Dell's Money-Saving Monster Comic Book Cover

You could always tell when a Dell title was about to be cancelled when they published repeats of earlier covers. Dell saved money on cover artists by using an old issue when sales dropped below a certain point but the magazine was sent to press anyways. I'm not a businessman, but if your product is doing so badly that issue #4 is a reprint of issue #1, I think it is time to save the cash and call it quits. Dell was doing this in the biz a while ago so it may be that monies were already spent along the production channels that would not be refunded otherwise, so they went ahead with old material on the chance they would not lose their entire investment.

But in this one-shot they didn't even try to come up with an original cover. It is like Dell looked in the filing cabinet for the most generic pre-existing art they could find and glued a few head shots cut from other books onto it. Admittedly the background art is keeping with a dark theme by being set in a creepy field during sunset, but the lone figure isn't even the Frankenstein Monster, unless the creature has taken to wearing bowler hats.

The poor layout of the title also makes it appear the classic vampire was mummified somehow, which would not be a bad story itself. Of course, I'd only want to read that if Marv Wolfman wrote it and Gene Colan drew it.

Some Gene Colan art:
Shazam vs Dracula

Howard and Bev

Dracula meets Sherlock Holmes