"WHY DID KIRBY THINK HE COULD WRITE?"

 I saw this question on Classic Horror Film Board, so here's my answer.

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That's a complicated question, and a lot of different people will give you different answers. I've done as much research as I can into the subject, but obviously I'm speaking of matters I didn't witness.

From his first independent ventures in comics, like a POPEYE imitation comic strip ("Socko the Sea Dog"), I think Kirby only "wrote" in the sense that he would map out the pencils and then add dialogue later. I'd be surprised if ever in his long career he actually wrote a script for anyone else. He hooked up with fellow artist Joe Simon within a few years of getting into comic  books, at least partly because Simon had a better head for business and for seeking out editorial contacts. When Simon and Kirby hit it big with Captain America (to be sure, an independent creation of Simon's), the two artists became flush enough to open their own studio. I would guess that Simon "wrote" in the same way as Kirby but the studio did accept scripts by other hands; in one interview, Kirby admitted that some other guy originated the Red Skull during that period. The only comment I've seen from Simon was the offhand remark that during their association he "would never let Kirby write," but he didn't elaborate. Most of the dialogue from the Simon-Kirby titles, both at Timely and at DC, is jazzy and efficient, but it's so much unlike the weird dialogue Kirby produced in the seventies that I tend to think the two artists had ghosts come in and smooth things out. 

Kirby and Simon collaborated on the farcical FIGHTING AMERICAN-- whose dialogue, TO ME, sounds a lot like the wacky scripting of the solo Kirby stuff later-- and then the two parted ways in the mid fifties. Then we see a few features written purely by Kirby, not quite as free-wheeling, but still tending to a lot of gosh-wow exclamations. He had a success with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN in 1957 but he was teamed with writer Dave Wood. Was that at the insistence of his editors at DC, who wanted some quality control? I would think so, even though on the whole the CHALLENGERS stories were driven by Kirby's profligate imagination. I theorize that Wood just kind of went along with whatever wild gimmicks Kirby turned out. This is an important point because in Kirby's mind, he was really "writing" the whole feature and Wood was just adding dialogue that would suit DC'S editors.

Kirby got on the outs with DC's management and Atlas Comics, soon to become Marvel circa 1960, became Kirby's main account. Editor Stan Lee didn't immediately start turning out masterpieces with Kirby, and it seems like to Lee Kirby was just another jobbing artist, even though the two of them had crossed paths at Timely, when Lee was just an office boy. Then DC started its superhero revival, so Lee naturally turned to one of the artists best known for that genre, and thus FANTASTIC FOUR was born. There are a few surviving documents indicating that Lee did not at this time turn over sole creative effort to Kirby, and this would be logical, given that Kirby hadn't exactly had a ton of hits over the past ten years.  Once books like FF and THOR became successful, slowly the working relationship became more fluid, and it appears that Lee let Kirby "have his head" more often. For all that, though, it's obvious to me that Kirby did some things-- such as crossovers-- only because Editor Lee demanded them.

Over time, Kirby came to resent the fact that Lee got the writers' salary, when he Kirby was the one inventing most of the new heroes and villains. Personally I don't think he appreciated Lee's contribution to the dramatic heft of the new wave of superheroes, and I think he came to believe he had done it all and Lee just filled in the dialogue as had Dave Wood. In the eighties COMICS JOURNAL editor Gary Groth certainly encouraged Kirby in this belief, during which time Kirby dismissed the idea that Lee had ever contributed to the stories. He got both a writer's and penciler's salary when he went to DC, and so his later work at Marvel, Pacific and elsewhere was usually though not always on the same terms. 

And that's my view as to why Kirby believed himself both the writer and creator of everything he did after breaking up with Simon, except for a few isolated special projects.

THE READING RHEUM: THE GOLDEN SCORPION (1918)

 

In my review of Rohmer's 1931 novel DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU, I quoted a Wikipedia article about the fourteen-year gap between that novel and 1917's HAND OF FU MANCHU. However, this was a slight oversimplification, for two novels appeared after HAND that indirectly invoked the devil-doctor. This may mean that in the late nineteen-teens Rohmer had not yet decided to abandon the Fu-series. One of the two novels, which I may review in future, is 1913's QUEST FOR THE SACRED SLIPPER, though the allusion to the doctor is circumstantial. However, 1918's GOLDEN SCORPION makes much more than an allusion, though Fu's appearance is still in the nature of a "guest-starring role,"  of the type I addressed in this crossover-essay.

