We interrupt this program...

Werewolf By Night, issue 13. One of my first comics, certainly my first American comic (being a kid from England where the Beano and Whizzer and Chips were a staple diet of any child). Mike Ploog's work on that book was to prove a tremendous influence on me.. A driving force, a guiding light. It's a book I would read at night after lights out. The door ajar; the corridor light spilling across the pages.

The book hit the stands initially in 1974. But it didn't reach my grubby little paws till 1977 (the earliest). It had probably languished in a hospital waiting room, for a couple of years perhaps, till my mother, who was a hospital nurse at the time, brought it home with her. This is an educated guess as to where the book had come from, devoid of substantiated facts, but I'm fairly certain that that's how the story goes. My early comic book collection did indeed consist of hospital waiting room seconds, books destined for the bins. Doomed classics.

I was rather pleased that recently, Marvel produced "Essential Werewolf by Night" because the book contains all of Ploogs glorious art in black & white. Coupled with "Essential Monster of Frankenstein", these are two of my favorite nostalgia collections and I highly recommend them.

This post was inspired by the recent flux of 'first comics' posts on various comics blogs across the blog-i-verse.