Back Issue #89 by TwoMorrows Publishing

BRONZE AGE ADAPTATIONS July 20

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The Shadow t Korak, Son of Tarzan Battlestar Galactica t Marvel Movie Comics Black Hole t 2001 t featuring Chaykin, Kaluta, Kirby, Kubert, O’Neil, Thorne, & more

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THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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“When Comics Were Fun!” HEMBECK cover and gallery, Plastic Man, Blue Devil, Marvel’s Star Comics imprint, VALENTINO’s normalman, Bronze Age’s goofiest Superman stories, and the Batman/Dick Tracy team-up you didn’t see! Featuring MAX ALLAN COLLINS, PARIS CULLINS, RAMONA FRADON, ALAN KUPPERBERG, MISHKIN & COHN, STEVE SKEATES, JOE STATON, CURT SWAN, and more!

“Weird Issue!” Batman’s Weirdest TeamUps, ORLANDO’s Weird Adventure Comics, Weird War Tales, Weird Mystery Tales, DITKO’s Shade the Changing Man and Stalker, CHAYKIN’s Iron Wolf, CRUMB’s Weirdo, and STARLIN and WRIGHTSON’s The Weird! Featuring JIM APARO, LUIS DOMINGUEZ, MICHAEL FLEISHER, BOB HANEY, PAUL LEVITZ, and more. Batman and Deadman cover by ALAN CRADDOCK.

“Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age!” DAVE GIBBONS on Charlton’s WATCHMEN connection, LEN WEIN and PARIS CULLINS’ Blue Beetle, CARY BATES and PAT BRODERICK’s Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, and a look at Blockbuster Weekly! Featuring MIKE COLLINS, GIORDANO, KUPPERBERG, ALAN MOORE, PAT MORISI, ALEX ROSS, and more. Cover by AL MILGROM.

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“Flash and Green Lantern in the Bronze Age” (crossover with ALTER EGO #132)! In-depth spotlights of their 1970s and 1980s adventures, MARK WAID’s look at the Flash/GL team, and PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Lost GL Fillins. Bonus: DC’s New York Office Memories, and Green Lantern: Ganthet’s Tale by LARRY NIVEN and JOHN BYRNE. With BARR, BATES, GIBBONS, GRELL, INFANTINO, WEIN, and more. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

“DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” An indepth exploration of DC’s 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULARS, plus: a history of comics giants, DC indexes galore, and a salute to “human encyclopedia” E. NELSON BRIDWELL. Featuring the work of PAT BRODERICK, RICH BUCKLER, FRANK FRAZETTA, JOE KUBERT, BOB ROZAKIS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. Super Spec tribute cover featuring classic art by NICK CARDY.

“Bronze Age Events!” With extensive coverage of the Avengers/Defenders War, JLA/JSA crossovers, Secret Wars, Crisis’ 30th anniversary, Legends, Millennium, Invasion, Infinity Gauntlet, and more! Featuring the work of SAL BUSCEMA, DICK DILLIN, TODD McFARLANE, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOE STATON, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE ZECK, and more. Plus an Avengers vs. Defenders cover by JOHN BYRNE.

“International Heroes!” Alpha Flight, the New X-Men, Global Guardians, Captain Canuck, and Justice League International, plus SpiderMan in the UK and more. Also: exclusive interview with cover artists STEVE FASTNER and RICH LARSON. Featuring the work of JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, RICHARD COMELY, KEITH GIFFEN, KEVIN MAGUIRE, and more! Alpha Flight vs. X-Men cover by FASTNER/LARSON.

“Supergirl in the Bronze Age!” Her 1970s and 1980s adventures, including her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths and her many rebirths. Plus: an ALAN BRENNERT interview, behind the scenes of the Supergirl movie starring HELEN SLATER, Who is Superwoman?, and a look at the DC Superheroes Water Ski Show. With PAUL KUPPERBERG, ELLIOT MAGGIN, MARV WOLFMAN, plus a jam cover recreation of ADVENTURE COMICS #397!

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TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. BACK ISSUE #85

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“Christmas in the Bronze Age!” Go behind the scenes of comics’ best holiday tales of the 1970s through the early 1990s! And we revisit Superhero Merchandise Catalogs of the late ‘70s! Featuring work by SIMON BISLEY, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍALÓPEZ, KEITH GIFFEN, the KUBERT STUDIO, DENNY O’NEIL, STEVE PURCELL, JOHN ROMITA, JR., and more. Cover by MARIE SEVERIN and MIKE ESPOSITO!

“Marvel Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” In-depth exploration of Marvel’s GIANT-SIZE series, plus indexes galore of Marvel reprint titles, Marvel digests and Fireside Books editions, and the last days of the “Old” X-Men! Featuring work by DAN ADKINS, ROSS ANDRU, RICH BUCKLER, DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE GERBER, STAN LEE, WERNER ROTH, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by JOHN ROMITA, SR.!

