{"id":316,"date":"2005-04-08T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-08T13:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/2005\/04\/08\/monster-menace-1\/"},"modified":"2005-04-08T13:42:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-08T13:42:00","slug":"monster-menace-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/archives\/316","title":{"rendered":"Monster Menace #1 [1993]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two vintage Kirby stories, plus other neat stuff, in the first issue of this reprint series from a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>The first Kirby story is &#8220;What Lurks on Channel X?&#8221; from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #73 (1961), inked by Dick Ayers, previously covered in another reprint from <a href=\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/archives\/205\">FEAR #5<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Next up is &#8220;I Fought the Molten Man-Thing&#8221;, 5 pages inked by Steve Ditko, from TALES OF SUSPENSE #7 (1960). It features a pilot, Frank Harper, who loses his nerve after an emergency landing. Taking a tropic vacation to recharge, he witnesses a volcano eruption out of which a creature of lava emerges.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/04\/Monster-Menace-1-1993.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-3023\" alt=\"Monster Menace #1 [1993]\" src=\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/04\/Monster-Menace-1-1993-722x1024.jpg\" width=\"448\" height=\"635\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/04\/Monster-Menace-1-1993-722x1024.jpg 722w, https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/04\/Monster-Menace-1-1993-211x300.jpg 211w, https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/04\/Monster-Menace-1-1993-624x884.jpg 624w, https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/04\/Monster-Menace-1-1993.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>He leads the creature to an airfield, where he puts it straight in the path of a wind-tunnel, where the intense cold forces it back and it retreats to the volcano. Apparently he reasoned that there must have been a creature under the lava that needed extreme heat to survive, and would retreat from the cold. This also restores his self-confidence so he can fly again.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bit of a quickie, so nothing is really fleshed out, but the Kirby\/Ditko combination always looks nice. I especially like the third panel of the page above, with Harper leading the Man-Thing away from the village to the air field. Unfortunately this reprint isn&#8217;t from the best source material, so a lot of the finer line-work vanishes. Reportedly Marvel is planning a reprint of the early TALES TO ASTONISH, which would have a lot of nice Kirby and Ditko work, hopefully they&#8217;ll be able to reconstruct them better than this (I know some of the original art from that era still exists, I&#8217;ve seen a lot of them in auctions, but I don&#8217;t know about those specific stories).<\/p>\n<p>Also in this issue, two Ditko solo reprints from the same era, a weird brand-new Ditko pin-up page and a Kyle Baker monster cover.<\/p>\n<p>Published 1993<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two vintage Kirby stories, plus other neat stuff, in the first issue of this reprint series from a decade ago. The first Kirby story is &#8220;What Lurks on Channel X?&#8221; from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #73 (1961), inked by Dick Ayers, previously covered in another reprint from FEAR #5. Next up is &#8220;I Fought the Molten [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genre","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}