindred. But instead of running this idea into the ground, as MONSTER MASH does, the short flick dumps that notion and reveals that the Witch is the true threat to Halloween. Seems she resents both Dracula's sovereignty over the creatures of the night, and the fact that people don't like ugly chicks. Dracula tries various strategies to bend the sorceress to his will, but in the end only the pleas of cute children ensure that Halloween goes on.

As long as one has a sizable appetite for borscht-belt jokes and Judd Hirsch's Lugosi accent, HALLOWEEN is at least passable. There's an odd moment in which the Witch defends herself from her enemies by bringing the Three Musketeers to life. I assume the production just ran out of monster costumes and borrowed some studio's musketeer outfits to save a buck.