GOLDEN SCORPION takes its title from a scorpion-shaped token by which members of a criminal organization recognize one another, though the proximate reason for using the icon is that the group's mastermind is named "The Scorpion." GOLDEN is also the second of four prose novels whose main hero is the French detective Gaston Max, following directly on the heels of 1915's THE YELLOW CLAW. The two novels make an interesting contrast in that in the 1915 work, the villain is named "Mister King" and he's never seen except for his hand, which is the "yellow claw" of the title, for all that a few later comic books used the phrase for the names of super-villains. The Scorpion may be one of the few Rohmer characters who resembles a *costumed* super-villain in that he's always seen in a concealing robe and cowl, and he like Fu Manchu-- implicitly a mentor-- commands an array of super-science weapons. Further, though "Mister King" escapes at the end of CLAW and apparently never resurfaces, Gaston Max hypothesizes that both King and the Scorpion work for a great Oriental organization, albeit in different capacities. Strangely, Rohmer does not drop the name of the Si-Fan, which had just appeared in HAND, but calls the overall organization "the Sublime Order."

GOLDEN opens in a manner familiar to Rohmer readers, with an ordinary British man, medical doctor Keppel Stuart, finding his ordinary life invaded by Oriental intrigue. Significantly, because Stuart is a bachelor at age 32, Rohmer mentions that Stuart got left at the altar, a detail inserted to reassure anyone who might harbor ill suspicions of a thirty-something bachelor. Unbeknownst to the doctor, he was surreptitiously visited by famous disguise-artist/criminologist Gaston Max, who left an item of interest in Stuart's care. This causes the Scorpion's organization to target Stuart by having a comely Eurasian beauty, Miska by name, spy on the doctor by becoming his patient. As is usually the case, Oriental intrigue also breed Oriental romance, as both Miska and Stuart fall for each other. This eventually breeds retaliation in the form of a disintegrator ray that blasts into Stuart's house and almost zaps the doctor's head off. (The ray is linked to a missing scientist, Henrik Eriksen, and both the name and the creation show up much later in 1939's DRUMS OF FU MANCHU, suggesting that Rohmer had thoughts of introducing such super-science early in the series but didn't end up doing so.)

Gaston Max contacts Stuart and the local cops and relates a long story about how he Max first began investigating the Scorpion's misdeeds. causing him to encounter both Miska and her assigned guardian Chunda Lal. Max mentions that even though the Hindu is not that large, he's able to subdue a larger opponent using "jiu-jitsu," which seems to be one of the few times Rohmer ever mentioned any form of Asian martial art. During Max's consultations with the police, he manages to talk about the Si-Fan in a roundabout way, even though he's familiar with the cases investigated by "Inspector Weymouth," whose history with Fu Manchu dated back to the first novel. 

Some time after this conference, Miska contacts Stuart and warns him to keep clear of The Scorpion's menace. By this act, she shows that, like Karameneh before her, her passion liberates her from her slave-like status under an Eastern master. It's during Miska's backstory that she details not only her first encounter with the cowled Scorpion, but also with the Scorpion's superior in the Order. Miska only beholds Fu Manchu-- denoted by both his emerald-green eyes and his avowed status as "the greatest scientist in the world"-- because Fu stops by the Scorpion's HQ to inspect Miska as a new acquisition for the Order's usages. (Ironically, though Fu approves of the Scorpion's choice of Miska, the devil-doctor has no more luck with his female pawns than does the Scorpion; both end up losing said pawns to the charms of sturdy Brit males.)

Stuart of course keeps pursuing the villain, and ends up working with Max and the cops in investigating an opium-house. This is the novel's dullest part, though the section concludes with an interesting scene: Stuart is taken prisoner by a Chinese thug who strangles the doctor unconscious with the thug's long queue of hair (!) Stuart wakes up a captive in the Scorpion's lab, and like his mentor, the villain's lab combines such visceral "Asian" horrors (a pit full of killer ants) and hyper-advanced marvels (a special chair rigged to disintegrate anyone who sits in it with the Eriksen ray). While waiting for the preparation of a serum to fling Stuart into catalepsy, the mastermind informs the physician that he will soon be transported to China, where he will be brainwashed to serve the Order. Stuart asserts that he will see the villain hanged, and the urbane evildoer calls the gallows "cruel and barbaric," contrasting that Western method of execution with such a "poetic" concept as his "Throne of the Gods." This remark is in keeping with the methods of the Si-Fan, which use exotic and clever gimmicks to carry out their crimes.

