There's a weird little pleasure that hits whenever someone mashes up sci-fi, horror, and fantasy elements. Vampires? Cool. But Planet of the Vampires? Sign me up. I like both Red Sonja and Vampirella, but Red Sonja and Vampirella Meet Betty and Veronica? Yes, please.

​Eerie magazine was a fun genre playground like that for nearly 20 years in the second half of the twentieth century. From 1996 to 1983, it pumped out extremely brief stories in body horror, the macabre, dystopian futures, Gothic romance, sword & sorcery, and planetary adventure. In contrast to its sister magazine Creepy, which told one-and-done stories throughout, Eerie told serialized sagas in which characters returned from time to time for more installments.

Some of these characters have become cult classics among fans of Silver and Bronze Age comic fans: Hunter, Darklon the Mystic, the Rook. Thankfully, the Warren Publishing comics- Eerie, Creepy, and Vampirella- have been collected into accessible "Archive" editions in recent decades, so they're not that hard to read. But there is not a fiendish fandom for Eerie the way that there is for many Big Two comic characters.  As such, every little, unexpected horror nugget you discover in Eerie feels like you've stumbled onto something great, like finding your new favorite album in a dusty crate at the back of the record shop.

I was in Loveland, Colorado a few weekends ago visiting Grand Slam Sports Cards and Comics (despite their name privileging the cards, they've actually got a pretty good comic selection), and I was digging through the mags to find any back issues of Savage Sword of Conan. They had a few, but what really caught my eye was a damaged copy of Eerie #80 from 1977. That Ken Kelly cover was unmistakable. A greenish-yellow vampire with bat wings, a Voltar helmet, a Conan loincloth, a Frank-Frazetta-nearly-nude victim, and a dramatic background of vivid red? You know I bought it.

There are few taglines that absurd, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

What I discovered in the issue's cover story was "Tombspawn: Pieces of Hate," which was actually part of an ongoing story. I hopped on Comic Vine to see if I could figure out in which issue the first part appeared, and it was a few issues prior, in #73 (Side note: I feel like it would be kind of frustrating to read Eerie at the time. If you dug the first "Tombspawn" story in issue #73, it would have been like ten months before you saw the next mere eight-page entry. These things are short!). I couldn't believe it for a second- I've had Eerie #73 hanging in a frame on my wall for a decade now. Back in 2015, I was playing in a punk band called the Ghoulies, and as a send-up to my all-time favorite band The Mummies and their Runnin' on Empty Vol. 2 comp, I bought a horror comic for us to mug at, and it became the back cover to an album we were putting out. I'm sure I read the comic like ten years ago, but hadn't opened it since. It's been displayed along with an issue of Creepy and Vampirella in my office ever since. 

But let's get back to "Tombspawn." Gerry Boudreau wrote the series, while artist Gonzalo Mayo did the pencils and inks.

​The world of "Tombspawn" is an interesting mash-up, like its genres. Set in 1992, it is the distant future of our recent past, taking place around fifteen years on from when it released. The world has bombed itself into oblivion, returning its technology and lifestyle back to something comparable to the stone age. A post-apocalyptic wasteland of irradiated monsters is left where the United States used to be. Craggy rock faces and rotting stone ruins dot the landscape. High above, unbeknownst to any characters, a space war cartel watches the remnants of humanity, responsible for keeping the world dependent on war.

Maybe it's just me, but Gonzalo Mayo's landscape design conjured sickly greens and unnatural purples in my mind to fill in his grayscale landscape. In this world, humanity is limping by.

Stevie, of course, decides to chance it with the vampire girl of his dreams and chooses to press the button labeled "REVIVE," placed right next to the better option of "DESTRUCT." I'm not kidding.

The vampire woman is immediately revived, and as vampire stories often go, Stevie is thrown into a spiritual and physical ecstasy while his body is drained of blood by the vamp in question. She, in turn, flies all the way up into space where she is spotted by the alien space cartel. The space cartel nukes her out of existence in an instant. This short ten-pager ends with Stevie, now a vampire, completely overtaken by the idea of vampire superiority, deciding to turn Biff as well. We conclude on a freeze-frame as he leaps forward with one more reference to horror movies and stale popcorn. 

