Weirdworld

Updated to mention Alex Niño’s name. And emphasize it.
Weirdworld was a fantasy comic series created by prolific writer Doug Moench and fantasy/horror artist Mike Ploog, who apparently also created the look for the character Ghost Rider and was closely associated with the Marvel title Werewolf By Night. Plenty of other talented artists worked on it, including John Buscema, P. Craig Russel and Tom Palmer and especially Alex Niño, who elevated Ploog’s layouts to art.

The Weirdworld stories were published in a variety of different publications, starting with a short story in a comic magazine called Marvel Super Action #1 (the cover featured the Punisher…), followed by a full-length story in the rotating-feature comic Marvel Premiere (issue 38, September 1977). This is where I first came across it. There was a 3-part story published in gorgeous full, air-brushed color across 3 issues of Marvel Super Special, and then bits published here and there, in Epic magazine and Marvel Fanfare. But I think the first story I encountered was unequaled, probably because the combination of art by Mike Ploog and Alex Niño.

Now, at the time I saw that first story, I didn’t know about Lord of the Rings, although I might have read The Hobbit. I did read Conan comics, so barbarian swordsmen and evil wizards were part of my 9-year old (!) vocabulary. But this was probably the most amazing fantasy story I ever saw. Tyndall of Klarn, a child-like elf swordsman, ventures into “The Heart of Darkness”, a patch of sunlit land surrounded by a circular realm of darkness. In the skeleton of a giant beached whale, he finds a huge egg, which hatches, and a beautiful elf girl emerges, quickly wrapping herself in a cobweb bikini. Both Tyndall and this girl (his instant love) don’t really know where they come from or what they really are, but they set off to find out.
Except they get snatched by these wonderful wax monsters, working for a Sea Hag-inspired old wizard (that’s the Sea Hag from Popeye). The wizard points out that Klarn is actually a ring-shaped island floating directly overhead (it’s what casts the shadows forming the lands of darkness), and sends Tyndall up there, rocketing into the air on a flying patch of sod, to slay a dragon.

This story fascinated my brothers and me. When I mentioned it to my brother, he told me that it probably isn’t as good as I remember. Well, I dug that issue up recently, and I think it is. The writing isn’t that great (my sister, who insisted on getting a look at it because she also had fond memories, complained that when she looked at it as a kid, before she could read, the dialogue she made up in her head was better. Reading the actual story, she complains the characters come across as really dumb). But the story, and particularly the art that Mike Ploog and awesome inker Alex Niño use to tell it, each panel echoing fantasy art classic compositions, from Frazetta to Disney, each shadow and sketchy horizon hiding new mysteries and secrets, is pure magic.

I should scan my poor, coverless copy, before it falls apart.

Links: Mike Ploog Art, more Mike Ploog Art (good scans) and an interview with Mike Ploog. An article about Alex Niño and a page about him with more art and links. Some covers and links from here. Or maybe here, in French.