“Batman AND Superman!” Bronze Age World’s Finest, Super Sons, Batman/Superman Villain/Partner Swap, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane go solo, Superman/Radio Shack giveaways, and JLA #200’s “A League Divided” (as a nod to Batman v. Superman)! Featuring work by BRIAN BOLLAND, RICH BUCKLER, GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, GEORGE PÉREZ, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by DICK GIORDANO!

“Comics Magazines of the ’70s and ’80s!” From Savage Tales to Epic Illustrated, KIRBY’s “Speak-Out Series,” EISNER’s Spirit magazine, Unpublished PAUL GULACY, MICHAEL USLAN on the Shadow magazine you didn’t see, plus B&Ws from Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, Skywald, and Warren. Featuring work by NEAL ADAMS, JOHN BOLTON, ARCHIE GOODWIN, DOUG MOENCH, EARL NOREM, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by GRAY MORROW!

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Volume 1, Number 89 July 2016 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Michael Wm. Kaluta (Unpublished cover produced for DC Comics’ The Shadow. This image ran poster-size in black and white in The Amazing World of DC Comics #1, July 1974.) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek James Heath Lantz Val Mayerik Roger McKenzie David Michelinie Allen Milgrom Michael Netzer Luigi Novi Dennis O’Neil Tom Palmer Ralph Reese Philip Schweier Walter Simonson Anthony Snyder Roy Thomas Frank Thorne Anthony Tollin Michael Uslan Don Vaughan Len Wein John Wells Rod Whigham Marv Wolfman

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BACK SEAT DRIVER Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 OFF MY CHEST Guest Column by Paul Kupperberg: Pictures to Prose . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 One of our favorite writers looks at comic-book characters’ transitions to novels FLASHBACK: Shedding Light on The Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 The dark hero’s appearances in comic books, with O’Neil, Tollin, Uslan, Augustyn, Jones, Barr, and Goss BEYOND CAPES: It’s a Jungle Out There!: DC’s Korak, Son of Tarzan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 The junior jungle man’s ’70s swingin’ safari at DC Comics, with Len Wein and Frank Thorne BEYOND CAPES: Science Experiment: Marvel’s Worlds Unknown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Thomas, Conway, Reese, Mayerik, and Wein discuss the pros and cons of adapting sci-fi WHAT THE--?!: The Super Cops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 The strange story of the real-life Batman and Robin and their short-lived media blitz FLASHBACK: A Monolith in Comics: Jack Kirby’s 2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 The King of Comics’ unexpected movie adaptation that created a Mister Machine-making spin-off FLASHBACK: Battlestar Galactica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 The Cylons are coming! Luckily, Marvel enlisted Simonson, Milgrom, and McKenzie to handle them FLASHBACK: Adapting Disney’s Black Hole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 The House of the Mouse sets its sights on its own Star Wars BACKSTAGE PASS: Marvel at the Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Creators galore recall Mighty Marvel’s Hollywood adaptations of the 1970s and 1980s BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 Reader reactions BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $73 Standard US, $88 Expedited US, $116 International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Michael Wm. Kaluta. The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2016 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

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In the background: Detail from the 1974 cover of DC Comics’ The Shadow #6. Art by Michael Wm. Kaluta. TM & © Condé Nast

SPECIAL THANKS Mark Arnold Brian Augustyn Mike W. Barr Jonathan R. Brown Rich Buckler Dewey Cassell Howard Chaykin Arthur Chertowsky Gerry Conway Jon B. Cooke Lamont Cranston Fred L. deBoom Stephan Friedt Joel Goss Grand Comics Database Jackson Guice Larry Hama Heritage Comics Auctions Gerard Jones Douglas R. Kelly Paul Kupperberg

ladder-lowered into the gaping mouth of a finned fiend in 1966’s Batman movie, comic-book fans have known that sharks make great villains (they’ve also inspired rogues for Green Lantern and Sub-Mariner). By the time Marvel realized that Jaws had teeth, they latched on to its anemic sequel for a so-so adaptation in Marvel Super Special #6. However, by fishing through some comics covers from the mid-’70s, you might think that Jaws’ Bruce the Shark was a villain-for-hire, ready to stick his nose into any comic. He had the audacity to tug on Superman’s cape, chomp Ghost Rider off his chopper, disrupt the Wall-Crawler’s dip, and bring along a friend for a Creepy feeding frenzy! And no one so blatantly co-opted Jaws than Mego’s Aquaman, who was packaged with “The Great White Shark” in a 1978 World’s Greatest Super-Heroes release (recently reissued, by the way).

