My Rating
“Nocturnal Animal”
Kirk Langstrom arrived at the café late that afternoon to meet his estranged wife, Francine. It had been a rough three months without her, but Kirk knew the separation was necessary. He needed to end his addiction to the Man-Bat formula before the monster destroyed what remained of his family.
The last time Kirk had seen his wife, she was racing out the front door with their daughter and son in tow. He could still remember the fear in Rebecca and Aaron’s young eyes. What had he done this time? Why couldn’t he remember what happened the night before? All of this pain, all of this misery, had been brought on by that goddamned formula. Kirk wished he had never begun the research that created Man-Bat.
Now, as he entered the café, Kirk was under no illusion that Francine would take him back. He still loved her with all his heart, but did she feel the same? In the next few minutes, Kirk Langstrom would discover just who cared for him more—his wife or the monster he created inside a test tube.
“Pieces of Me”
From the headquarters of S.H.A.D.E., they flew toward the desert plains outside San Jose, California. An emergency alert had gone out to every available agent: an assembly line of killer robots had somehow been corrupted by Satan himself. Frankenstein’s Monster and his estranged bride were the only operatives available for the job.
So away they went, fighting side by side once again—a team first formed hundreds of years ago.
As the pair traveled toward the hot zone, Frankenstein couldn’t stop thinking about the letter. Expressing himself intimately had never been one of the Monster’s greatest strengths. Yet, during those long years apart from his bride, the creature had learned to read and write. Now he had poured his cold, dead heart onto the page.
What flowery poetry he had crafted for his one true love!
Would his words be enough to rekindle her equally cold and equally dead heart? Frankenstein would have to survive the mission before finding out.
“Buried on Sunday”
Jon Kent followed his father into the cold Sunday morning sky. Why had his mother tried so desperately to talk Dad out of leaving that day? Superman wasn’t exactly known for taking Sundays off, so what made this particular trip different?
Jon soon received his answer as the cemetery came into view.
His father had chosen a strange place to visit when there were so many more exciting destinations in the world. Then Superboy spotted an oversized figure lumbering between the gravestones.
Solomon Grundy!
Born on a Monday. Christened on Tuesday. Married on Wednesday…
But what happens when Superman encounters him on Sunday?
“The Dead Can Dance”
Everyone had cleared out of Titans Tower for the night except Raven. She was never much for holidays, especially Valentine’s Day.
Love.
Raven scoffed at the concept. It was something the normals obsessed over, not her.
Her opinion mattered little when an emergency call arrived at the tower. A terrified family believed their home had been invaded by a supernatural presence. They called it a ghost, but in Raven’s world, the word “ghost” could mean a hundred different things.
She wouldn’t understand the true nature of the haunting until speaking with the family’s four-year-old daughter, Jane.
The little girl had another name for whatever was hiding inside their home.
The thing with stabbing hands.
“Be My Valentine”
Possession is a little like riding in a cab. You’re aware of being inside the vehicle, but passenger and driver don’t necessarily share the same memories.
For Deadman, things work a little differently. Occasionally, fragments from his hosts remain behind—emotions, images, and memories that don’t belong to Boston Brand.
Then there was Aidan Murphy.
The young fourth-grader had run directly in front of a passenger train. When Deadman entered the boy’s body, he discovered memories of three bullies and a collection of Valentine’s Day cards that had been cruelly altered.
Why had the boys written such horrible things to little Aidan? Can Deadman set things right at Spring Street Elementary School? And what dark secret does Dougie hide from his friends and teacher?
“Heart-Shaped Box”
Alec had almost forgotten the feeling.
After the tragic loss of his human existence and the woman he loved, Swamp Thing wandered the Louisiana bayou alone. Then a young botanist named Terri Farms arrived in Houma to conduct research.
It wasn’t long before Terri stumbled across Alec and his monstrous form. Unlike most people, she didn’t run screaming into the swamp. The young woman looked beyond his grotesque appearance and saw the goodness that remained inside the Swamp Thing.
Over the winter months, the two continued encountering one another throughout the Louisiana wetlands. At least, Terri believed the meetings were accidental.
Alec knew better.
He had become infatuated with the young botanist and fascinated by her work. Over time, the two formed an emotional bond just as any two humans might. Well…one human and one former human.
On Valentine’s Day, Alec finally worked up the courage to present Terri with a giant heart-shaped card. It was the first Valentine he had given a woman in decades. He was nervous—or whatever the plant equivalent of nervous might be—but Terri accepted the gesture warmly.
The card. The ghost orchids. Everything was perfect.
Some would say love will always find a way.
Unfortunately, several sets of eyes were watching the happy couple through field glasses from the nearby treeline.
“Visibility”
SWAT and the SCU had surrounded the downtown LexCorp office building earlier that morning. A 911 call had originated somewhere inside one of the research laboratories occupying the skyscraper’s lower floors.
The situation sounded almost too ridiculous to believe.
A large talking gorilla had stormed into the building armed with a heavy machine gun. Strapped to the beast’s back was a sophisticated mechanical cylinder containing a living human brain.
Monsieur Mallah and the Brain had arrived.
For the next several hours, the erratic primate held the massive police presence at bay while interrogating hostages about new Cybernetic Optic Nerve technology being developed inside the facility.
Bullets weren’t going to solve this particular hostage crisis.
It would take the calm nerves of Captain Maggie Sawyer to look beyond the heavily armed gorilla and discover the pain shared by two lovers—and the true reason they had invaded LexCorp.
“The Turning of Deborah Dancer”
Čelákovice, Czech Republic—the caretaker opened the damaged crypt for Andrew Bennett and Deborah Dancer to inspect. The stench of recent decay drifted into the moonlight as the pair descended into the darkness below.
Another skeleton had disappeared.
