Werewolf By Night vs Krogg The Lurker From Beyond

One of those comics I always seemed to have two copies of throughout the Bronze Age, no matter how many times I swapped one of them, Werewolf By Night #8 was actually the first issue I ever read of Jack Russell's hirsute alter ego. And I loved it, even though it screams filler.
Behind a magnificent Mike Ploog cover, there's a solid, unshowy Werner Roth art job over a tight Len Wein script. Ok, Roth was no Ploog, but it's perfectly acceptable, if slightly tame, stuff.
Werewolves, meanwhile, have always been my favourite monsters, though I generally had a bit of an issue with the Marvel Werewolf due to the fact I always kinda wished he had a bit more of a personality.
I get that the original idea was I, Werewolf and the narration was fun and all, but I always wanted there to be a bit more to him than grr, hunt, kill.
In fact, there's a Giant-Size Creatures I'll post at some point where Wolfie gets the hots for, and is rejected by, Tigra, and that's much more in line with what I wanted.
But I've always liked this one, warts and all, and the villain more than makes up for the Werewolf's lack of dialogue. Geez, is Krogg The Lurker From Beyond verbose. He could out talk The Leader or Doc Doom, this guy. Plus he's a rabbit, which is cool.
Fun to note also the scene where Krogg eats the souls of the two luckless hunters, inbetween panels. There's the Comics Code in action.

Gunhawk

Here's an interesting one that probably went unnoticed at the time, and has long since been forgotten, but is worth looking at for a couple of reasons.
Gunhawk ran intermittently in the pages of Western Gunfighters, and seemed to be a Marvelized version of Jonah Hex. He had the facial scar, the bad reputation, and the driving need to help people against his better judgement.
But the funny thing is, he debuted in August 1970, a full year and a half before Jonah's first appearance, yet seems such a blatant rip-off, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the other way round.
Also, Gunhawk seems to have been created by Jerry Siegel, which makes him automatically interesting. There's a really sad story that, while DC were refusing to even acknowledge the existence of Siegel & Shuster as the creators of Superman, Jerry, practically penniless, desperately tried to get work at Marvel.
He presented a couple of scripts to Archie Goodwin, but they were so awful, there was no way he could accept them. However Archie, being the nicest man in comics, told Siegel they were great, paid him for them, and then quietly went away and rewrote them. Is Gunhawk one of those stories?
Finally, there's the art. Who knew that if you get Sal Buscema to ink Werner Roth, you get a reasonable facsimile of Herb Trimpe?? That's just weird.

Lois Lane & Rose And The Thorn - Together!

I'm sure everyone here has read, or at least is aware of, the most ( in ) famous issue of Lois Lane. The one that always appears in 'What the @*!' lists. Y'know, this one? If not, search the net, loads of sites have uploaded it over the years. Go ahead, read it, I'll wait.

Well, didja know there was a sequel? And that it guest starred Lois' back-up strip heroine Rose And The Thorn? Yep, our Lois is no fairweather friend to the black community, and in this issue, teams up again with Dave Stevens, former black militant and the guy who had his life turned around by Ms. Lane, convincing him that not all uptown chicks are bigots, by the simple expedient of giving him a blood transfusion from her own whitebread bod. Way to go, sister.
As I've said before, I read Lois Lane for Rose And The Thorn, but actually, the headliner's stories of this period are kind of fun too. It's easy to mock this kind of thing, but I'm no subscriber to the 'guilty pleasures' theory. If you like something, you like it regardless of what anyone else thinks about it, and the worst you can say about I Am Curious ( Black ) and The Foe Of 100 Faces is that they're a bit clumsy and cheesy. They're certainly well-intentioned, and in that far-ago time of comic book relevancy, that's enough for me.
Plus you get Superman ( with Murphy Anderson redrawn head ) practically begging The Thorn to join the JLA. ' Thorn--Don't vanish! You battle crime and injustice--just like The Justice League! Let me sponsor you for membership! Plus you're ridiculously hot! '
You're fooling no one, Supes.
And by the way, just what was it with Vince Colletta and stripes? In every single story he ever inked, there's somebody in a striped tie ( go ahead, check out all those old Thor's if you don't believe me ) but here he has Black Brother Dave, his hot mama Tina AND evil boss Morgan Edge all striping it up like maniacs. Was Vince, like, Little Dot's arch nemesis or something?