Marvel Premiere #28
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMarvel Premiere #28 marks the first time Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Morbius the Living Vampire, and Werewolf by Night appeared together in the same story — an event that retroactively defined them as the founding roster of the Legion of Monsters, Marvel's premier grouping of supernatural outcast characters. The issue is a direct product of the early-1970s relaxation of the Comics Code Authority's restrictions on vampires, werewolves, and other monsters, which had enabled each of those four characters to earn their own solo series or starring features; bringing them together in a single narrative was a logical, if chaotic, culmination of that horror boom. The story's melancholy twist — Starseed dying before he can permanently cure the four monsters of their afflictions — gave the Legion an elegiac origin that distinguished it from conventional superhero team-ups and planted a thematic seed about cursed identity that later writers returned to repeatedly. The team's debut here directly seeded the 1992 'Rise of the Midnight Sons' horror line and influenced a 2010 Legion of Monsters ongoing series, cementing the issue's long-term place in Marvel's supernatural mythology.
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Writer Bill Mantlo scripted the story, titled 'There's a Mountain on Sunset Boulevard!', with pencils by Frank Robbins and inks by Steve Gan; the issue was edited by Marv Wolfman, lettered by Karen Mantlo and Gaspar Saladino, and colored by Janice Cohen. The concept appears to have grown directly out of the short-lived Legion of Monsters black-and-white magazine one-shot (September 1975), which used the name as an anthology banner for unrelated monster stories but never assembled the characters in a single narrative — prompting Marvel to deliver the actual team-up in the color Marvel Premiere anthology series. The cover, notably, was penciled and inked by Nick Cardy, a DC stalwart best known for his Teen Titans and Aquaman work; according to the Marvel Database (citing Back Issue magazine), this stands as the only color Marvel comic book cover Cardy ever contributed to. The issue shipped with a February 1976 cover date, placing it squarely in the Bronze Age horror wave that Marvel had been riding since the Comics Code revision of 1971.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First team appearance and narrative origin of the Legion of Monsters, consisting of Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze), Man-Thing (Ted Sallis), Morbius the Living Vampire (Michael Morbius), and Werewolf by Night (Jack Russell).
- Story titled 'There's a Mountain on Sunset Boulevard!' — written by Bill Mantlo, penciled by Frank Robbins, inked by Steve Gan, edited by Marv Wolfman; cover dated February 1976.
- First and only appearance of Starseed, a golden cosmic being who is the last survivor of a prehistoric human offshoot civilization — he dies in this issue after being inadvertently burned by Man-Thing's empathic fire.
- Despite what the cover image implies, the story is not a conventional team-up: Ghost Rider attempts to protect Starseed while Morbius and the Werewolf, driven by bloodlust, attack him; Man-Thing's arrival further complicates matters.
- In Starseed's dying moments, he briefly lifts the monsters' respective curses — reverting them to Ted Sallis, Jack Russell, Michael Morbius, and Johnny Blaze — before the effect fades along with him, underscoring the issue's theme of unrealized redemption.
- The cover was drawn by Nick Cardy, identified (via Back Issue magazine research) as the only color Marvel comic book cover he ever produced.
- This is the second on-panel encounter between Jack Russell (Werewolf by Night) and Michael Morbius; their first meeting occurred in Giant-Size Werewolf #4.
- The story has been reprinted in multiple collected editions, including Marvel Milestones: Legion of Monsters, Spider-Man & Brother Voodoo (2006), Essential Werewolf by Night Vol. 2 (2007), the Werewolf by Night Omnibus (2015), the Morbius the Living Vampire Omnibus (2019), Decades: Marvel in the '70s – Legion of Monsters (2019), and Marvel Masterworks: Ghost Rider Vol. 3 (2021), as well as a British 9p variant edition printed simultaneously with the US release.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Marvel Premiere #28 (1976), Eclipso #63 (1978), Marvel Milestones: Legion of Monsters, Spider-Man & Brother Voodoo #[nn] (2006), Ghost Rider Team-Up #[nn] (2007), Essential Werewolf by Night #2 (2007), Werewolf by Night Omnibus #[nn] (2015), Werewolf by Night: The Complete Collection #3 (2018), Morbius the Living Vampire Omnibus #[nn] (2019), Decades: Marvel in the '70s - Legion of Monsters #[nn] (2019), Werewolf by Night - Classic Collection #1 (2020), Morbius Epic Collection #2 (2021), Marvel Masterworks: Ghost Rider #3 (2021), Morbius : L'intégrale #1975-1981 (2023), Ghost Rider Epic Collection #2 (2024)
Key issues in Marvel Premiere
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