THE REVENGE OF MARTIN: IS IT CANNIBALISM WHEN YOU'RE PLANT BASED? (MORLOCK 2001, MORLOCK 2001 AND THE MIDNIGHT MEN)

Last time I made reference to something I called The Fleisher Cannibal Hero Trilogy. For some reason three of Atlas Seaboard's titles featured heroes that ate human flesh. One of these titles is meant to be a horror title, so...okay, I guess. One of them is a super-hero title featuring an analog to the Hulk. And this one...

Morlock 2001 is set in a dystopian fascist United States in, well, 2001 and stars a character who is grown from a plant pod by an evil botanist who is pressganged into being an assassin for the government until he decides to rebel and periodically turns into a rampaging killer tree that dissolves its human victims.

The 70's was a Powerful Drug, my friends.

I've always been fascinated by media set in a 'far future' that has already passed, and instead of that, what we got we get...a very weird mashup of several different popular dystopia tropes. There's a lot of 1984 here, but Fleisher also adds in dashes of Farenheit 451, Soylent Green, THX1138 and other fairly recent iterations of the same kind of downbeat science fiction before Star Wars thoroughly killed that kind of storytelling.* If there's anything unique about this comic's world, it's how relentlessly nasty everyone is. Morlock is befriended by a pretty young girl--and is immediately willing to bad talk him to the government handlers which are using our hero as an assassin. In the second issue, Morlock is discovered during an ID check and is chased through the streets by the crowd looking to collect the bounty on his head...or to 'bash in his head--just for the fun of it.' He escapes on a train and is assaulted by a trio of...clowns? obviously patterned after the Droogs in A Clockwork Orange before being taken prisoner by the train conductor who keeps calling him 'deviant.'

I wonder if this parade of cruelty during this first two issue is to hide the fact that Morlock himself is a pretty terrible protagonist. Even though Fleisher tries his damnedest to portray him as an innocent figure, the fact that he has a highly infectious touch as a human and eats humans by dissolving them when he's a fuck-off tree monster...and is utilized as an assassin for this oops-all-dystopias civilization even after he has doubts, makes it hard for readers to sympathize with him. Even if we do have a shred of said sympathy, it's gone when he eats a little blind girl--arguably the only sympathetic character in the series so far--while he's tree'd out. Okay, sure, the girl's father was planning on selling out our hero to the government for cash, but still...

Even reading it today, and keeping in mind a similar scene in Fleischer's Hulk rewrite The Brute (which we'll get to soon enough), this scene seems a bit too much over the line. Yes, it's still within Comic Code Authority standards that had been loosened recently, but the cruelty might have hit readers harder than Flesicher, editor Jeff Rovin and the Goodmans thought it would be. As I've mentioned before, one of the things that attracted writers to Atlas Seaboard was a greater degree of freedom...and I think that is one of the reasons (but not the biggest reason) the comic company didn't catch on.

The biggest sin of Morlock 2001 is that there's very little plot to drive use forward in reading. There's so much cribbing from Dystopian Classics masquerading as world building that almost nothing happens. Thus, when the Atlas Seaboard Shakeup happened and Martin and Chip Goodman demanded that most of the titles needed to be rebooted, Gary Friedrich had his work cut out for him. His solution was to retitle the comic Morlock 2001 and The Midnight Men, retain the background and add things such as...you know, an actual character and a plot.

The third issue opens up with government agents killing another professor and destroying the house with fire. Meanwhile, Morlock has arrived--it is implied that he's looking for this professor so he can synthesize more serum to stabilize his form--and promptly trees out, kills one of the agents and passes out. However, the professor isn't dead despite having third degree burns all over his body, discovers Morlock as he reverts back to his human form, and decides to use him as part of this revolution he'd been planning for years. He puts on a blue costume and, inspired by the clock in his study that stopped when the house was burned down, declares himself (and his revolutionaries-in-arms) The Midnight Man. However, his plans go wrong and, with a treed-out Morlock coming at him and government agents discovering their underground hideout, our new hero decides "better death than slavery on the surface!"

While I may think Freidrich's script is trying too hard to accomplish too much, there's no denying he's committed to the bit. This may be the only Atlas Seaboard title where you can say the story ends on a satisfying--and as nihilistic as Fleischer's vision--note.