I won't disclose the exciting climax, though anyone reading this will probably intuit that Miska will end up choosing to betray her master in favor of her new amour. A further connection with the Fu-series is seen when Chunda Lal attempts to kill the Scorpion to save Miska, and the mastermind resorts to a 1918 version of a Jedi mind-trick, mentally dominating the Hindu with the arcane powers gained from the Tibetan arts of "Rache Churan." When Max and the police come to the rescue, the Scorpion ends both his life and all resemblance to Fu Manchu, taking his own life through the agency of the disintegrator-chair. He unlike Fu Manchu never returns. Still, even without my having read the last of the Max novels, I imagine the cowled super-criminal rates as the foremost opponent of the French detective. 

ADDENDUM: I should also mention that at the beginning of the chapter "The Red Circle," the author, speaking through Gaston Max, attempts to distance himself and his characters from what one of the cop-characters calls 'that defunct bogey, "the Yellow Peril.''' Max responds to this jibe:

'No, I speak of no ridiculous "Yellow Peril," my friends. John Chinaman, as I have known him, is the whitest man breathing...'

Despite the incorrect nature of the phraseology for today's audience, the speaker's intent is to place the average "yellow man" on the same level of the average "white man," at least in terms of being a law-abiding citizen, unlike the Asian criminals that Max and his allies are discussing. 

Even in those early days, had Rohmer received enough negative response about Fu Manchu to make him disassociate himself from the Yellow Peril? And did any such negativity play a role in Rohmer's decision to table Fu Manchu for the next decade, until Hollywood showed some interest in a revival? Only the foremost Rohmer experts may have a clue...

MYTHCOMICS: "LET IT COME DOWN" (LOEG: CENTURY #3, 2012)

 

Although my title references only the third part of the Moore/O'Neill CENTURY trilogy-- one of the last few offerings in the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN property-- I'm actually going to discuss all three parts, albeit briefly for Parts One and Two.

The title "Century" references the time-span of the three books, in which the three central characters attempt to head off a magical apocalypse. All three had appeared in earlier LOEG comics, with Mina Murray (of DRACULA fame) and Allan Quatermain having been charter League members, while Orlando, an amalgam of the medieval Roland and the immortal Virginia Woolf character, appeared slightly later. For most of the story Mina and Allan have become as immortal as Orlando, but their longevity doesn't seem to be of that much help. They spend most of their time chasing vague clues around London and getting railed at by their Blazing World boss Prospero, while Moore and O'Neill devote copious space to side-plots.

Part 1, dated "1910," is the least interesting of the chapters, largely because of Moore's peculiar conceit of subordinating his pop-fiction characters-- some semi-original, like the daughter of Captain Nemo-- to a long and pointless homage to Bertolt Brecht's THREEPENNY OPERA. The overbearing didacticism of Moore's script reduces this segment to the status of a null-myth, though Moore and O'Neill work in a ton of "occult investigator" types to set up the main menace. The most consequential homage is Oliver Haddo, who in Somerset Maugham's 1908 book THE MAGICIAN, creates supernatural entities called homunculi. Moore melds this Maugham concept with a "moonchild", a concept from real occultist Aleister Crowley and with the Antichrist of the Bible.

Part 2, dated 1969, takes place after both BLACK DOSSIER and a 1964 text-story I chose to bypass. Mina, Allan and Orlando return to London to pick up the trail of Haddo once more, but again there are a bunch of side-plots about gangsters and drug-addled musicians that don't come to much. In contrast to the three immortals, Haddo has managed to survive by continually transferring his consciousness into younger bodies. Mina foils Haddo's plan to transfer his mind into the body of a rich rock-star, but he still manages to take refuge in someone else's form, while Mina accidentally gets packed off to an insane asylum. Her disappearance estranges Allan and Orlando and they break up, with no intervention whatever from their mystic master. Moore and O'Neill don't succeed in emulating any aspect of the 1960s but the emphasis on psychedelia, though without getting into the reasons psychedelia was significant to the culture. Still, there's enough good psychological interaction between the principals that I'd term this a "near-myth."

