Showing posts with label Bill Fraccio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Fraccio. Show all posts

Sunday, November 8, 2026

Start Your Thanksgiving Feasting EARLY with Our Turkey Dinner...

Every Year, the RetroBlogs Run What We Charitably-Call...
...a "Thanksgiving Turkey"!

It's a comic, graphic novel or mini-series that's so unbelievably-bad, we can't believe it was actually published!
We're talking The Worst of the Worst.
Stories and/or art that are so awful, so inane, they're not even shown on the 'Net, just talked-about in embarrassed whispers!
In fact, they're so bad they've likely never been reprinted, and probably never will be!
Who has won the title this year, and which blog has the misfortune of hosting it?
To answer the second part first, the Thanksgiving Turkey will appear on Seduction of the Innocent!!
As for the first part...this year it's a three-way tie!
Preeesenting the three related books that truly define "turkey"...and not in a good way...
The Silver Age Dell Comics Monster SuperHeroes!

Frankenstein

Dracula
WereWolf
Apparently Universal Studios wasn't enthusiastic about Dell's plans and, while they couldn't stop Dell from using the names Dracula and Frankenstein (which were derived from public domain literature) thus continuing the books' numbering from the movie adaptation issues with #2 issues, they made sure the superheroes didn't use actors' likenesses or the unique makeup designs from the movies!
They did put their legal foot down (as it were) when it came to Wolf Man, which the studio had trademarked, so Dell had to start their WereWolf comic from #1, and avoid any of the story or makeup elements created specifically for the movies!
There's more, and you can begin your intellectual indigestion on Monday at Seduction of the Innocent!! with the first chapter of Frankenstein!
Bring your Pepto or bicarbonate of soda...you're gonna need it!

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Reading Room MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLORED WORLDS "Forbidden Formula"

Before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four #13 (1963)...
...there was 
...The Watcher!
We're talking big bald alien in a cloak, part of a legion of cosmic observers keeping an eye on the doings of other races throughout the universe (and, presumably, the multiverse)!
Here's his first (and only, AFAIK) non-Marvel appearance from Charlton's Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #18 (1960)
Unlike Marvel's Watchers, Codin and his fellows deliberately interfere directly with others, albeit surreptitiously.
But, I'm compelled to ask...did this story influence either Stan or Jack several years later when they introduced their Watcher?
Guess we'll never know...

Both the writer and artist of this never-reprinted tale are, ironically, unknown.
(Too bad the Watcher can't tell us...)
The Grand Comics Database speculates the illustrator is Bill Fraccio, a long-time Charlton mainstay who did everything from romance to Westerns to war to sci-fi!
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(featuring the first appearance of Marvel's Watcher)