The art for the first two issues is by Al Milgrom, who will end up being a rather big artist for Marvel in the 80's, with Jack Abel giving it an appropriately gritty sheen with his inks. The third issue has the most novel artwork, however. The legendary Steve Ditko is enhanced with inks by the equally legendary Bernie Wrightson for that story, and the results are...unique. It's undoubtedly Ditko in its impressionistic cartooning, but Wrightson gives the art a degree of dimension and detail that makes it something impactful. If this was to be the art team going forward, I would have been very interested in seeing where it would have gone.

Regardless of whether we're looking at Morlock 2001 or Morlock 2001 and The Midnight Men, this series was a mess. Flesicher was so intent on playing with sci-fi tropes that he loved that he forgot to give us much in the way of plot to justify the overwhelming cruelty, while Freidrich is unable to do anything more than try to turn the mess his predecessor left into something barely comprehensible. Yes, the two artist/inker teams that handled the three issues are excellent for different reasons, but you can't get past the plotting and dialogue. I cannot recommend this.

Next time we encounter the first Atlas Seaboard super-hero...kinda. This character borrows the honorific of 'The Man of Tomorrow' in teeny tiny text on the first issue, and as 'The Man of Atoms' in the story itself. But as we'll find out, this series had a hard time deciding whether its lead wanted to be a two-fisted astronaut, a straight-on superhero or...a Jesus metaphor? Join us for a walk on the water with The Phoenix!

Until then, remember...Revenge is a Dish Best Served In Four Colors

* Yes, I said it. Wanna make something of it?

THE REVENGE OF MARTIN: NASTY, BRUTISH AND RIDING A UNICORN (IRONJAW)

If Atlas Seaboard could possibly be said to have a character that served as the face of the company, it wasn't one of their super-heroes that we'll meet in the future. It was a post-apocalyptic barbarian with an prosthetic metal jaw called Ironjaw.

Ironjaw not only starred in a comic bearing his own name for all four of Atlas' months of existence, he was featured in the sole issue of the anthology title The Barbarians. If it existed beyond the second issue, I'm positive he also would have shown up in the black and white magazine Thrilling Adventure Stories.

And to be honest, I'm not surprised. The four issues of Ironjaw are the best series so far.

The first three of those issues (we'll come to the fourth soon enough) were written by Michael Fleischer (1942-2018), a rather controversial writer at the time. Known primarily for his spaghetti western-esque run on Jonah Hex and a very brief, frequently gruesome series featuring The Spectre in Adventure Comics at the time of Atlas' reign, Fleischer also gained some fame for publishing a brutally lurid novel set in the comic industry called Chasing Hairy and suing Harlan Ellison for...well, praising his work in a typically Ellisonian way that he construed as a stream of insults. His window of fame was brief, lasting only a few years in the mid 70's although he managed to keep writing comics into the 80's. Even during his time in the spotlight, Fleisher was known for being one of the darker, grimmer writers in the industry....so imagine what he felt he could release on the public with a higher pay rate and a promise of minimal editorial interference. Under him, the saga of Ironjaw was one of an absolutely amoral lunkhead who managed to survive in a horrid world through his physical prowess and a bit of luck...and I say that with absolute admiration.

It seemed like Atlas knew it had something special in Ironjaw. The cover of the first issue was done by Neal Adams, and the pencils were handled by Mike Sekowsky in the first issue and the absolutely wonderful Pablo Marcos in the other three. Particularly under Marcos, the pages are the right balance of desolate and lush, giving us a sense of both times of old and times that have gone to pot...which is appropriate given the premise of the series.

You see, Flesicher makes it clear in the first panel of the first issue that this story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. And with the exception of Iron Jaw's steed, which is an actual unicorn, the first three issues are free of magic or monsters. There's even a moment when Ironjaw and his adopted father goes to a mountain cave to worship his 'god' that turns out to be a washing machine tended by a 'priest' who's using obvious sleight-of-hand. Serpent Men are guys in suits, and 'cannibal bears' are normal sized grizzlies urged to maul victims solely because they're covered in honey. It's only until the fourth and last issue, written by Gary Friedrich that we get giant lizard monsters and a sorceress who is responsible for our hero's titular mandible.

That last issue is supposed to reveal Ironjaw's origin, and it paints a character much different from the brusque, brutish and uncouth figure we've come to know and love. In it, we learn that our boy used to be a...troubadour whose good looks and sexy singing voice enchanted the women of the tribe of thieves he belongs to. Angry that their women throw themselves at him, some of the thieves crucify him and tear off his lower jaw before leaving him for dead. But one of those women saves him and leaves him in the care of an aged sorceress--who ends up de-aging to be a total hottie. Said hottie sorceress nurses ol' Ironjaw back to health, giving him his prosthetic jaw, lets him get some revenge and...

