Marvel`s Frankly Farcical Fantasy...
`For those who thrilled to J.R.R.Tolkien`s "Lord of the Rings"...` states the cover, `...an all-new adventure into EPIC FANTASY!`...
Epic fantasy? Hardly. Doug Moench must have just finished one of the many cheesy sci-fi fantasy novels of the `70s or his first Tunnels and Trolls game when he put this to paper...
Weird World is an odd fantasy adventure, although to be fair it begins quite well, but then slips rapidly into just plain daft. It tells the story of Tyndall, sent out into the monster-haunted realms of Weird World by the cruel Dwarf Elders to destroy the Heart of Evil (no, really). Smashing a giant egg he believes to be said, Heart of Evil, a beauuuutiful elfin pointy-eared girl, Velanna, appears. She too is of the race of Klarn, a race Tyndall thought he was the only member of...
Dressing herself in giant spider`s gossamer threads, she and Tyndall set off for a place where they can live in peace, two Klarns together...(ahhhh, yep, all this folks and we`re only four pages in...)
Anyhow, after ludicrously escaping a Swamp-Serpent, they fall into the hands of an evil wizard - he`d been watching then through his Mirror Of All-Seeing (no kidding) and forces Tyndall on a quest! A quest to kill a dragon!! The blood of the dragon will make evil wizard young again!!! So he can ravage the pointy-eared slave girl he has chained in his dungeon (a kind of Weird World Viagra, obviously)!?!!
By now, in the race to fill a 32-page comic, the whole thing just becomes silly. The rushed ending is abysmal.
I believe Weird World ran for a couple of stories in other magazine-sized Marvel publications, but never appeared - to my knowledge - in this format. In 1977, maybe readers were more inclined towards grim, hulking barbarians like Conan and Kull, than the fairytale elfin Klarn?
This story is a bit namby-pamby, like a child`s fairytale TV cartoon. One of it`s saving graces was the excellent art by Ploog and Nino, and that cover is iconic. Pity, looks promising, but doesn`t deliver...