Comic books have often adapted subject matter from other media, and many of those adaptations published during the 1970s and 1980s are our topic for this issue. Licensed comics have been covered in previous issues, from G.I. Joe in BACK ISSUE #16 to The Micronauts in issue #76, so if you’re looking for, say, Godzilla, Star Wars, Star Trek, ROM: Spaceknight, or The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, visit twomorrows.com and search our back issues. Among this issue’s page-turning contents, you’ll find an article by Stephan Friedt covering Marvel Comics’ Bronze Age movie adaptations. Disney fare aside, movie adaptations had fallen out of favor on the comics racks until 1975, when Marvel became the Movie House of Ideas with The Land That Time Forgot, soon followed by a slew of films reinterpreted in comic-book form. But Marvel missed the boat by not adapting the Steven Spielbergdirected Jaws, based on Peter Benchley’s bestseller, which premiered on June 20, 1975 and essentially invented the movie blockbuster. It was a pulse-pounding story starring a reluctant, sympathetic hero and his mismatched partners who join forces to save the world (or at least Amity Beach) from a larger-than-life menace. Sounds like the perfect plot for a Marvel comic, doesn’t it? Heck, ever since DC’s Caped Crusader was

Michael Eury

So while Bruce the Shark’s searing saga wasn’t turned into a Marvel comic book in 1975, we here on the S.S. BACK ISSUE raise our canister of Bat-Shark Repellent in a toast to pop culture’s favorite shark!

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Comics, words, and pictures, used in congress to tell a story, have been a part of human written communication since the start. From the 32,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain’s Cueva de las Moneda, through the pictograms of early written language, to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, pictures have always stood alongside (or instead of) words. The modern comic strip was born at the end of the 19th Century and came to maturity in the 1920s in a 20-plus-year burst of creativity that saw the introduction of countless iconic strips, including Dick Tracy, Tarzan, The Phantom, Blondie, Thimble Theater and Popeye, Barney Google, Flash Gordon, Alley Oop, Bringing Up Father, Buck Rogers, Joe Palooka, and others. The earliest pictures told stories of heroism, of the hunters who kept them in mastodon meat and sabertooth tiger pelts. When tribes finally settled down into villages and towns, exchanging the excitement of the hunt for the predictability of the crop, artists began creating society’s heroes, weaving written fiction out of spoken legend and adding poetry in both its purest form and in the rhythms of prose. Heroes were created and evolved, from Oedipus and Achilles, across Robin Hood and Don Juan, to Tarzan and Buck Rogers, up through Harry Potter, James Bond, and Jason Bourne, all in the heroicfiction tradition—which, in all these examples, saw the hero born in the fiction. But, for our purposes, we have to begin with Dick Tracy, cartoonist Chester Gould’s hard-hitting, fastpaced police procedural/adventure strip, distributed by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate beginning in 1931. Tracy, a combination of up-to-date crimefighting techniques and raw violence fantastically based on Prohibition–era gang activity, was an immediate success. And it began its run just in time to get in on the growing fields of advertising and licensing, both of which were having comings of age of their own thanks to the new pop media of the 1920s, radio and motion pictures. Tracy was on the air by 1934 and made his big-screen debut in 1937. But before either of those achievements, Detective Tracy became the first comic-strip feature to be turned into prose, as the star of the first Big Little Book in 1932. According to Garyn G. Roberts’ book, Dick Tracy and American Culture: Morality and Mythology, “In all, more than 600 distinct (Big Little Book) titles appeared from Whitman [Publishing] and its followers during the Depression, World War II, and the first years of the Cold War. Most of the books were approximately 4 1/2 inches square and 1 1/2 inches thick... The usual format for these books was a page of text for each page of illustration… Dick Tracy Big Little Books were among the most prolific

Paul Kupperberg

The House of Novels … or Is That the Library of Ideas? Four of the Pocket Books’ Marvel Novel Series from the late 1970s. Don’t you just love those painted covers? Characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Dick Tracy TM & © TMS News & Features, LLC. TM & © DC Comics.