Well, that issue ends with Atlas promising a second part of this origin, and that second part never comes. For me, this change in tone from darkly comic to more traditional low fantasy robs Ironjaw of what makes it so compelling. Once you get rid of the post-apocalyptic comedy and add in traditional magic and monsters into the mix, the title becomes, well, just another Conan rip-off, and in 1975, we had some super choice Conan comics being done by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Tom Palmer over at Marvel.

That being said, Ironjaw is the first Atlas comic I've run across I enjoyed unequivocally so far. Even that fourth issue is well-written and has that thoroughly gorgeous Pablo Marcos art to marvel at...and given the total whiplash changes in direction other titles ended up with, that change in direction seems more like a readjustment than a total abandonment of the premise for something entirely different.

(You scoff...but just wait until we get to one of my favorite titles in the line, The Scorpion...)

I would strongly recommend reading Ironjaw. Even if you're not all that enthusiastic about sword and sorcery like I am, there's some great fun in both art and storytelling.

We're not quite done with Michael Fleischer next time. In fact, we're about to take a look at a weird mash-up of science fiction tropes that serves as the first of the Fleischer Cannibal Hero Trilogy. Come with us to the future as seen through the eyes of a man grown from a plant pod with a habit of turning into the man-eating tree known as...Morlock 2001!

Until then, remember...Revenge is a Dish Best Served In Four Colors

THE REVENGE OF MARTIN: LOW KARATE (HANDS OF THE DRAGON)

Just like horror comics became a fad in the early 70's, so were kung-fu and martial arts comics. Bouyed by the runaway popularity of Bruce Lee here in the States just before his death, we had an influx of titles emulating the style of Hong Kong cinema.

There was one problem, though. Almost to a one, these comics were written by white writers who leaned on martial arts cliches. Marvel even revived the deeply racist yellow peril character Fu Manchu as the father of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu and evoked the white savior trope in Iron Fist. DC didn't do much better with Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter and Karate Kid. So it stood to reason that Atlas Seaboard wanted their own representative of kung-fu cinema. And to create their very own martial arts hero, they turned to Ed Fedory and Jim Craig.

I know what you're thinking...Ed who?

Ed Fedory (1949-2018) wrote a smattering of horror stories for Warren and Skywald--which was sort of the bargain basement Warren--before writing this singular story. According to the Grand Comics Database, he worked briefly at DC after Atlas Seaboard went out of business, but the other comic-related resources that manage to list him doesn't mention this. Fedory's big claim to fame was his career as a amateur historian and relic hunter which led him to write a number of books and a regular column for Treasure magazine. He seems to have been one of those people who dabbled in comics rather than a comic writer per se.

Given that he worked for Warren and had that rep as a historian, it makes sense for Jeff Rovin, who was poached by Martin from Warren, to reach out to him to write a martial arts comic. And pairing him with Jim Craig, who goes on to do, among other things, the first issue of What If and a number of later issues of Master of Kung Fu for Marvel Comics, seems like a good idea.

So what went so very, very wrong?

In this singular issue, two infant brothers are exposed to an exploding USAF bomb while being transported to China. One is scarred while the other remains handsome. So it stands to reason that as the brothers are raised by monks, the scarred kid becomes mean and cruel and evil, while the unharmed one becomes virtuous and handsome and apparently irresistible to his...partner? Secretary? Love Interest?...Nicky. When the good brother notices the presence of both his evil brother, now dubbed The Cobra, and a tattooed mastermind named Dr. Nhu in photos of the prime minister of a non-specified Asian country, our hero dons a blue and red costume complete with groovy chain and ventures out into the night of an unspecified city I think is meant to be San Francisco to stop an assassination attempt.

You know, so far all of the Atlas Seaboard titles I've reviewed have been varying degrees of Not Good (save maybe for Demon Hunter), but all of them have had some things for me to point at as positives. But this thing...Ye Gods, is this dire. There's nothing here I can say isn't stinky. The story is rancid, the characterization is non-existent, the art is average at best, the Asian mystic stereotypes are rampant and the pacing is so rocky it feels like riding a bicycle with two flat tires. There's also simple mistakes in the narrative, the most egregious of which is our being told the Dragon got a job as an anchorman but then ordering Nicky to 'work a layout' for some photos she took as if he was...editing a newspapaer? This was a painful book to get through, and I can't see anything to redeem it. I'm sure there will be worse books I'll be reading in this project--wait until we get to the Cannibal Super-Hero Trinity of Michael Fleischer--but Hands of The Dragon establishes a low bar indeed. When the final panel promises 'Dragonkill' next issue, I could not wait fast enough for that to happen.

