[MarkWarner]

Last week's book fared well with the group. But hold your horses for this week's choice! To compound the spate of suggestions being sent to me, yet another even more mysterious member of the reading group has sent me this message regarding a Reptisaurus issue:

"Something decidedly different than the normal fare, a godzilla knockoff battling UFO invaders.  Despite the numbering, this is the first issue in the series, it picks up where the 2 issue Reptilicus series (which was based on a movie, till Charlton lost the license) leaves off."

Reptisaurus v2 #3 can be found at: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=12606, and the story we are concentrating on is the first one, well it is most the comic, so better start reading early!

Edit: Whoops apologies, I cocked up the link but all good now!

[SuperScrounge]

Reptisaurus the Terrible - Why look, they're warning us. ;-) Okay, it wasn't terrible. Harold? An alien named Harold? Aliens from Jupiter have conquered wolrds in other galaxies, but only now do they try to conquer Earth??? Somehow I don't think the writer was trying his best with the story. There were moments of cleverness, like the military guy coughing and mentioning germs, but sadly not enough to raise this story above a "Meh, okay" rating.

Ugas the Unicorn - Okay, but nothing special.

The Monster in the Loch - A bit biased on the believers' side.

[Drahken]

So much silliness.....

"The germs will do the job for us.. ah... ah... ACHOO!"

"The only thing that's harmed the creature so far is ramming our ships into it, so lets land our ships and attack on foot."

"They're small, they're easy." *very next panel* "Eek, run for the ships!" I'm surprised he didn't jump on a chair and hold up his skirt at that point....

[narfstar]

Yep so bad I liked it. OK you have this really goofy kids story with these words all in one panel "there were sibilant screams..Jovian imprecations and sudden infectous terror." Hey I guess if the kids made it that far they may be willing to break out the dictionary.

[Captain Audio]

"TZLXPN!" (untranslatable) .
Run through modernday Babelfish = Zut Alors- Sacrebleau- Bloody 'ell- Od's Bodkin- Got in Himmel

[crashryan]

The mind boggles.

This book is all about Joe Gill. The script is completely insane. I came up with three possible explanations:

(1) Bits like "Jupos" named Harold and John saying silly things like "excellent! Dandy!" and "Wait 'til the boys back home see this" suggest that Gill was having a lark and deliberately wrote the story for laughs.

(2) Gill is legendary for having fuelled himself with alcohol before (and while) churning out hundreds of pages of script. He may have written this while drunk out of his mind and the editor didn't care as long as he got his 20 pages.

(3) Though the consummate hack, even Gill may have had his limits. He might have held Reptisaurus in such contempt that he wrote this story to demonstrate how stupid it was.

There are clues that this character didn't fly too high on Gill's radar. Here he has Reptisaurus hanging with his mate who has hatched a batch of babies. Next issue a single Reptisaurus meets his mate for the first time. I suppose the stories might have accidentally been run out of order. In later issues Reptisaurus is single again. Then he shows up with a new mate, a sexy Pterodactyl, with whom he produces another crop of eggs. Divorced and remarried? Whatever.

Of course Reptisaurus started out as an adaptation of the C-grade giant monster movie Reptilicus. There were two issues of Reptilicus before Charlton changed him into something for which they wouldn't have to pay licensing fees. Bill Molno's artwork is the comic book equivalent of the special effects in the original movie: pathetic.

The text story is a muddle and the filler story is notable only for having a better looking monster than the lead story.

I classify this comic in the "so bad it's good" category and shamefacedly admit to liking it.

[narfstar]

Is there any real proof that Gill wrote all these? He was the main writer but not the only writer. I will have to say that the I really loved the Reptilicus movie because it scared me as a kid. Any piece could regenerate into a full monster. How could they destroy it? They thought they did but at the end a piece was left to regenerate. This was the first time I had seen such a concept and loved and feared it. I thought it better than Godzilla at the time.

[MarkWarner]

Ah .. after writing this I have now read the other comments. A drunk (or chemically fuelled) author could well be the explanation for this. But are more there hidden song titles?

I somehow think that this book cannot fail for me, but you never know! Ok so far so good and I am really enjoying this, but I need to break off to ask, is this real? It is on a very cool (art-wise) half-page panel on the bottom of our Page 7.

Meanwhile ... a thousand miles from Earth

[bowers]

I actually read this one as a kid, and it was great to do a reread. Although not a big monster comic fan, I did follow Charlton's Big 3- Konga, Gorgo and Reptisaurus. I also remember the writing was a bit strange in this one. But this was the age of "camp" humor, so I probably chalked it up to that. Good cover- I see Vince Aliscia inked this one . That guy must have been one of the hardest working men in comics. He worked on everything in the Charlton line- war, western, crime, hero, and even romance! Obviously quantity over quality. I did prefer the later art by Montes and Bache- their Aztec cover on the special issue was my favorite. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this tale, quirky dialogue and all. A special thanks to Narf for bringing us all these Charlton gems. Cheers, Bowers