titles produced by Whitman. The Wisconsin-based company alone published 27 different Tracy titles between 1932 and 1967. Besides Tracy, only Little Orphan Annie (with 21 books), Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and a select few others had more than a handful of titles assigned to them.… Three Dick Tracy Big Little Books were adaptations of Republic Pictures movie serials: Detective Dick Tracy and the Spider Gang (1937), Dick Tracy Returns (1939), and Dick Tracy and His G-Men (1941).” Dick Tracy also starred in two Whitman Authorized Editions, full-size hardcover children’s novels with illustrations, Dick Tracy Ace Detective (1943) and Dick Tracy Meets the Nightcrawler (1945). The Racine, Wisconsin-based Whitman Publishing offered its young readers any number of different formats and, in addition to the comics, relied on licenses from Hollywood of interest to girls (Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Betty Grable) and boys (Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Gregory Peck) to feed the demand for their low-priced but highly entertaining illustrated editions. The comic strip proved a fertile source of characters for these early novels, with Blondie and Dagwood, Red Ryder, Winnie Winkle, Smilin’ Jack, April Kane, Invisible Scarlet O’Neill, Brenda Starr, and Tillie the Toiler joining the square-jawed Tracy on the bookshelves. At Grosset & Dunlap, Alex Raymond’s science-fiction strip was turned into prose in 1936’s Flash Gordon in the Caverns of Mongo. Flash was also the star of a single issue of a 1936 pulp, Flash Gordon Strange Adventure Magazine, that featured a Flash Gordon novel, The Masters of Mars, written by James Edison Northford. Big Little Books and other kids’ publishing aside, about the only other place a reader could find prose stories, albeit short ones, starring their favorite comics heroes was in the pages of comic books. A linear descendant of the comic strip, the familiar comic-book format—which first saw life as a 64-page, 10¢ pamphlet reprinting newspaper comic strips—debuted in 1935, but it took the 1938 success of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman in Action Comics #1 to give the medium legs. Within two years, fly-by-night pulp and girly magazine publishers had been transformed by sales of millions of monthly comics at a dime apiece into respectable children’s publishers of some of the country’s most cherished heroes, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Captains, Marvel and America. Kids could subscribe to their favorite comic books, which were mailed out folded in half lengthwise in a paper sleeve, at the cheapest possible postal rate for a periodical, the use of which was governed by rules for such periodicals, including one stating that it must carry at least two pages of text as editorial matter. To meet that requirement, most publishers would run short, generic adventure prose stories. But sometimes, readers would be treated to a prose story starring the title hero, as in early issues of Superman and many issues of Plastic Man and Police Comics. Legendary Marvel Comics writer/editor Stan Lee’s first published work was a prose story in Captain America #3 (1941), “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge!” It wasn’t long before such characters as Superman, Batman and Robin, Captain Marvel, Blackhawk, and Captain America were being carried on the airwaves and starring in movie serials and newspaper comic strips. But other than the USPS–mandated prose stories, only Superman made the leap to prose treatment in The Adventures of Superman by George Lowther, a writer on the Mutual Network’s Superman radio program. It was the first novel to star a comic 4

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book character, and, while written for young readers, it was a serious treatment of this juvenile material and would be the first in-depth telling of Superman’s origin, furnishing many details that would find its way into the comic books. What followed the innovative origin elements was a well-done, fast-paced story involving spies, Nazi saboteurs, and the “Mystery of the Skeleton Ship” in a haunted shipyard. Thanks in large part to the advent of the cheap (25¢) mass-market paperback book, movies and television programs received their share of tie-ins and novelizations throughout the 1950s, but comics were not seen as worth pursuing in the largely adult paperback book market, which seemed to have replaced the dying pulp magazine as an inexpensive delivery system for cheap fiction. Comics were kid stuff, and subversive kid stuff at that; comics were blamed by parents, doctors, and even the US government throughout the 1940s and 1950s for everything from juvenile delinquency to illiteracy. The four-color funnies were best left to comic books and kids’ shows on television. Then came the 1960s and the introduction of two major pop-culture influences that shifted the perception of just who was really reading comic books. The first was the aforementioned Marvel Comics under the editorial guidance of Stan Lee, who, along with artists and co-storytellers Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and others, created a slew of superheroes with amazing superpowers and cosmic foes, but who took off their masks after fighting Galactus and faced their unpaid bills, missed homework assignments, nagging bosses, and a whole soap opera worth of down-toEarth troubles. The average age of readers of an issue of Superman or Sad Sack at the time may have been 11 years old, but The Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Mighty Thor, Sub-Mariner, Daredevil, and others were being read by young adults, college students, and college graduates. The second cultural shift debuted on ABC-TV at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 12, 1966: Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward. To say that the tongue-in-cheek, iconic half-hour show based on what was then a failing DC Comics publication (the flagship title was on the verge of cancellation in 1965 due to low sales) was a success would be an understatement. Produced by William Dozier, Batman was a bona fide 1960s fad, on par with, if not as long-lived, as The Beatles, but right up there with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and James Bond. The success of Batman emboldened Signet Books to come out with several Batman paperbacks, including two original novels in 1966, Batman vs. 3 Villains of Doom and Batman vs. the Fearsome Foursome, both by Winston Lyons (the pseudonym of William Woolfolk, a comics writer from the 1940s who had gone on to considerable success as a mainstream novelist and television writer), the latter being a novelization of the 1966 movie, Batman (a quickie filmed to take advantage of the show’s success, utilizing the cast and crew of the television series). Batman would become one of the most frequently novelized comic-book characters, and was even featured in best-selling suspense novelist Andrew Vachss’ The Ultimate Evil (Warner Books, 1995). Batman’s DC cohort, Superman, received prose treatment as well in 1966, albeit as a young-reader novel from Whitman, Superman Smashes the Secret of the Mad Director. While the 1960s saw a bit of a golden age for TV novelizations, with everything from The Flying Nun to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. making their way to the paperback spinner rack, the pickings were slim in the comics literary vineyard. Marvel owned the end of the 1960s with the lackluster The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker (Bantam Books, 1967) by sciencefiction master (and one-time top Captain Marvel comics scribe) Otto Binder. The story, starring Captain America, Giant-Man, the Wasp, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch featured a beautifully painted cover over a dull, plodding story by a writer who was trying hard to imitate the grit of Marvel Comics. [Editor’s note: Despite the heroes shown on the cover, the Avengers starring in the story are Captain America, Goliath, Hawkeye, Iron Man, and the Wasp.] But Binder, who had spent the bulk of his comics writing career on the cartoony Captain Marvel and the bloodless Superman of the 1950s and early 1960s, could not muster the necessary grit nor understanding of these, the next generation of comic-book characters. Ted White, one of the young Turks of the science fiction community, weighed in on superheroes with his 1968 Captain America solo novel, The Great Gold Steal (Bantam Books). White, an accomplished novelist and a lifelong comic reader who had come up through the ranks of nascent 1950s comic-book fandom, knew his Cap and understood Issue