With CENTURY #3, dated 2009, Moore and O'Neill finally get down to brass tacks. Prospero conveniently waits until the Antichrist Apocalypse is almost nigh to belabor Orlando for having lapsed in his duty. During that time, immortal Mina has remained in an asylum for forty years, and the bereft Allan has become hooked on drugs again. But thanks to Prospero's tardy bitching, Orlando decides to call upon British intelligence to find Mina. This plotline works because it follows logically from a subplot from BLACK DOSSIER, as Orlando encounters what is essentially a doppelganger for TV's Emma Peel. (In fact, all of the female characters from the two AVENGERS serials make appearances in CENTURY #3.)

Thanks to MI-6's information, Orlando finds and liberates Mina Murray. Unable to elicit further help from Allan the addict, the two heroines try to track down the Antichrist, who was born over twenty years ago and cultivated in what sounds like the other-world of Harry Potter-- all under the manipulation of the continually reincarnated Oliver Haddo. Finally Orlando and Mina confront the monstrous Moonchild, seeking to delay the demented creature until Prospero can send help, and Allan comes to their aid at the eleventh hour, only to meet his doom. The Moonchild, by the way, has some brilliant lines: seeing the two mortals challenging him, he complains, "I thought you'd at least be Jesus or an angel or somebody." 

Though the Moonchild/Antichrist isn't a pop-fiction character, Moore sagely chooses just such an icon to vanquish the abomination: a never-named female who is in essence a cosmic version of Mary Poppins. (She destroys the Moonchild by reducing him to a chalk outline.) Orlando and Mina are left to mourn Allan, though their ally "Not-Emma-Peel" helps them return the adventurer's body to his adopted land of Africa. I assume that this denouement is an indirect tribute to the second Quatermain book by Rider Haggard, in which the hero dies (despite getting about six "prequel novels" afterward). Oddly, the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN film contrived a similar death for Quatermain, but I think it axiomatic that Moore, who has expressed antipathy for all of the film adaptations of his work, probably did not mean to homage this movie.

Of the four or five remaining LEAGUE works, I've read one and found it below par. I may force myself to read the rest in due time, but I'd almost like to imagine that the series ended with "Let It Come Down," despite all the damned Brecht references.

UNTIMELY RUMINATIONS #2

Here's another blast from the past, taken from AMAZING HEROES #51 (1984), when Steve Gerber was hyping VOID INDIGO:

Gerber believes that contemporary examples of popular culture that attempt to recreate myths do not truly do so. "One of the qualities of myth is that it looks at both the light and dark sides of humanity, and the escapist mentality is incapable, really, of looking at the dark side...There's a certain ugliness in every one of us that we all have to face and confront at some time or another"-- and that, Gerber says, in myth we recognize and condemn in ourselves, therefore achieving a catharsis.

To be sure, the first sentence of this quote makes clear that Gerber isn't trying to define myth overall, unlike some of the myth-theorists I've critiqued on this blog. But he's also putting forth an overly rationalized notion of a supposed facet of myth, because it jibes with the particular work he's expousing. I wouldn't say that his observation is completely untrue. But the very mention of "catharsis" in this context makes it sound as if Gerber has a didactic view of myth-- which is ironic given that many of Gerber's works meet my definition of literary myths, precisely because they don't have an overly didactic organization.

I can see, though, why an intelligent creator like Gerber would become seduced by the Didactic Side of the Force, for as I noted elsewhere, the tropes of the didactic and mythopoeic potentialities not infrequently intermingle with one another:

Didactic discourse and mythopoeic discourse are not as intimately entwined as those of the kinetic and dramatic potentialities. The discourses can appear independently of one another, or they may intertwine within a narrative to support one another, or they may conflict with one another so as to confuse the narrative. 

Given that in the primary art of fiction there can be so many permutations in the interaction of these two potentialities, it's not surprising that they also become confounded within the secondary art of criticism.

NEAR-MYTHS: THE ETERNALS (2006-07)

 

Prior to the original run of Jack Kirby's ETERNALS, there were a couple of attempts to revive the franchise. I read one and not the other, but have the impression that neither one particularly grabbed the Marvel audience. If anything, the EARTH-X appearance of the Celestials, the "space gods" of the series, might be the most mythic use of any element from Kirby's concept. Neither the eight Eternals who comprised Kirby's ensemble nor their devilish foes the Deviants really caught on in the Marvel universe, despite Roy Thomas having brought them into contact with Thor and other Marvel-cosmos deities.

