Comic creatures from Marvel’s venerable stable of ’70s scare stars return from the dead in LEGION OF MONSTERS, a handsome hardcover collection of a recent series of one-shots that update the beasts for a new millennium.

X-MEN’s Mike Carey scripts the opening WEREWOLF BY NIGHT story, which is largely gender-flipped and set in a small-town bar. A plodding but interesting-looking tale of MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN follows. Novelist Charlie Huston tackles MAN-THING to great effect, with an asshole of an heir holding an elite dinner party with a most unusual main course. It’s one of the best of the stuffed bunch.

Ted McKeever provides another highlight with TALES OF THE ZOMBIE’s Simon Garth, looking for love in the morgue and beyond. It’s more humorous than horrific, but strikes the right chord in both areas. The same cannot be said for Satana, the Devil’s Daughter, whose boring story seems like more an excuse just to draw the flame-haired succubus in skimpy clothing … not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Jonathan Hickman’s LIVING MUMMY tale is a work of art, more fun to look at than it is to read. His style is unique, with each page like a minimalist collage of images and muted colors. Next is MORBIUS, THE LIVING VAMPIRE, hanging out with heroin junkies; Michael Gaydos’ painted art is a nice touch. But vampires do not have their day (or night) in the number that follows, featuring Dracula and his daughter Lilith. Frankly, the atrocious ink job on David Finch’s art makes it look more amateur-fanboyish than Marvel’s usual standard.

After that brief moment of disappointment, we reach the reprint section of the book, with half a dozen stories from the ’70s. Of these, the two from Marvel’s Comic Code-free black-and-white magazines are the best, with the Monster of Frankenstein inadvertently crashing a costume party, and a creature called the Manphibian rising up from the oil fields. Stuck between them is a full-color issue of MARVEL PREMIERE that briefly sees Man-Thing, Morbius, Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider team up.

The other three reprinted stories all featured The Scarecrow – not the one we know as an enemy of Spider-Man and his peers, but a strange superhero all his own. He’s trapped in a painting, but emerges every now and then to fight monsters from other dimensions. In the last of his trilogy of appearances here, he joins forces with The Thing in an issue from MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE.

Lastly, there’s the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE: HORROR 2005 tacked on at the end. For me, this is a take-it-or-leave-it freebie, because I hate these text-based bios, even if ithey do expose you to some oddball, obscure characters. Plus, ranking each one on a seven-point scale in a six-category “Power Grid” strikes me as awfully nerdy. For instance, do you care if Brother Voodoo has a “durability” rating of 3 and an “energy projection” of 6? If so, I leave you to your 20-sided dice. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MIKE CAREY:
• THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by Mike Carey

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF CHARLIE HUSTON:
• ALREADY DEAD by Charlie Huston
• NO DOMINION by Charlie Huston

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF TED MCKEEVER:
• BIG BOOK OF HORROR by Steve Niles, Scott Morse, Ted McKeever and Richard Sala