1977 Novels (left) DC’s secondtier title Challengers of the Unknown got the novel treatment by Ron Goulart, from Dell Books. (right) Also that year, Marvel’s novel line launched with Len Wein and Marv Wolfman’s The Amazing Spider-Man: Mayhem in Manhattan. Challengers TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

what needed to be done to successfully transfer the Star-Spangled Avenger from the comics page to the prose. The Great Gold Steal is a fast-paced adventure that remains a good read nearly 50 years later. Going into the 1970s, the pickings for comics-based novels were eclectic, including a series of 15 novels from Avon featuring Lee Falk’s Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks (including Falk’s own charming The Story of the Phantom, the first in the series), and half a dozen Flash Gordon novels from Avon (1974–1977) credited to the comic strip’s creator, the late Alex Raymond, but actually written by Con Steffanson and Carson Bingham. The Challengers of the Unknown, a marginal DC Comics title, made it into prose in the eponymous-titled novel by science-fiction stalwart Ron Goulart from Dell in 1977; rumors of a big-name movie producer’s interest in the property were bandied about as the reason. The same year, Pocket Books launched an 11-book series starring the heroes of the Marvel Universe (it was supposed to be 12 books, but a Silver Surfer novel written by William Rotsler was scrapped when it was decided that only Stan Lee should be allowed to write the character), packaged by comic-book writers Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, who also wrote the premier book, Mayhem in Manhattan, starring Spider-Man, who was followed by the Hulk, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, X-Men, the Avengers, and Daredevil. In 1978, Elliott S. Maggin’s Superman: The Last Son of Krypton (Warner Books) featured a cover photograph of Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel and used the Superman: The Movie logo, but had little else to do with the movie, thanks to legal complications involving screenwriter Mario Puzo. Two more Superman books were published in conjunction with the films that followed: Miracle Monday, with Superman II in 1981, which was another Warner Books original by Maggin, and William

Kotzwinkle’s straight adaptation of the sorry Superman III (Warner Books, 1983). Another film producer’s interest in the World War II comic Blackhawk, a long-running third-tier feature that survived (but just barely) into the 1980s, caused DC Comics to rush out with a tie-in written by William Rotsler from sister company Warner Books. In the 1990s, comic-book tie-ins received a new lease on life, beginning with half a dozen short-story collections edited by Martin H. Greenberger starring DC’s top heroes—Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman—and featuring stories by the top names in genre fiction, as well as comic-book writers. Marvel Comics signed with book packager and publisher Byron Preiss to publish an extensive series of comic-book novels, starring Spider-Man, X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, the Hulk, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, Generation X, Iron Man, and others. In all, more than 80 Marvel novels and story collections appeared between 1994 and the early 2000s. Thanks to the success in recent years of such Marvel movies as Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, Blade, Punisher, Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four, and The Hulk, these and the other films receive regular novelization treatment, some franchises also spinning off original novels, like 2010’s Iron Man 2. Those years also saw a flood of books from DC’s library of titles that made it to the screen, television and film, including Lois & Clark, Superman, Batman, Catwoman, Constantine, Justice League (animated), The Books of Magic, Smallville, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as well as those based such comic-bookbased storylines as The Death of Superman, Batman’s Knightfall, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Kingdom Come, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and 52. Green Lantern received a hardcover trilogy in the early 2000s, and four novels Bronze

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The front and back covers to William Rotsler’s little-known Blackhawk novel of 1982. TM & © DC Comics.

almost as old as the comics themselves, turning pictures into prose. PAUL KUPPERBERG, currently the executive editor of Charlton Neo Comics and writer of Life with Archie, has written more DC comics than we have room to list here, plus novels and short stories, as well as superhero novels, including Pocket Books’ Spider-Man novel Crime Campaign and Spider-Man/ Hulk novel Murdermoon.

