Our final Rutland Parade tale for this year involves neither DC or Marvel characters!
Our protagonist is Doctor Adam Spektor, a researcher into the occult, who started out as a host-narrator for short stories in Gold Key's Mystery Comics Digest, but quickly graduated to his own comic, where he used mystical artifacts and his arcane knowledge to battle mystical menaces head-on!
Aided by his magic-skeptical "friend and companion" (interpret as you will) Lakota Rainflower, Spektor encountered all the classic monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, werewolves, mummies, evil sorcerers and sorceresses, etc.), including one he met before who lays a trap for him in this week's story!
Doctor Spektor ran from 1972 to 1975, and, except for a 2014 Dynamite Publications mini-series rebooting the character, hasn't been seen since!
Among the antagonists are two who are not Gold Key characters, but do date back to the Golden Age of Comics!
Nor was he a mystic-themed character!
Resurrected and now possessed of enhanced strength and limited invulnerability, the man named Zoro retained his intellect and conscience instead of being a mindless servant to the depraved scientist who experimented on his corpse.
He enjoyed a long, if weird, run in Novelty's Reg'lar Fellas Heroic Comics during the Golden Age, but hadn't been brought back since...until this week's story!
Not so with the other Golden Age character...The Heap, who was the first ongoing swamp-based monster in comics!
Debuting in the Sky Wolf feature in Hillman's Air Fighter Comics, The Heap quickly received his own strip, which continued even after the book was re-titled Airboy and survived until the book was cancelled at the end of the Golden Age.
Much like the later Man-Thing, The Heap tended to wander mindlessly into situations where he, inadventantly, ended up helping people...who would fear and hunt him due to his appearance.He's referred to in this tale as "The Lurker" because another company, Skywald Comics had recently revived the character...but had extensively-altered/updated him.
Since Skywald now had the trademark for "The Heap", this story's version, based on the Golden Age incarnation, had to use another name!
Now That You Know a Bit More About the Players, Be Here Tomorrow for the Story Itself!
