“Yesterday’s” Comic> Attack of the Mutant Monsters

Monsters, yes. No sign of mutation involved, though.

Attack of the Mutant Monsters

A+ Comics (1991)

reprints stories originally published by Charlton Comics

FEATURING THE WORK OF:

Steve Ditko

Nick Cuti and Geo Wildman

Attack of the Mutant Monsters is a three-story anthology, although the third story is rather short. I’m going to review that one first only to get the text away from the cover image. You’ll see why in a moment.

“The Kilgore Monster” is about an Irish village beset by a giant sea serpent (I’m not sure there are any small ones, really.) One fisherman, Sean Campbell, is determined to destroy it and he does–although his entire crew and the village is wiped out save for his love, Laura. Nick Cuti is credited as the writer, and Geo Wildman as the editor (research suggests his full name is George and the writer is “Nicola”), with no other credits listed. It’s a good little story, but it’s not the one that made you get the comic. It’s the two other stories. What does it feature? Mainly this:

The other two reprints come from Charlton’s version of Gorgo, a British movie in the same vein as Godzilla. In fact, the plot seems like a mix of Godzilla and King Kong. The first story is a direct adaptation of the movie. Two treasure hunters stumble upon a monster neat a Gaelic fishing port. The locals think it’s a legend they call Rega, but the treasure hunters capture the monster and sells it to a circus who names it Gorgo Kegor. Yes, for some reason, Gorgo is renamed Kegor in all but one panel of the second story, making me think they changed the monster’s name for some reason, which is odd because the human characters all have the same names from the movie. Anyway, Kegor turns out to be a baby and when momma comes calling, London gets a rocking.

Steve Ditko is the only credit given to this and the next story. I haven’t seen the movie in years, but what I remember of it seems to be properly adapted in the comic, except that the local boy who tags along (also named Sean) appears to be a bit older than the kid in the film, which makes the dialog, especially the “save your skins” line from the trailer, seem a bit more believable, actually.

The second story is an original tale featuring Kregor being taken prisoner (that kid gets kidnapped more times than your average princess, doesn’t he?) by a third world dictator and domesticated to attack his neighbors. However, the trainer decides to kill him off and seize power for himself using the monster. Unfortunately for him, Kregor eventually breaks free from the trainer’s methods and pretty much finishes off the new dictator’s career. Both are decent enough stories, and the artist on the Gorgo/Kregor stories is by Steve Ditko, so that tells you everything there.

After all that, though, while they’re interesting stories if you can find them, I don’t know if they’re worth hunting down, unless you’re a fan of either Gorgo, old monster comics, or Steve Ditko. I don’t know why A+ Comics changed the monster’s name. You can tell where the touch-ups are and they did miss one “Gorgo” in story #2. The stories themselves, including the non-Gorgo sea serpent story, are rather generic as far as the giant monster genre goes. If you stumble across it, at best it’s worth a read.