Spider-Man and Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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under the DC Universe umbrella told stories utilizing some of DC’s less popular but more interesting heroes, including the Question in the excellent Helltown by Dennis O’Neil. In 2005, Chronicle Books published It’s Superman!, novelist Tom DeHaven’s take on a Depression–era Man of Steel who was like nothing ever seen in the comics, but who remained a familiar, if flawed, hero. From the smaller publishers and from Great Britain, such characters as Witchblade, Fathom, and Judge Dredd and an assortment of his costars from the pages of 2000 A.D., the British weekly comic magazine in which Dredd debuted in 1971 and has appeared ever since, also starred in novels. Even Dick Tracy made it back to prose with several short-story collections and novels from Bantam Books surrounding the 1990 Warren Beatty Tracy film. The flow of superhero and comics-based novels have slowed in the last couple of years (along with a rise in the number of graphic novels and serious non-fiction treatments of comics and comic books), an early casualty of the diminishing sales of media tie-ins, long a staple of a middle tier of publishing. Watchmen, with the anticipation of a far larger gross than it received, was not novelized, but the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons on which it was based sold some 1.5 million copies in the year leading up to the film. Now that comics and graphic novels have reached a certain level of maturity and, more importantly, popular and critical acceptance, perhaps that is the future of the comic-book movie tie-in: a reliance on the source material and a move away from a tradition

High-Flying Freedom Fighters

The Shadow’s origins—both narratively and editorially— are appropriately shrouded in a fog of mystery, misdirection, and misunderstanding. In a chicken/egg scenario, many get confused whether radio begat the pulp magazine or vice versa. Both ran concurrently throughout the 1930s and ’40s, presenting separate interpretations of the character. In the pulp magazine published by Street & Smith, The Shadow was a mysterious crimefighter, cloaked in black, who prowled the night. On radio, he was more of an amateur sleuth who seemingly possessed the power of invisibility. In 1941, The Shadow’s popularity led to a newspaper strip. Comic books began to aggressively compete with pulp magazines for newsstand space. Walter Gibson, who wrote the lion’s share of The Shadow’s pulp adventures, once suggested that Street & Smith’s reluctance to enter TM the comic-book market stemmed from the fact that its presses weren’t equipped for color. However, when faced with the increasing success of its competitors’ comic-book ventures, the pulp publisher capitulated, subcontracting its comic books to a color printer. The Shadow newspaper strip was restructured in comic-book form. As America became more involved in the war in Europe, daily papers began dropping comic strips. When Vernon Greene, who drew the Shadow strip from Gibson’s scripts, enlisted in the military, a succession of lesser artists took over. The comic book and the pulp both struggled through the 1940s, until both were canceled almost simultaneously in 1949. Five years later, the radio drama left the air. walter gibson In 1964, as Marvel Comics launched a new wave of superheroic characters, Archie Comics attempted a Shadow revival. The first issue remained marginally true to The Shadow’s pulp roots, but starting with the second issue, he was depicted as a typical superhero in green and blue tights and a cape. The series ran eight issues, many written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel. Fans of the character would have to wait another decade for The Shadow’s return.

Philip Schweier

THE SHADOW AND BATMAN – 1973 In 1973, DC Comics licensed The Shadow from Street & Smith’s corporate successor, Condé Nast. Denny O’Neil’s moody Batman stories made him the perfect choice to chronicle new adventures of The Shadow. As both writer and editor of the series, O’Neil found the pulp version of the character much more suitable for comics. “A guy who is invisible is not an ideal character in a visual medium,” O’Neil explains.

Who Knows What Excellence… …lurks on the spin racks of 1973? O’Neil and Kaluta, that’s who! Michael Wm. Kaluta’s iconic cover to DC Comics’ The Shadow #1 (Oct.–Nov. 1973). Colors by Jack Adler. The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

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ANTHONY TOLLIN Tollin is recognized as one of the leading authorities on The Shadow. He discovered the character via reruns of the radio program while growing up in Minneapolis in the 1960s, and began collecting the pulps and paperback reprints. In 1974, he joined the staff of DC Comics, first as a proofreader, later as a colorist. In March 1974, Walter Gibson and John Nanovic, the former editor of The Shadow magazine, were the featured guests at a monthly symposium hosted by the Murder Inc. mystery bookstore in Manhattan. “It was $3 admission,” Tollin explains, “and I went with a couple of friends, Ken Gale and Howard Bender, who later went to work for DC. I brought my 1934 Living Shadow (the first Shadow novel) hardcover for Gibson to autograph, and I remember Howard Bender was rather shocked that I just walked up to Walter and introduced myself and started talking to him.” Gibson and Tollin hit it off, and Tollin was later invited to contribute to Gibson’s retrospective, The Shadow Scrapbook (HBJ, 1979). “I was recruited because I had a very-near-complete Shadow pulp collection at

