Arrgh! #3

 It's getting rare for me to find a Marvel or DC Comic book that I have never heard of. But it still happens from time to time. Case in point, Arrgh! From 1974-75. I just happened upon this issue in a dollar box not even a month ago. I thought this would make a great Halloween read and for the most part, I was right.

      This short-lived series devoted to horror with a comedic twist, only lasted a handful of issues but it's brief run is actually steeped in controversy. At about the exact same time, DC published a series called Plop! readers debated often in the letters page as to which book came first.

    Though Plop! hit newsstands a couple of months before Arrgh!, most comic book experts agree that Arrgh! came first. Why even series creator Roy Thomas writes in the letters section of this book to a fan explaining how he came up with this series in 1972 or ‘73, but production delays put Arrgh!'s release date after the first issue of Plop!

      This sort of thing happens all the time in comic books. Some fans think this sort of coincidence is a conspiracy to attract readership. I think it has to do with morphic fields.

     Sorry, I'm going to go off topic for a moment.

     The theory behind the morphic field had to do with how cultures in one side of the world were able to develop a technology at the same time another does without any way of communicating. The field is some sort of energy that affects how cells develop. I think it also affects creativity and can explain why Marvel and DC keeps coming up with the same ideas. (Either that or there's some serious industrial espionage going on.)

   Now back to the book…

   There were 3 stories in this issue. The first scenario is the classic monster falls in love with a beautiful woman. Here, Bigfoot develops a crush on a country gal whose hubby isn't to happy to be the third leg of a love triangle.

   Our next escapade involved a small time hood who gets turned into a giant rat. Every time he's hit by a bolt of lightning, the rodent grows in size until eventually he's the Big Cheese of the Big Apple.

   Last is an adventure involving Russian spies and the mummy of King Tut. This tale is supposed to be a reprint from the 1950s. But I don't know if this was part of the joke or not as no information as to which comic this was originally published is mentioned anywhere. With apologies made to certain Russian leaders by the editor, I’m inclined to think it’s a parody of EC’s horror books from the early 50s.

    Arrgh! was surely different than most horror titles from the 70s. For one thing, everything is tongue-in-cheek. DC was clearly better at horror, even funny horror than Marvel with titles like House of Mystery and Weird War Tales that featured great little yarns by Sergio Aragones and Don Martin. Horror was one of Marvel's big failures during this time period.

    Even with a couple of notable exceptions like Ghost Rider, Dracula's Tomb, and Man-Thing, the majority of Marvel horror comics didn’t last more than a dozen issues. Arrgh! didn’t survive past issue #5. I guess Marvelites just were ready for Abbott and Costello type horror.

  Worth Consuming.

  Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.