Where Monsters Dwell #23: "The Monster Waits for Me!" by Lee, Kirby & Ayers, Pt. 1

I didn't have a copy of Where Monsters Dwell #23. So I went online to AtomicAvenue.com via my ComicBase 16 Professional Edition and found a copy graded "Good" for not too much more than the current market price. Since I feel like I'm starting to hit some sort of wounded stride with weekend posts devoted to Where Monsters Dwell, Marvel's early Bronze Age title devoted to Silver Age monster, sci-fi, horror reprints, I wanted to keep the run up.

The title story of Where Monsters Dwell #23 is "The Monster Waits for Me!" Though there are no credits, the work is obviously vintage Jack Kirby. You have to go to ComicVine.com (the first link at the top of the post) to find out that Kirby's inker for "The Monster Waits for Me!" was Dick Ayers. And you have to go to MarvelWikia to learn that Stan Lee wrote the story and that it originally appeared in Strange Tales #92, published January, 1962.

As you can see from the scan below, one could quibble with the seller's grade of "Good." Grading isn't easy. But if it had been me evaluating the condition of this comic book, I would have graded it "Fair."

I was just happy to have received it in five business days. I read the issue this morning, and it's a great one.

Not only does Where Monsters Dwell #23 feature a "state-of-the-art" Silver Age Lee-Kirby collaboration, but it also has a Lee-Ditko backup story, as well as a rare Lee-Infantino crime/horror tale. Carmine Infantino is the artist credited with helping to usher in the Silver Age with his clean, crisp, suburban-based The Flash.

But what I really would like to talk about is the concise perfection of "The Monster Waits for Me!" In this post look at the beautiful first page following the splash, in particular the depiction of the rundown boarding house our gorgeous unemployed Sue-Storm-lookalike narrator finds herself in. In later posts I'll deal with the rest of the story and the Lee-Ditko and Lee-Infantino backup stories.

But for now check out the old lath and plaster walls: first, in the panel where our comely narrator talks to the battle-ax landlady as they ascend the staircase; then, in the panel where she appraises her room while unpacking her bags.

 

When I read "The Monster Waits for Me!" this morning and I studied the panels showing the old rooming house and its deteriorating walls I was immediately reminded of the loft I slept in with my live-in girlfriend (who would become my wife). The apartment we lived in was part of building that was older than the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, which it weathered, though with its architecture altered. Originally it was two separate structures. But the earthquake shifted the foundations to such an extent that a decision was made to conjoin the two buildings where they face the Durant Avenue, creating a large horseshoe. At least this is the story my landlord liked to tell drinking a 16-ounce can of beer, his handyman coveralls open down to his pendulous belly.

In any event, my father, who is a amateur carpenter, built me and my girlfriend a sleeping loft with closet space underneath. He did this because the bedroom was not much larger than a double bed. The loft provided space for shelves.

We climbed up a wooden ladder, which my father also made, to get into bed at night. There was not much space between mattress and ceiling up there. You could prop yourself up on a pillow and read but you couldn't sit fully upright without banging your head.

One night my girlfriend and I were arguing up in the loft; I have absolutely no memory what the argument was about. Whatever it was, my girlfriend, who could be tempestuous and had no qualms about violence, became so agitated that she started kicking the ceiling. The ceiling crumbled, exposing the old lath and plaster in a good-sized hole.

In the months that followed the hole widened and dusty, rocky grains of old mortar showered down on us as we slept. We attempted half-hearted repairs with packing tape and paper bags. But invariably the tape would lose its adhesion and a pile of dust and mortar would drop down on top of us.

The hole got bigger, and the problem got worse. How long did we live that way -- sleeping beneath that gaping wound as the old Victorian-era building breathed its decay into us? Finally during one of his visits my father took pity on us and repaired the hole; I can't remember if he used a thin sheet of plywood or a piece of drywall.

Seeing the exposed lath and plaster in the Lee-Kirby-Ayers story brought it all back. I felt ashamed.