Neil Gaiman, no stranger to mythic motifs himself, took his shot at finding a new approach to the wonky premise. Gaiman decides to attempt re-introducing the main characters by having them all subjected to the diaspora of memory loss, so that for many years they've become integrated with humans. Their more numerous foes the Deviants are still out there, and some of them are attempting to knock off the Eternals before they regroup. For once the Celestials, except for a particular one, are offstage during the conflict.

Ikaris, who was most often the focal hero during Kirby's run, is one of the first Eternals to begin reviving the others in his quasi-family. The battles between Eternals and Deviants are punctuated by appearances of a handful of Avengers, who don't have much to do except to spoof the "Civil War" tropes of the time. 

Gaiman has to take a lot of time both introducing the Eternals' current identities and re-establishing the quasi-mythic personas they held in quantity, and the result that the plot drags. Some of the characters are moderately interesting, but the size of the ensemble mitigates against developing any of them. Possibly Gaiman could have done more with the heroes and their opponents had he come back for an encore.

Yet toward the end, Gaiman and artist John Romita Jr do summon some of that old Kirby awe as Eternals and Avengers bear witness to the resurrection of the so-called "Dreaming Celestial," whom Kirby introduced toward the end of the original series. The Celestial's revival ends without a proper resolution, though I imagine some other Marvel raconteur followed up on it.

Since I haven't read all of the ETERNALS reboots that followed Kirby, I'm not sure whether or not Gaiman introduced the most daring wrinkle: that the Celestials actually bred the Deviants as fodder. This might be deemed a reversal of the H.G. Wells trope of the Eloi and the Morlocks from his TIME MACHINE, for instead of the gross humanoids eating their fairer-looking kindred, we have the handsome humans being kept on a pedestal by their creators, while the ugly ones are the Celestials' livestock. But the idea isn't developed, and I will be surprised if anyone else has done so since 2006.

MYTHCOMICS: "CYCLONE AT THE CENTER OF A MADMAN'S CROWN" (MASTER OF KUNG FU #33-35, 1975)

 [NOTE: The summary title I chose for this three-part MOKF adventure is taken from the title of issue #34, because I felt it summed up the psychological theme of the narrative.)

When composing my reviews for serial comic books, I never attempt to read the series as I originally did when I followed it in real time (if I was able to do so). In this case, however, I had decided to attempt re-reading the whole MOKF series from beginning to end. I wasn't sure that I would post on the individual comics when I started the project, and now I know that most of the issues I've reread so far don't merit much "cyber-ink." 

I noted that the first issue of the series provided a potentially great opposition between two racial myths: that of Mandarin China as represented by Fu Manchu, and that of the cinema-manufactured image of the Asian martial artist, exemplified by the devil-doctor's son Shang-Chi. Unfortunately, most of the later stories with Fu Manchu, whether by Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, or anyone else, proved unimaginative and underwhelming. Paul Gulacy began working on the title frequently during this early era, but his vivid pencils did not make an impact on the series until MOKF #29 (May 1975), when Gulacy and Moench decided to transform the series into something like a James Bond comic book as drawn by sixties luminary Jim Steranko. (The tableau above is a typical example of Gulacy emulating a Steranko visual trope.) Though Fu Manchu would continue to make periodic appearances, Fu's old antagonist Nayland Smith became both a regular support-character and a symbolic father-figure to Shang-Chi. Additionally, the rather flat character of Black Jack Tarr was given a more dynamic personality, while Moench and Gulacy introduced a younger agent, Clive Reston, who would be able to engage with the main hero on a more personal basis. "Cyclone" also introduces Leiko Wu, the first regular female support-character, and Shang-Chi's first full-fledged romantic pairing. (The youth had enjoyed a first brush with love in an earlier story, but the woman practically had "Red Shirt" written on her forehead.)

In this quest for modernization, the creators had to discard the main template for Shang-Chi's character: that of Kwai Chang Caine from the 1972-75 KUNG FU teleseries. For many issues writers had kept the hero as a sort of "earth angel" who was too good to be true. But Leiko, the former lover of Reston, functioned in part to bring the angel back to his earthly origins.

