Monster of the Day

No surprise here. This was as poorly executed as their Dracula book,  but at least Frankenstein fought a mad scientist who had a huge rampaging ape and giant spider and whatnot. The level of aliases was embarrassing, though. Aside from this, Dracula took the civilian identity of Al U.  Card. Get it?

In the mid-60s Dell decided to jump on the superhero bandwagon. Their gimmick was to base heroes on the classic Universal monsters. There was this and a Frankenstein book, and a Werewolf title (Wolf Man being copyrighted), but the latter had no real monster trappings. He was a spy with a fancy bodysuit and…

No more commies as of tomorrow. To be fair, as giant monsters went, nobody killed more people than Communism.

Hard to believe this never became as popular as Spider-Man.

If this guy looks a bit familiar, it's because it's our old friend Repticilicus. Charlton printed a few issues of an official Reptilicus comic (and also a Konga comic), then lost the rights and simply renamed the monster. The series only ran another six issues, though.

Man, if you don't like that, then we have nothing to talk about.

  Hmm, this guy looks vaguely familiar, for some reason.

As I noted, monsters were (comparatively) scant on the ground in the first season, but there where some. This one is pretty obvious and fairly mundane, admittedly. If I remember correctly,the episode inevitably featured an obsessed Ahab-analogue, but maybe I'm just assuming that to be the case.

The Seaview, a Day in the Life. The show certainly knew what kids wanted. It was far, far dumber show than Star Trek, but one that had a Gorn like every week.

I always loved that this guy's cardigan grew with him. Irwin Allen's shows epitomized the era that saw the networks transition black & white to color. Action shows that straddled the line, like Wild Wild West, often went from outre to downright bonkers once they went to color. Allen's shows Lost in Space and…