The Howardesque sword & sorcery themes are apparent from the first few pages. Society is destined to destroy itself while staying focused on superficial comforts like beer and circuses. We have destroyed all our progress and don't even seem to be capable of processing it- we just grab bows and arrows and feel nostalgic for easier times. Americans have been reduced to a state of barbarism, which they're adjusting to with varying degrees of success.

Readers liked the story, with the letters column "Dear Cousin Eerie" in the following issue featuring several positive reactions of "Vampire 1992." One mixed review was mostly whinging at the Eerie editorial staff because he felt like they didn't know whether they wanted to be a horror mag or an adventure mag. He felt "Tombspawn" and another story leaned too hard into adventure.

The second chapter, contained in issue #80, was the "Pieces of Hate" story with the Ken Kelly cover I was initially drawn to. After six panels of recap, we pick up with Stevie and Biff on a campaign of vampire supremacy, convinced that they need to turn as many remaining humans into blood-suckers as they can. These vampires grow not only fangs and an uncontrollable vampire-chauvinist mindset, but a set of heavy metal bat wings bursting out of their shoulder blades. I find it spine-chilling on an existential level when genre fiction has characters retain their fundamental personality while horrifyingly changing one key aspect (in this case, they're pretty much the same characters, just ravenous for their vampire cause now) without comment.

Issue #80 is very much a middle chapter, and two pages shorter than its predecessor for a slim 8-page run, but ends by setting up a conflict between the space cartel and the vampires. Initially mistaking the cartel UFO occupants for a mystical enemy called "Russians," the two groups decide on a "Most Dangerous Game" type of contest to see who gets the US. It's the classic mashup like Yankees v. Red Sox, Taylor Swift v. Katy Perry, and vampires v. space aliens.

What the second issue lacks in plot it makes up for in philosophical discussion. Author Gerry Boudreau goes in deeper on the themes of the first issue, mostly unchanged since the 30s but somewhat updated​ for 1977. Stevie narrates, likening the wave of vampire infections to a rekindling of the pioneer spirit, but realizing immediately the self-destructive path its set them on. 

Letter-writers in "Dear Cousin Eerie" were now raving about "Tombspawn." They loved its lack of clearly moral characters, the Gonzalo Mayo art, and painted Ken Kelly cover. "This is going to be an excellent series!" wrote Jack Marriot of Toledo, Ohio. 

For those following "Tombspawn," the wait was significantly shorter for the third issue than it was for the second. Chapter three, titled "The Game is Afoot," appeared in issue #82 just two months later and Gonzalo Mayo is joined this time by legendary artist Carmine Infantino.

The recap is contained to one page, spiraling in on itself while you turn the magazine to view it from all sides. At the page's center, our vampires Stevie and Biff shake hands with the Space CIA agents against whom they've decided to compete. The vampire everymen then fight an atomic pterodactyl, and I need to pause for a moment because I'm afraid I may never get to write a sentence like that ever again.

The aliens try to contend with the barbarian vampires' physical superiority by using holographic tricks and mind-control guns. Between bouts, Stevie once again waxes philosophical while turning a sort of Cro-Magnon man into a monstrous neanderthal bloodsucker ("cavampireman?" "australopithenosferatu?").

Humanity is still quite literally sifting through the fallout of its own bad choices, and it can't help but plot its next downfall. Stevie and Biff, our two himbo Joe Schmo vampires, are able to ask the question of what their wanton consumption might bring, but are never focused long enough to think it through. They can't investigate, can't plan. Instead, they're once again consumed by bloodlust and you turn the page.

In the final pages of the third issue, Biff is bitten in half, seemingly in one devastating chomp, while the friends navigate what they think is another illusion from the space aliens. Stevie vows to avenge his fallen friend and that space cartel will not win. 

But that was the last we saw of the barbarian vampires in space.