In its place lay the corpse of an American tourist.
Was the man trying to be brave or simply being incredibly stupid?
“Anything for a selfie,” Deborah commented.
Andrew Bennett examined the scene with eyes sharpened by centuries of undeath. Miklos Nadasaday, son of the Blood Queen, had risen sometime within the past twenty-four hours.
Why was Andrew’s destiny forever intertwined with that tyrannical woman?
Mary had been his first true love, but Andrew had made the terrible mistake of turning her into a vampire. Passion, affection, and devotion should never have been mixed with the curse of the undead. Over the centuries, Andrew convinced himself that devils—in whatever form they took—were incapable of experiencing true love.
Then Deborah Dancer entered his life.
Can Andrew and Deborah stop the minions of the Blood Queen from stealing their precious blood? Which vampire order will prevail in a centuries-old power struggle rooted in the Czech Republic? And can Andrew Bennett finally find true love with the half-vampire woman turned by his first?
“To Hell and Gone”
Love.
Is there anything more powerful in Heaven or Hell? Can it survive within the deepest pits of damnation or soar above the loftiest clouds?
For Etrigan, the Demon bound to human flesh, no distance was too great and no army of Hell large enough to keep him from his beloved Rosa.
During a recent cosmic conflict, Etrigan had been pulled into the fray, resulting in the long disappearance of his human counterpart, Jason Blood. Rosa was a pure spirit, but grief and desperation had driven her toward something terrible. In an attempt to retrieve her lost love, the woman turned to black magic and tried to summon Jason and his Demon back to Earth.
Instead, her actions damned her soul to the eternal fires of Hell.
Now Etrigan is coming for her.
Can the Demon find Rosa among the countless planes of Hell? Has Jason Blood’s damned lover become the coveted Memoriae sought by Hell’s armies? And can Etrigan defeat everything the demon lords throw in his path?
Love may conquer all, but Hell isn’t giving up without a fight.
“Dear Velcoro”
The war was hard on everyone involved. For some GIs, the dreaded “Dear John” letter hurt worse than a Kraut’s bayonet through the belly.
On the night before a major raid against a Stahl Sturmtruppen project bunker, Vincent Velcoro received the bad news.
His gal back home had been writing for months about the changes in his personality. Vincent had once been a fun-loving American boy with his entire life ahead of him.
Then he was turned into a vampire.
No shit, my love. Becoming one of the undead in the middle of a global conflict can certainly put a damper on a man’s personality.
Unfortunately for Vincent, he couldn’t exactly explain the situation. Everything involving his condition and the Creature Commandos had a big red TOP SECRET stamped across it.
So what was he supposed to tell her?
Can Vincent Velcoro accept the bad news with a little help from fellow Creature Commando Warren Griffith? Do werewolf males really love everything hairy? And will Lt. Shrieve survive his tour of duty with the ugliest bunch of GIs in the European theater?
Reviewer Notes
Let it be said that DC Comics writers can still produce top-tier comics when they want to, and Young Monsters in Love – 80-Page Giant is one hell of an example.
DC was once the king of romance comics during the Silver Age, publishing enough tales of love, heartbreak, jealousy, and ridiculously complicated relationships to fill a small library. Taking that old tradition and combining it with the publisher’s massive collection of monsters was a fantastic idea. Who says vampires, demons, swamp creatures, ghosts, and talking gorillas don’t deserve a little romance?
What a whopper of an issue!
Young Monsters in Love contains not one, not five, but ten monster-themed romance stories. Better yet, DC didn’t limit the book to its biggest characters. Sure, you’ll find familiar A-listers such as Swamp Thing and Teen Titans’ Raven, but you’ll also encounter characters such as Monsieur Mallah and the Brain, Andrew Bennett of I, Vampire fame, Frankenstein, Deadman, Etrigan, Solomon Grundy, and the Creature Commandos.
That’s what I enjoyed most about this book. It feels like somebody at DC opened the dusty door to the company’s monster closet and told the writers, “Pick whoever you want.”
They certainly made the most of it.
Just a warning for parents: some of the stories deal with themes that probably aren’t appropriate for younger readers, so use your best judgment. This might have Valentine’s hearts all over the cover, but don’t mistake it for one of those innocent classroom Valentine’s Day specials.
I also have to admit that I became a little verklempt while reading Raven’s story. That poor, poor girl. Somebody needs to give her a hug if nothing else.
That’s assuming she would even allow it.
Overall, I thought the writing throughout the anthology was excellent. Naturally, with ten separate stories, I enjoyed some more than others, but I never felt like I was simply trudging through one tale to get to the next. Each creative team takes the basic theme of “monsters in love” and does something a little different with it. Some stories are funny. Others are tragic. A few are surprisingly touching.
The artwork is equally varied, which is exactly what I want from a giant anthology like this. Different artists are allowed to put their own stamp on DC’s supernatural characters instead of forcing the entire book into one visual style.
And holy hell, Man-Bat looked absolutely badass!
I was equally happy to see Jack Kirby’s Demon receive a killer visual treatment. Etrigan should look like something that just crawled screaming out of the deepest pit in Hell, and this book certainly doesn’t disappoint.
By the time I finished all eighty pages, Young Monsters in Love had accomplished something I wasn’t expecting—it made me want to start collecting DC horror comics again. Give me more Man-Bat. Give me I, Vampire. Give me Frankenstein, Etrigan, Swamp Thing, and the Creature Commandos. Hell, give Monsieur Mallah and the Brain their own Valentine’s Day special.
I’m giving Young Monsters in Love – 80-Page Giant a massive five out of five stars.
Definitely grab this book if you can find a copy. That $9.99 cover price was one hell of a bargain back in 2018 for eighty pages of monster-loving awesomeness.
Until next time, boils and ghouls…even monsters need a little love.