Post #666 - Disney Princess & Prince Edition

Welcome to the 13th hour (locally) as we celebrate the 666th post with a quick look at Disney's under-celebrated Princess & Prince. Brother and sister - the children of Satan, the King of Hell - Damien Helstrom and Santana - Prince & Princess of Hell. When Disney bought Marvel, they ascended to Disney Princess & Prince status (just like Thor and Loki).

Though the Son Of Satan was teased the month before, both really first appeared in July of 1973 (Sell dates, not cover dates), Satana in Vampire Tales #2 and Damien in Ghost Rider #2. Damien also got his first cover that month, taking over Ghost Rider's old slot in Marvel Spotlight -

Satana didn't get her own first cover until over a year later, but finally she got a painted cover for one of Marvel's b&w newsstand magazines - Haunt Of Horror #5, where she had been appearing since, once again, issue #2.

Not that the Son Of Satan didn't get some nice covers of his own along the way...

 

...but though far fewer, Satana did covers better, either with old masters like Gil Kane (as above)...

...or with those painted covers...

Of course, like most brothers and sisters, they didn't always get along...

Both of them were known to get together with the other heroes in the Marvel universe, too...

More recently, the Marvel universe has gone 'dark' and they have seen a resurgence in the 90s and this century. So the Disney Princess & Prince are still active players, even Avengers(!), ready for their toy line. Not surprisingly, we're not going there. We're just looking at some older appearances here.

Also not surprisingly, there was fun imagery in the Son Of Satan's comics at times...

...and long before Spider-Man, Damien did...

Personally, i was always more fond of Satana's appearances in the old b&w mags...

Here's the original model sheet from Esteban Maroto that accompanied the article on her creation appearing in Vampire Tales #3 - Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Satana* (*But were too awestruck to ask)...

Let's close out for today with Satana's original short introduction from Vampire Tales #2 -

art by various for the titles shown (what?! it's the devil's post. Did you expect actual credits?)

Star Trek Vs.

We'll resume out series on the Fly Girls after the weekend. In the meantime...

With the never-ending battles between Star Trek and Star Wars fans, folks tend to forget that there used to be another battle for SciFi Top Dog. It kinda-sorta went like this...

pages by Flash Kiernan and Buck Tallarico for Quasimodo's Monster Magazine v2 #8 (1976)

Doc Wirtham's Greatest Hit

Hey! Remember Oisif Egaux?

NOTE: As intended by the creators, pretty much every image from this post

has been moved to our back room for adult content following the site restructuring.

The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

Odds are, most folks don't. But most likely never saw his work...



It's definitely distinctively different than most...

Okay - how about Clifford Neal? Is that name any more familiar?

Back when the underground comix market had dropped off to almost nothing, and before the independent market opened up, Cliff Neal stepped up to provide a unique open forum comic. Starting in 1976, he published a confusing number of issues (let's call it 10) of Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories -

As you might have already deduced, that's Oisif Egeaux's work on the cover of #2 (and #1, but i like #2 better). The first issue of Dr. Wirtham's C&S was completely the work of Egaux (pronounced Ego, appropriately enough in that case). This might not be too surprising, given that Clifford Neal and Oisif Egeaux are the same person.

Having produced the first issue solo, he ran this editorial at the opening of the first issue:

And how did that call for folks to join him work out?
Well - take a look at the Table Of Contents from the following issue:

I'd say it worked out Not Damned Bad. And i think that's the earliest work i've seen from Will Muegniot.

By a few issues later...

I used this one so you could see the Editorial Statement that ran with it.
Other contributors over the run of the book included Gene Day, Peter Bagge, Terry Beatty, and Joe Zabel. It's an oddly unique title, and we'll come back and look at some of their work another day. Today, let's look more at Cliff/Oisif's art and stories from the book.

all art by Oisif Egaux/Clifford Neal for Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories (1976-1987)

Jim Jams (not to be confused with Jim Jam Jr.)

Before we get back to Joe Guy, let us pause to look at our author, Jim Stenstrum.
Jim is an artist as well as a writer, and that's where you'd find much of his work these days. While you might not know his writing from his old comics, odds are you've seen some of his artwork. His character designs have graced such shows as the animated Superman from the 90s to the Scooby-Doo videos of recent years. His artwork appears in many other toons, ranging from Johnny Quest to Fish Police to Freakazoid! to Tom & Jerry.

I know him best from his old stories he did for Warren, and sometimes they stuck with me in the oddest ways. Back in the days before the WWWeb, hunting and collecting music was a much more difficult and time consuming endeavor. I maintained a constant watch list of things for which i was hunting, and the printed copy had a header reading Hard John's Nuclear Hit Parade. That title came from Jim Stenstrum.

Back in the 70s when my first son was gestating, Jim had a short series of stories in Eerie running under that title, starring Hard John Apple, illustrated by Richard Corben. This was right about the time that Den started running in Heavy Metal magazine, bringing a bit more attention to the work he was doing at Warren.

A snippet-

...some time later...

Where Joe Guy played a light-hearted but dark parody of the comics genre, Hard John gave Stenstrum license to turn that twisted lens on modern society of the 60s & 70s. As usual when Jim is spotted driving, i was standing by the road with my thumb out, eager to go along for the ride. Even the short jaunts were usually interesting, like his work with Neal Adams to produce Thrillkill - a story about a public mass shooter written way back in 1975.

In addition to his work in animation, Jim also has a new series of novels featuring Rex Havoc (just two so far - Asskickers Of The Fantastic and Horror Island.)
I've yet to read either, but Rex Havoc & The Asskickers Of The Fantastic was the title of a story he did for Warren's 1984 back in 1978, just to be confusing. I only discovered the existence of these books while writing this piece, but i quite enjoyed the original 10 page comic.
If you go hunting through old issues of Eerie, Creepy and 1984 looking for his work, you should know that Jim also wrote for them under the name of Alabaster Redzone.

Anyway - Yes, we'll come back to Hard John after we wrap up on Joe Guy. In the meantime, here's another taste of Jim Stenstrum's slightly skewed sensibilities as he and John Severin bring us the Super-Abnormal Phenomena Survival Kit -

For younger readers left wondering about that last line, Irwin Allen (who brought us shows like Time Tunnel, Lost In Space and Land Of The Giants) had recently sparked the Disaster Movie genre and was making a new name for himself while altering the Hollywood landscape, influencing movies to this day. The Towering Inferno and Earthquake were huge box office back when this was written.

pages from Creepy #79 and Eerie #83 (1976, 1977)