In "Dear Cousin Eerie," one reader proposed an "all-Tombspawn" issue for the future of the mag. After one letter-writer expressed a desire to see "Tombspawn" continue in the very next issue, Eerie editorial responded that the series would return, but it would be a while since Gonzalo Mayo was working on a "book-length VAMPIRELLA epic" in the meantime. Since the Eerie team frequently responded to concerns about the return of well-liked series (around this time they spend a column inch or two assuring readers that their time-travel trilogy will indeed conclude, it just got delayed a bit) that they could have communicated a cancellation of "Tombspawn," but it was quietly dropped. I searched through the next two-dozen issues' worth of letters pages and couldn't find another mention of it.​

​We never got a fourth chapter of "Tombspawn," so we'll never know who won the game or what happened to Stevie. Gerry Boudreau teamed with Gonzalo Mayo for more horror adventures in Eerie #90, but this time told an 8-page story called "Carrion" rather than returning to their previous creation (reader reaction to "Carrion" was not pleasant). I'm sad to see that it never concluded; I could've gone for ten more chapters of "Tombspawn" just to see what other misadventures a couple of former couch potato vampires could've gotten into. To see the logical conclusion of the vampire epidemic would've been fun, too. I can't help but speculate whether it would've ended all life on Earth, like Marvel Zombies, or if the aliens would have launched even more nukes. I guess I'll never know.

I really enjoyed Gerry Boudreau's world-building and characterization in this series. It's not often you get to see a barbarian with gigantic bat wings and a death's head emblem on his loincloth make Elton John references. The themes evoke Howard, Lovecraft, and Burroughs while also transplanting the darkness of Depression-era fantasy into the consumerist 70s. But I think my favorite thing here is Gonzalo Mayo's art. He conjures Frank Frazetta using just black and white. But he also mixes it with what feels like a recreation of Marlon Brando's Jor-El in Superman, and old (even then!) science fiction TV like The Twilight Zone. He uses stark contrast between black and white to create a dark, salacious, damned planet that I want to spend more time on. Character designs just don't look like that anymore.

For the rest of the late 70s, Eerie was dominated by The Rook, its time-travelling Bill Dubay character who pretty much became the magazine's flagship series for a while. The popular "Hunter" series returned for "Hunter III." Eventually, creative teams found the grind too hard to keep up with and Eerie began publishing issues with fewer stories in each issue. There was always a lot of talent behind the mag, and always a wild variation in quality between the stories. 

I'm really glad I happened to crate-dig my way to Eerie #80. Who knows what other incredible nuggets are in the archives of Warren Publishing? I know there are a few send-ups to 70s anthology horror out there like Vampiress Carmilla, but Eerie will always feel special. Is there more sword & sorcery goodness out there to find? Let me know if you've got a good one you want to share.

That man's name?... Voltar!

I cannot tell you how pleased I've been to recently discover Voltar, a comic book sword-and-sorcery hero created by frequent Savage Sword of Conan artist and inker Alfredo Alcala. I'd never even heard of the character until Reddit user and frequent r/ConantheBarbarian poster u/Man_Out_Of_Time_2 purchased some Voltar art. Voltar's pretty fantastic.

If you picture John Buscema's Conan and then slap a winged Thor helmet on him, you've got Voltar. That description might lead you to believe that Voltar's just a ripoff of those two characters, but Voltar debuted in 1963, a full seven years before Conan would make his comic book debut by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith and only one year after Thor first appeared in Journey into Mystery. Clearly inspired by Robert E. Howard's Conan and a couple of other evident sources (Lord of the Rings, Norse mythology, Bible stories), Voltar is not so much a barbarian but rather a military officer in the army of the fictional kingdom of Elysium. ​

Alfredo Alcala was one of the most prominent Filipino artists in the 60s and 70s who eventually made his way over to the States. In search of cheap creative labor, Marvel did a lot of hiring artists, writers, and inkers from the Philippines in those years, many of whom went on to produce classic work, including Alcala, who'd been a fan of American comics for decades. When the Philippines was invaded by Japan in 1941, Alcala was a teenager. He buried his collection of American comics under the floorboards of his house to protect them and he went to work using his art skills against the Axis powers. He'd ride his bike by military encampments and Japanese gun positions and then draw them from memory, handing the artwork off to the American forces in the area.

