What? These weren’t the guys you were expecting? 🙂
Apparently back in the mid/late-’60s, someone at Dell Comics thought it would be a good idea to take some of the classic monsters and re-imagine them as superheroes. There had been a sort of resurgence of interest in the old Universal Monsters, due to their exposure to a new generation on TV. You couple that with a burst of interest around that time in superheroes from a pop/camp perspective (thanks to the Batman TV show), and you can see the reasoning.
I’ve never actually come across one of these books to be able check them out for myself. My awareness of them is very limited, gleaned only from their occasional mentions in places like Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego magazine, or on various blogs or comics sites.
Then why am I drawing these characters? I guess there’s a fun sense of wonkiness to the whole thing that kind of appeals to me. Sort of like watching Plan 9 from Outer Space. I thought it would be a kick to just take a crack at these guys and see what it might wind up looking like.
Happy Halloween!
Awesome drawings! So the Dell Frankenstein’s arms were skin tone and not green? That is a little distracting to me.
The Doc Strange cover is also really nice!
Thanks! Glad you’re liking the stuff.
Yeah, Dell really did give Frankenstein a green head while coloring his arms the standard comics shorthand color for Caucasian skin tone. Why? I don’t know. I just played along with what they did, because it’s kind of part of the fun of doing something like this.
I remember those books. Not so much the stories themselves, but the covers and the general idea. A goofy concept which deservedly did not last long, but on the other hand, one might posit that the Silver Age was momentarily enriched by their presence, since they were something different, while still fitting in with the general goofiness of the period.
It seems like starting around this time period (perhaps emboldened by the success of Marvel’s attempt to do something different), a number of publishers began to experiment. They would try things, throw stuff against the wall, see if anything would stick. I believe it’s how you wound up with DC (for one example) doing books like The Doom Patrol, Metal Men, Bat Lash, Angel and the Ape, The Creeper, etc., etc. Maybe not everything the publishers tried would be successful, but there’s certainly some Silver Age gold to be found in the midst of those offerings if you look.