Issue #33 starts off with a literal bang, as a killer robot attempts to assassinate Reston, only to be stymied by Shang-Chi. Nayland Smith then briefs his agents about similar assassinations of MI-6 operatives. The similar killing-methods, which have the capriciousness of "a child's game," prompts Smith to attribute the murders to a never-identified master killer known only as Mordillo. Further, Mordillo's long game is to take control of "Project Ultraviolet," an English invention that makes it possible to channel the power of the sun into a selective super-weapon. (To himself, Shang-Chi is deeply repelled by using the sun, "the source of all life," for purposes of murder.) An additional complication is that one MI-6 man, Simon Bretnor (whose surname even sounds like "Britain"), has simply gone missing, and Bretnor had a checkered past in that he seduced Leiko away from Reston some months before Bretnor's disappearance. However, Moench doesn't wait long before dropping the other shoe, revealing that Bretnor is the assassin Mordillo, and that he's captured Leiko, believing that she is the key to his possessing command of the solar death weapon (which the villain renames "the Solar-Chute").

Now, though Part One of this narrative might've been seen as something out of Ian Fleming, the next two parts veer into the loony-tunes terrain of the British spy-series THE AVENGERS. Mordillo, despite being a master of spycraft, has an obsession with children's toys, and the "madman's crown" of the title is an island surrounded by mountain peaks that resemble the encircling spikes of a crown.

 Reston and Shang-Chi mount a two-man mission (albeit one later joined by Tarr) to rescue Leiko and take down Mordillo, and when they first land on the island, they meet assorted constructs-- a cartoonish train, mechanical soldiers, and Mordillo's main confidante, a robotic yes-man named Brynocki. Given that Moench and Gulacy labored to center MOKF in a slightly more naturalistic cosmos than one found in most Marvel comic books, Mordillo's recapitulations of childhood images is clearly meant to suggest the depths of madness into which he's sunk-- even if, as Shang-Chi opines, "all thoughts are madness to him who is not the thinker."

Mordillo displays his credentials as a super-villain by trapping Shang and Reston and forcing them to watch as Leiko gets suffocated in a giant hourglass. However, it's at this propitious point that Black Jack Tarr makes his appearance by masquerading as one of the villain's mechanical men-- and the rebellion of one of his creations offends him more than physical peril ("You can't attack me-- not me!") He then escapes, and calls upon a resource more affiliated with the adult side of his personality: his lover Pavane, who had appeared in MOKF #29-31, and who was forced to tolerate his romance with Leiko-- much as Reston will soon be forced to tolerate a budding relationship between Leiko and Shang-Chi.

Pavane does not cross the path of Shang, though she does get a brief catfight with Leiko, while Shang gets the honor of pursuing Mordillo and Brynocki as the Solar-Chute ascends to begin its reign (rain) of solar death. Mordillo isn't able to score any physical points on the Master of Kung Fu, but he does seed some doubts about what Nayland Smith and MI-6 were going to do with the solar-chute, particularly against enemies of Chinese ethnicity. And when Mordillo claims that of spycraft that "it's all a game," this gives a new intonation to his taking refuge into a childhood-themed madness, and the idea reinforces Shang's early assertion that madness is relative to the thoughts of the individual thinker.

Shang-Chi of course destroys the solar-chute so that no one can use it again, while Mordillo's insanity precipitates his death. However, upon reuniting with his allies, Shang is embraced by Leiko, and it's obvious that she's become fascinated with him, and he with her. This is the crux of the new, non-angelic vision of the martial hero, as he himself meditates, "I should refuse her embrace-- But it is not within me to do so-- Rather, it is within me... to return her embrace, to concede that I am not perfect, that I am only a man-- capable of hurting another man." And this love affair, though often rocky, lasted the entire length of the MOKF original run-- though it was never quite as "strange" as the love between the late Mordillo and his faithful cartoon-creation.

NULL-MYTHS: "GHOST RIDER VS. FRANKENSTEIN" (GHOST RIDER #10, 1952)

Given my enthusiasm for crossovers, I allowed myself to get my hopes up for this one. Yet even as I started the story, I was pretty sure that this Golden Age GHOST RIDER story was going to resort to the old "guy pretending to be a monster" schtick, and sure enough, that's all it was. But this encounter certainly had a lot more mythic potential than, say, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER.

One amusing detail: the theory about how the monster escaped death references not the Mary Shelley monster, but the 1931 Universal FRANKENSTEIN film, wherein the creature is almost slain in a burning windmill. I guess the story's writer didn't want to bring in any of the other monster-slayings in the Universal Frank-series-- least of all, the one that really ended the series, where the lumbering horror perishes thanks in part to the efforts of Abbott and Costello.

The full story can be read at THE HORRORS OF IT ALL.