Those first Voltar comics in the early 1960s are damn hard to track down, though. You can see a few images online, but I'm not able to find any complete stories or even anything for purchase- not that I'm confident I'd be able to read them even if I could get my hands on them- are they written in Filipino or English (or even Tagalog)? In fact, I'm not even sure whether they're in comic strip or comic book form. Perhaps my research skills fail me (There's an omnibus of some of his work, but that one's in Portuguese!). If you know any you want to share... comments are down below!

I was, however, able to read what seem to be the only two Voltar stories to be published in America. The first is a copy of Magic Carpet #1 from 1977. This issue doesn't seem to be anywhere online, so I sprang for a copy of it on Ebay. There doesn't seem to be too much demand out there, so prices are reasonable. It also features a backup story titled "Buccaneers on the Skull Planet," which may be the coolest title in the history of fiction. The other Voltar story is a seven-issue serialized story for the Warren Publishing magazine The Rook, issues #2 through 9 published in 1979 through 1981. Both of these stories are simply titled "Voltar" within, but they're very different stories. Because so little about these stories is out there, I thought I might recap them a little more than I normally would.

This 25ish-page story was written by Manuel Auad, obviously with pencils and inks by Alcala. As Alcala is listed as the sole creator of Voltar but doesn't have a story credit or anything like that, it's hard to tell if he did any direction of the writing.

An evil wizard named Kan is attacking the Tower of Zimar, the denizens of which send a desperate plea to Voltar via carrier falcon. Being a good guy, Voltar springs into action. He is warned by a blind, old man that what is sees is not always the truth, which Voltar more or less ignores at first blush. On his way to the tower, Voltar comes across several trials that are more or less previewed on the cover of the issue- he meets a tricky satyr, an aggressive centaur, an illusion-casting sorceress, and a dragon monster. When he arrives at Zimar, he's actually able to dispatch Kan pretty easily since Kan's magic is almost too powerful and seems to have deluded him, but Voltar, remembering the words of the old man, is able to just kind of stand there and then deliver one killing blow. Like early Conan the Barbarian comics, Voltar's sword more explodes off his enemies than cuts them.

Most of these encounters with fantastical enemies are told pretty episodically- Voltar meets a character, they fight for a few panels, and by the time you turn the page, he's victorious and moving onto the next one. I'm not against a picaresque.

The character and creature designs are a lot of fun here, with creepy monsters and imaginative illusions that are cast before Voltar during his journey. None of the prose storytelling is outright incredible, but we're all here for the art, not necessarily the words on the page.

While the title pages only bill this story as Voltar once again, I've seen some sources call this one Voltar: Comes the Endtime or simply Voltar: Endtime, so that's how I've been thinking of this arc to differentiate it from Magic Carpet. This is easily the better of the two stories, this time written by Bill DuBay under the pen name "Will Richardson" as the backup stories in seven issues of the time-traveling Rook's magazine. It helps that having seven issues of storytelling gives the story a lot more space to breathe, but the central conceit of the story is a lot stronger, too. 

Chronologically, Endtime takes place much later than Magic Carpet's tale, with Voltar being an older warrior on the edge of retirement (though you'd never know it based on how Alcala draws him- he still looks like the world's most jacked 25 year-old). The goblin armies of Gog and Magog are marching on Elysium, and the country is looking for a messiah. Is Voltar that messiah, or will they only tease us with that idea before making a last-minute switch? I'll never tell.

​Voltar once again goes on a journey here to save his people, with most issues including a one-off villain for Voltar to defeat with either his brains or his brawn before moving closer to Gog and Magog. This story ratchets up the continuity and worldbuilding. Voltar has evidently been away from Elysium for a long time, which allowed the goblin armies to invade. We meet Antiochus, king of Elysium and Voltar's father, who also tells us of Voltar's sister and mother. Voltar implies that he might actually be immortal, despite the story telling us he's getting old. What I didn't tell you earlier is that Magic Carpet #1 didn't even make any mention of Elysium, leaving the story in an unnamed setting.

These seven issues are so much fun.