Except, of course, it didn't. This book came out during the last month of Atlas' four month publication lifespan along with previous covered titles Demon Hunter and Fright and no amount of hyperbole by Larry Leiber was going to make that second issue emerge. And in this case, it was for the better. There is no way I can recommend this.

Next time we finally reach one of the very few titles to reach four issues, and arguably the character that became the face for Atlas Seaboard as a whole. Come with me to a barbaric land that may be more dystopian future than distant past and meet Ironjaw!

Until then, remember...Revenge is a Dish Best Served In Four Colors

THE REVENGE OF MARTIN: UNFORTUNATE SON (FRIGHT)

The loosening of the Comics Code led to a not-quite-so-brief horror comic fad. In the case of Marvel, which was the bane of Martin Goodman's existence during Atlas Seaboard's run, it meant a parade of comics starring versions of classic monsters. So Atlas Seaboard was intent on doing their own family of titles with horrifying monsters.

The most popular of these Marvel titles--a book that was considered a veritable classic back then and is still thought of in high regard--was Tomb of Dracula. So what does Atlas proudly presents as the central for its horror comic Fright?

Ladies and gentlemen...may I present Adam Lucard, The Son of Dracula.

To be fair, this singular issue does have something of a pedigree. The writer is Gary Friedrich, who came straight from Marvel after some disagreements over his co-creation Ghost Rider. Friedrich did know his way around a horror comic, and I have to assume he came here through some combination of the higher rates, creative freedom and a chance to stick it to Marvel. The pencils are by Frank Thorne who doesn't have the biggest body of work, but is a legit legend, having created the visual look of Red Sonja. Why these two professionals chose to do such a baldfaced imitation instead of coming up with something that would bring joy to both of them is beyond me. Maybe the fact that David Anthony Kraft, in the editorial postscript, claims to have a part in its creation has something to do with it.

And don't get me wrong--this is a derivative, uninteresting story. The beginning, however, shows promise. We see Dracula saving a woman from being burnt as a witch and the woman, understandably not wishing to trade in death by fire for death by vampire, makes Drac an offer--if he doesn't kill her, she will bear him a son. When she does give birth, the woman hides the kid away in the Appalachian mountains with very specific instructions for his new caretaker.

Okay, so far, so good. Even though there is a similar 'Dracula Must Spawn' subplot going on over in Tomb of Dracula, the more overtly monstrous Dracula and the implied emphasis more on a son unaware of his heritage being pursued by his horrific patriarch makes it distinct. And then there's the gorgeous Thorne art, which is distinct from the film noirish pencils of Gene Colon over at Tomb while also being incredibly appropriate for the gothic horror of the story. This version of Dracula is somewhere between Hammer Horror and Grindhouse.

But then we jump ahead to the modern day. Adam is now teaching a class at Columbia University in 'The Occult: Fact or Fiction,' as well as being a crush object by hot blonde Debbie Porter. Porter and her buddy break into apartments to loot for tuition, and Adam is fully aware of his vampiric heritage and is insistent on sleeping with an ornate crucifix lest he become just like daddy. Debbie breaks in to seduce Adam, removes the crucifix and...well I think you can figure it all out. Adam becomes a vampire, Debbie becomes his first meal, he also chows down on her partner and wakes up to regret it all.

This second half is hella disappointing because it's so by the numbers. Thorne's art tries to do the heavy lifting--there are some shots of Debbie that are outright gorgeous in a 60's throwback way--but there's a laziness to this part that can't be overcome. It feels unoriginal...and that's partially because it is. And because we can only judge the one issue that came out, there's no way of knowing if Freidrich had something else in mind for the series that would be revealed, we'll never know.

...actually, as we'll see when we examine some of the longer-lived series, we still might not. But that's for a later essay.

Fright is a good set-up with exceptional art dragged down by an awful back end that promises nothing. Back in the day, when Atlas books were commonly found in quarter bins (I recovered loads of them in the 90's by searching there), I'd maybe suggest seeking it out solely for Thorne's linework. Nowadays, when they're netting upwards of $30 on ebay, I just can't.

Next time, we switch from the fad that was 70's horror comics to the fad that was kung-fu comics. Join me, Jim Craig and Ed Fedory (Who?) for the sole issue of Hands of The Dragon!

Until then, remember...Revenge is a Dish Best Served In Four Colors