OK, this one might be a bit difficult but I have faith in the Straight Dope! I am trying to track down a particular comic book story, a short one that came from a pre-Silver Age Marvel Comics anthology series.
The artwork was reminiscent of Steve Ditko, though I’m not at all sure it really was his work. Anyway, it’s a horror story about a a clan of vampires. The vampires are all depicted like “man-bats” (they were all naked, bald homonculi with bat-wings lining along their arms.) They lived in some remote, mountainous, Transylvania-type backwoods of Eastern Europe, apparently.
The story begins as a lone vampire is flying overhead and spots a human traveler walking all by himself along a deserted road. (Some narration relates that the roads are more deserted than usual lately because of a mysterious “Man Beast” that has taken to prowling the area.) The vampire swoops down and snatches him up, whisking the seemingly ill-fated man to the vampire’s abode. All the other vampires are astonished that one of their own has gotten a human – they’ve been so hard to find since the Man Beast has been on the loose.
The vampires are about to descend on the man and feast on him, but the one vampire who snatched him up pushes them off, insisting that this is his prey and he alone gets to feast on him. One of the vampires even remarks that this vampire (he had a name, but I forget it) seems as furious and violent as the Man Beast.
I don’t remember quite what happens next, but the vampires suddenly become quite curious about who this man is. They ask him his name. Then, in a succession of decompressed panels, the man transforms into a monstrous form. He suddenly begins hurling the vampires aside in a rage. “You wanted to know who I am,” he declares. And in the final panel, he grabs hold of the now-terrified vampire who snatched him up. “I AM THE MAN BEAST!!!” he screams.
The End.
OK, I know it’s not much of a twist ending. But something about that story always made it stand out in my mind. I read a reprint of it in the back pages of a 70s-era Marvel Comic, but I would guess that it was originally from the 50s or even earlier. I’m thinking pre-superhero era “Strange Tales” or “Journey Into Mystery”.
This is very similar to “The Secret” from the “Tales from the Crypt” series. The source of that, according to Wikipedia, is “Haunt of Fear” #24. Differences:
The vampires are an eccentric couple who have adopted a kid from an orphanage.
The vampires have adopted him in plans for a later feast, only to find out that
That the kid is actually a werewolf, and as the full moon appears from behind the clouds, as the couple catch up with him, he informs them that he has an appetite for vampires!
I’ve been delving through old comics on a site devoted to same. So far, I’ve found a plot from a twilight zone ep, a Hitchcock presents, and just last night a rip-off of a Matheson story where there is an actual baby who goes from infancy to maturity to senescence over the course of a single year.
I remember a similar comic book story in which a town is plagued by a vampire. They do some investigation and hire a vampire killer to track down the vampire. I don’t remember the name, but the townsfolk are surprised when, one evening, they meet the killer/hunter at the train station and it’s a woman. Not what they were expecting. She goes trolling for the vampire, looking alone, feminine and helpless. So naturally the vampire spots her and swoops down with a “Helloooo, my dear!” Before things go any further, the hunter sprouts her own fangs and she takes him out, very glad to steal a much larger and juicier territory than she had before.
Yay! That’s it! “Beast Man” (not Man Beast) – Hmmm, maybe that’s why I could never find it.
Just a look at the few panels and I can recall why I liked that particular story so much. It was the heavy blackness. That was (is?) very unusual for comic book art which is usually bright pastels. It gave that story a moody quality that I wasn’t used to seeing in ‘normal’, superhero stories.
I read a story like this in which the vampire is about to attack a beautiful woman, only to have her turn into a werewolf. Sorry, no cite, but it was something like Tales from the Crypt.