Old Comics Wednesday: Marvel Premiere #28

Even when saddled with a pretty half-assed story [by Bill Mantlo] and a far lesser artist to ink his pencils [Steve Gan], Frank Robbins was still the man. Here are my favorite panels from “There’s a Mountain On Sunset Boulevard!” the first [until recently, only] appearance of the Legion of Monsters, a bad idea whose time had clearly come.

I clipped these panels last July, so here’s what I remember of the actual plot: The monsters come together by coincidence and freak each other out, “Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay” Lou Costello-style, because they’re fucking monsters and only the headliner of a monster comic can encounter another monster and not be completely freaked out. — See: Any contemporary issue of Tomb Of Dracula, Ghost Rider, Fear, Man-Thing, or Werewolf by Night. — but this is a team book, so everyone but Man-Thing has at least one “Ugh, where is that smell coming from? It stinks so– OH MY GAWD WHAT IS THAT?!?!?!” moment.

The monsters fight.

Then a gold-skinned, sorta-Christy figure called The Starseed appears to them and says he’ll cure all of Earth’s problems, including the monsters’ monsterousness. But Morbius and Werewolf-By-Night skipped breakfast so, instead of eating each other, they want a chunk of Gold-Plated Alien Jesus ass to eat right now.

The monsters fight.

Gold-Plated Jesus is scared, so of course he’s accidentally burned to death by Man-Thing, which I think speaks to what a crummy messiah he probably would have been.

The monsters feel bad, then walk away from each other — you can’t really say “break up” because that implies they were actually once a team. The End. Next Month in Marvel Premiere: The Liberty Legion, for both of you True Believers who wished The Invaders featured a lot more of Bucky calling the shots.