Vampirella 5

Missing the last two days, I'll be covering two issues today, here's the second one. This is another early issue of Vampirella, with a Frank Frazetta cover featuring a couple confronted by a dinosaur. The frontis for this issue is "Vampi's Feary Tales: The Satanic Sisterhood of Stonehenge!" by Tom Sutton.

First story is "The Craft of A Cat's Eye" by Tony Williamsune (miscredited to John Fantucchio) and story by Don Glut. This story features a man who goes to live with his aunt with plans to murder her once he is put in her will. Once that happens, he does kill her, only for her cats to kill him. Not much of an ending here.

Second is the cover story, "Scaly Death" by Billy Graham (art) and Don Glut (story). This story features a couple that is on the run from dinosaurs in 1 million BC. Eventually they find a cave which they go into... which ends up being a dinosaur's mouth! A hilarious ending that saves what is otherwise not that great a story.

"An Axe to Grind" by Jeff Jones (story & art) is third. It features a saleswoman who tries to sell a lightning rod to a man only for him to chase after her with an axe. In the end, he is struck by lightning. Another pretty good ending here and fairly good art by Jones.

Fourth is "Avenged by Aurora" by Tom Sutton (art) and Bill Parente (story). A wizard takes in a boy being attacked by the Duke. The boy falls in love with a girl, whom the Duke demands marry him. The boy tries to escape with her, but she is killed and he is executed. A lion appears and kills the duke, and the boy appears in the sky along with the girl as a constellation.

Next is "Ghoul Girl" by John Fantucchio (art, credited properly this time) and Don Glut (story). In Germany, a girl is falsely accused of being a ghoul and is chased by a mob. She is protected by a man visiting from the US, but eventually both are taken by the mob and are burned alive by the mob, who are ghouls and don't want competition.

"Escape Route" is sixth, by Mike Royer (art) and T. Casey Brennan. A man whose wife died in a fire appears to him when a restaurant he is in catches ablaze. Rather than save himself, the man stays in the fire and dies. Royer's art is quite poor, as is Brennan's story, not that I expected much from him.

The issue concludes with "Luna" by Jack Sparling (art) and Don Glut (story). Astronauts take rock samples from the moon and bring them back to Earth. When exposed to water, one of the pebbles turns into a woman, who tells the geologists that the people on the moon turned themselves into tiny rocks which would regenerate when exposed to water. However, monsters on the moon were also similarly turned into rocks and appear when some water is spilt on the remaining samples.

A rather poor issue, particularly from a story standpoint.