This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post comes a little earlier than usual. This one examines various stories in the Thing’s team-up series titled Marvel Two-in-One after two adventures in Marvel Feature.
MARVEL FEATURE Vol 1 #11 (September 1973)
Title: Cry: Monster
Villains: The Leader and Kurrgo
Synopsis: The Thing and the Hulk get pitted against each other as part of a conflict between the Hulk’s archenemy the Leader (lower right) and the Fantastic Four’s old foe Kurrgo, the former dictator of Planet X. The Leader chose his greatest foe the Hulk as his champion in this fight, while Kurrgo chose the Thing, a member of his team of enemies the Fantastic Four.
The villain whose champion wins the battle will win the prize – abducting BOTH monsters to serve them in their plans. In the Leader’s case, to take over the Earth, and in Kurrgo’s case, to conquer and once again subjugate his people.
While the battle goes on in a ghost town in the American west, Kurrgo cheats by secretly amping up the Thing’s strength via periodic cosmic energy transmissions. This causes the Leader to declare Kurrgo the loser by default. Meanwhile, the Hulk and the Thing battle Kurrgo’s high-tech robot. Continue reading
THE SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURES OF BARON MUENCHHAUSEN (1915-1917) – Written by the iconic Hugo Gernsback in the years before he launched his own publication, these sci-fi tales presented the 1700s Baron being alive and having wild adventures. (The cover spelling does not match the one Gernsback used.)
IRON SMOKE BOURBON – Hunker down with some Iron Smoke Bourbon to help you and yours celebrate. 
LA ROSE DE FER (1973) – This film’s title was translated into English as The Iron Rose even though The Rose of Iron would be a more literal translation, but that’s just a tiny nitpick. La Rose de Fer was the fifth movie from Jean Rollin, whose horror productions can range from brilliant to So Bad They’re Good level. 
There IS a body count in The Iron Rose, but there is certainly no blood and gore. As our story begins, a beautiful woman (Francoise Pascal) lounges on the beach and regards an iron rose that has washed in with the tide. After tossing it aside she goes about her business, and before long is on a bicycling date with a young man (Hugues Quester). 
KNOCKING OFF NUMBER THREE – In the NAIA the number 6 team in the nation – the BETHEL (TN) WILDCATS – traveled to face the 3rd ranked LINDSEY WILSON COLLEGE BLUE RAIDERS. A 7-7 tie at Halftime turned into a 21-13 Wildcats lead to end the 3rd Quarter. In the 4th Bethel U. held on for a 21-16 Upset of the Blue Raiders. 
NUMBER SEVEN TAKES A FALL – Down in NCAA Division Three the 19th ranked SUSQUEHANNA UNIVERSITY RIVER HAWKS played host to the number 7 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLUE JAYS. The River Hawks put the Blue Jays on Upset Alert at the midpoint with a 14-12 edge. Each team scored 12 points in the 2nd Half for a 26-24 Susquehanna victory. 
DOWN GOES NUMBER NINE – Up in NCAA Division 2 the storied HILLSDALE COLLEGE CHARGERS welcomed the number 9 ASHLAND UNIVERSITY EAGLES. After a 7-7 1st Quarter tie the Chargers led 14-10 at the Half and then 22-20 in the 3rd Quarter before winning out by a final score of 36-20. 
WEIRD WAR TALES Vol 1 #93 (November 1980) 
*** Army Sergeant Vincent Velcro, who was given a choice of 30 years of hard labor for crippling a superior officer or being a human guinea pig for chemical injections derived from bat blood. The injections turned him into a science-spawned vampire. 
MALDOROR 
THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS aka El Charro de las Calaveras (1965) – Halloween is fast approaching, so here is another seasonal post from Balladeer’s Blog. Regular readers know how much I enjoy the campy, so-bad-they’re-good horror films from Mexico. I reviewed several of them 
El Charro arrives in a nearly deserted town with a dilapidated cemetery in which assorted skulls lie around in piles. The masked hero encounters the first of three monsters he will fight in this flick – a ridiculous looking werewolf with a headpiece so large it makes him look like the mascot of a sports team. 
With less than a week to go in Halloween Month, Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the controversial new icon of horror cinema: Art the Clown from the Terrifier series. If you’re tired of the endless reboots and retcons involving Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, then check out the assorted films of Damien Leone’s depraved slasher. 
Leone first presented Art the Clown in his film short The 9th Circle in 2008. That film depicted the deranged, silent and sinister figure, played by Mike Giannelli, striking on Halloween night on behalf of a Satanic Cult. 