Dark Knights (top left) Many DC readers first met The Shadow in Batman #253 (Nov. 1973). Cover by Michael Wm. Kaluta. (top center) A handshake between night masters, from Batman #253. (top right) Nick Cardy cover to #253’s sequel, Batman #259 (Nov.–Dec. 1974). (bottom) An undated Kaluta sketch of The Shadow and Batman, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Batman TM & © DC Comics. The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

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The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

Coinciding with the release of The Shadow #1 (Oct.–Nov. 1973), the Master of Darkness was featured in Batman #253 (Nov. 1973), also written by O’Neil. This introduced younger comic fans to The Shadow. However, the writer says the intent was never a marketing gimmick to goose sales of the Shadow series. “Back in those days, sales figures weren’t shared with editors. I just thought it was a cool team-up.” In the story, Batman follows a gang of counterfeiters to a remote ghost town in Arizona, where he is aided from the darkness by a spectral figure in a slouch hat. At the end of the story, the Caped Crusader comes face-to-face with the legendary Master of Darkness. “I’ve never told anyone this … but you were my biggest inspiration,” Batman tells him. Batman and The Shadow met once more, in Batman #259 (Nov.–Dec. 1974), “Night of the Shadow.” Common themes between the two characters are revisited, but the story also reinforced their differences. When The Shadow attempts to present a gift of a gun to Batman, the Caped Crusader declines, citing his distaste for firearms. The story was dedicated “to the memory of our friend Bill Finger,” who wrote many of the early Batman stories. For years, Finger confessed to being directly influenced by The Shadow in his co-creation of the first Batman story. More recently, Shadow expert Anthony Tollin presented evidence that the very first Batman story, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” (Detective Comics #27, May 1939), was lifted, scene for scene, character for character, from “Partners of Peril” (The Shadow, November 1, 1936).

Mid-Century Master The spellbinding artistry of Edd Cartier (1914–2008), sci-fi and pulp artist extraordinaire. (left) Cartier’s “Confronting the Witch” pulp illo, courtesy of Heritage. (right) His rendition of The Shadow.

edd cartier

“Confronting the Witch” © the Edd Cartier estate. The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

THE SHADOW, 1973–1975 Both Shadow/Batman stories were drawn by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano, but finding someone to illustrate DC’s Shadow series proved a challenge. O’Neil’s first choice was Jim Steranko, who would later contribute covers to the many Shadow paperbacks printed in the ’70s. He was given the first script, which O’Neil had based on one of the that time in my Manhattan apartment and I lived about radio programs, but turned in a completely different story. This was perhaps the result five blocks away from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which of his time at Marvel, where artists were often given greater latitude in interpreting the published The Shadow Scrapbook,” Tollin says. “So it was stories. “That’s just not the way things worked [at DC],” O’Neil explains. easy for me to get a little bit of time off from DC and Alex Toth was also considered, but that fell through for similar reasons. According run over for meetings with Walter and bring things over to Tollin, Alex didn’t like Denny’s script, and without asking permission, Toth assigned to be scanned and such.” one of his friends to write a full comic script. “So suddenly, instead of getting the artwork DC colorist Adrienne Roy also contributed to the drawn by Alex Toth back,” explains Tollin, “DC receives a script, a whole different retrospective. She was engaged to Tollin at the time, and for script for the first issue of The Shadow, and a bill for it.” Christmas in 1975, she created a life-size bust of The Bernie Wrightson was also considered for the assignment. “He would have been a great Shadow’s head and shoulders, which appears on the cover choice for The Shadow,” O’Neil says, supported by an incredibly dramatic, full-page Shadow of the book. She later made a copy of the bust, which was house ad drawn by Wrightson. However, when sales on the Wrightson-drawn Swamp Thing presented to Gibson on his 80th birthday. took off, DC management decided he was too important on that title. One of Gibson’s last stories, “Batman With DC paying a fee to Condé Nast, it left less money to hire premium Encounters Gray Face,” was featured in talent. “This is always the problem you have with a book like The Shadow,” Detective Comics #500 (Mar. 1981). says Tollin. “When Marvel was paying a fee to use Conan, they couldn’t The Shadow author passed away on afford to use the first-string talent, which is why it became a star vehicle December 6, 1985, at the age of 88. for Barry Smith.” “Walter was like my surrogate grandWhat O’Neil needed was someone who could follow the script. father,” says Tollin, “and I gave one of According to BACK ISSUE #10 (June 2005), O’Neil and fellow writer the eulogies at his memorial service.” Steve Skeates were discussing the forthcoming Shadow comic as In addition to Gibson, Tollin culthey entered the coffee room at DC Comics, a common hangout tivated friendships with others from for freelancers. Overhearing the need for an artist, Michael Kaluta, The Shadow’s heyday, such as Edd who was just breaking into comics, volunteered. O’Neil paused, left Cartier, one of the pulp’s illustrators, and the room—supposedly to speak with publisher Carmine Infantino— Margot Stevenson, who had played The and returned a few minutes later. “It’s yours,” he said. Shadow’s lovely friend and companion anthony tollin The Shadow was not yet on DC’s publishing schedule, so Kaluta Margo Lane on radio. Tollin has directed cast reunion episodes at old time radio Kendall Whitehouse. Courtesy of Anthony Tollin./FB. was under no deadline pressure to complete the first issue. He juggled it along with “Carson of Venus,” a backup feature appearing in conventions, and written liner notes for collections of The Korak, Son of Tarzan. At the time, he wasn’t very familiar with The Shadow, but soon Shadow, Superman, and The Lone Ranger radio programs. found he had a taste for the 1930s setting, perfectly capturing the run-down New York Tollin says one of the joys of working at DC Comics in City of the Depression. the 1970s was the amazing talent that walked through the Some have likened Kaluta’s work to that of Edd Cartier, who drew interior illustrations door, if only to visit. DC editor Julie Schwartz had known for the pulp magazine. Cartier’s work perfectly captures the smooth, fluid movement science-fiction author Alfred Bester since the 1940s, when of The Shadow, and Kaluta appears to have gone to great lengths to emulate the Bester wrote the original Green Lantern comic. He left that finesse without copying Cartier’s style. job to write scripts for The Shadow radio program, and later At first, The Shadow proved to be a critical and commercial success for DC. Will Murray, passed those old scripts on to Tollin. a well-known pulp historian, has described this version of The Shadow as a blend of “I love The Shadow,” Tollin says, “but I suspect a lot of the prior incarnations—the pulps, the radio show, and later novels, as well as O’Neil’s own that has been perpetuated by my friendships with these elements. In an article published in Comic Book Marketplace (August 2003), he credits people. It’s been enriched beyond the printed page.” Bronze

