(People loved horror in the 1970s) + (Marvel desperately wanted to get into the magazine business ($x10))= Another magazine with random Marvel vampire stories surrounded by filler, stupid photos and fanzine-type material…
I’m good with making horror. I was good with making karate-based magazines. But this one can’t figure out if it’s Mad Magazine, a comic book, or a horror mag.
Because Tomb of Dracula already had a spin-off magazine, Dracula Lives, this one would focus on…
And like Marvel’s other magazines, the format took it outside the comic book code so they could show “penetration” (of teeth) and have women in much more explicit poses.
In the story, Morbius is searching for his girlfriend, Martine, and has to hide in plain sight. You know what that means…
He wears a trenchcoat! Albeit a stinky one from a Goodwill box. I like that he hates the stench. If he needs to hide in plain sight, why doesn’t he just turn into…
He doesn’t find her, and soon after gets to be the star of Fear, where the search continues.
Steve Gerber is one of my favorite writers, but this story–and the ones that follow–are pretty generic.
As noted above, the issue is filled out with a lot of, frankly, garbage, alongside a few new monster/vampire stories and reprints of Golden Age horror comics. There’s a Werewolf story by Bill Everett, but it’s not about Jack Russell, so I haven’t tagged it as canon. It’s actually a decent comic, though. The only canon tale is Morbius.