There's also a constant drumbeat through Comes the Endtime where characters or the narration bemoan the stench of war, violence, and destruction. It's always presented as a plague or a rot that disgustingly invades your nose, and I'm left wondering how much input Alcala had on this story. It would make sense for a Filipino who saw his land invaded by the Japanese during WWII to see the effects of war as a plague. Or maybe it was the California kid who wasn't even born until after the war... I don't know! 

If you like sword and sorcery, or 70s comics, or just classic adventure stories, Voltar is a total blast. He feels very much like a cousin of Conan while maintaining some of his own unique traits story beats, like his obnoxious winged helmet and referring to himself in the third person.

But let's talk the art. We're all here for the art. It's incredible.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the scant few pages of Voltar that exist are some of the most beautiful Bronze Age comic art in existence. Alcala's ornately-designed pages are completely lush with detail, giving life to every inch of the page. In Endtime, every few pages is a bold double-barreled splash page. It helps the stories feel like more than the straightforward adventure tales that they are, giving them a mythical quality. I could gush about Alcala's work all day. His character designs are excellent, and it's interesting to see that Voltar looks (without his helmet, at least) exactly how Conan will be drawn by legions of artists in the coming decades, but this Voltar design got there first.

Voltar and the other fighting characters ripple with muscle that is always posed with dynamic, interesting movement. The bad guys have angular, pointy helmets or jutting goblin jaws that betray their allegiances. The landscapes are fantastical: high castles jut out of severe rock faces, beams of light shoot through impenetrable cloud masses. It makes me wish that Alcala had more chances to do the pencils and the inks on Savage Sword, because he's a master of his craft.

Now, Voltar's not really much of a barbarian; he doesn't seem to be from outside civilization, he's not a berzerking rage monster. Calling him "Voltar the Barbarian" feels like a bit of a misnomer, but it's an epithet that people seem to attach to him frequently, so here we are. Like Thongor of Lemuria, he's one of Conan's descendants. They've all got two-syllable names and a country or "the Barbarian" on the end.

If you want to check out Voltar for yourself, you can pick up a copy of Magic Carpet #1 on Ebay for a fairly reasonable price, but I'd suggest googling the Rook issues, because they're all online for free if you know which sites to go to, if you know what I mean. They're worth the risk.

There's this thing I like to tell my students when I'm teaching writing: stealing is good. Sometimes students get a little silly with this- last year, some students tried to make "Stealing is good" their class yearbook quote, but most of the time it goes over well.

Here's what I mean by that. Plagiarism is bad, but stealing is good. When you're just starting out, "stealing" from our influences is how you develop your own creative skills. I'm sure if you've ever tried your hand at creative writing, you looked back at your draft later and realized you were just ripping off your favorite authors, even if you weren't conscious of it. When I started writing songs with my first band when I was 17, I was completely and totally just ripping off Green Day, Blink-182, and the Misfits, even though I wasn't necessarily trying to. Heck, this blog basically started with me aping Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" concept but with Conan stories. 

But I think this is a very important part of someone's development as a writer or artist or musician. When you see a turn of phrase you like from your favorite author, steal it. When you are stuck while writing a song, ask yourself, "How would [musician I really admire] write this?" That's how you become better. Ultimately, you get to a point where you've sort of developed your own voice and you're chasing your own ideas, and you don't have to steal anymore, you just have your influences that you're standing on.

Now having read The Wizard of Lemuria, it makes a lot of sense that Carter was easily able to uproot his story "Black Moonlight" and turn it into the Conan tale "The Gem in the Tower" so easily.

I've been digging into Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series recently. In spring I read A Princess of Mars and I'm currently working my way through the second title, The Gods of Mars. It's almost impressive how much The Wizard of Lemuria reads like a John Carter story that Lin Carter shoehorned Conan into. Heck, there are a couple of lines in The Gods of Mars that seem lifted wholesale into Thongor's. John Carter at one point narrates in a moment of desperation, "To think, with me, is to act." Likewise, "For Thongor, to conceive of a plan was to attempt it." I just happened to read those two lines on the same exact day and got deja vu. Lin Carter writes a hell of a lot like Burroughs- a lot more than he writes like Robert E. Howard, and that's something that separates his work a little more from Conan.