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No Secrets from The Shadow A mind-numbing Kaluta original art page from DC’s issue #1, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Condé Nast.

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License to Kill(ustrate) (top row) Jack Adler’s colors gave Michael Kaluta’s early Shadow covers a pulpish feel. (bottom) The truck’s license plates on this splash page to The Shadow #4 (Apr –May 1974) provide credits to Kaluta’s art helpers for the issue. TM & © Condé Nast.

O’Neil’s skill as a writer for bringing together so many disparate versions of The Shadow and making the whole concept work. According to Tollin, DC production manager Jack Adler had been in the comic-book industry since Action Comics #1. The covers of the first four issues of The Shadow were among the last covers Adler colored for DC. The first two featured painted covers, evoking the pulp magazines of yesteryear. New fans clamored for an origin story, though throughout the character’s history, that had never been fully explored. During the original pulp run (1932–1949), fragments had been revealed and snippets were shared, but they were often vague and contradictory. Many would argue this mystery only adds to The Shadow’s appeal, preferring to view him not as a mortal man, but rather as a supernatural force. The Shadow predated the wave of “grim ’n’ gritty” characters that would follow in the 1980s. Unlike other superheroes up to michael wm. kaluta this time, The Shadow killed his foes, or placed them in a position in which their evil © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. tendencies led to their demise. To make this work, readers had to believe … The Shadow knew! The Shadow knew the evil that lurks in the hearts of men (and women), and possessed a mystical ability to discern the good from the guilty, the evil from the innocent. In fact, The Shadow was so different from typical superheroes of the 1970s, the book was not listed with other superhero books in DC’s subscription ads. Instead, it could be found with mystery/ horror titles such as House of Secrets and The Unexpected. The Shadow #2 (Dec. 1973–Jan. 1974) was also an adaptation, this time of “The Freak Show Murders” from the May 1944 Bronze

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issue of the pulp magazine. The Shadow #3 (Feb.–Mar. 1974) was also taken from a radio story, but as the series began to build an audience, O’Neil began crafting completely new adventures. However, the book began to falter as Kaluta turned in the artwork for The Shadow #2 late, and it soon became clear that hitting his deadlines was going to be a challenge. “Missing deadlines has been the curse of comic books since the 1940s,” explains O’Neil. “It was my single biggest problem in my 17 years as an editor.” And this anxiety is magnified when applied to everyone involved—pencilers, inkers, letterers, colorists, etc. “I don’t know if it’s because some artists are so invested in the work, and they’re too much of a perfectionist to let the work go, or if it’s a lack of discipline, or maybe they didn’t see comics as a serious medium.” The Shadow was Kaluta’s first ongoing series, and his workload soon became more than he could handle. Not only was he drawing The Shadow and the “Carson of Venus” backup stories, but also the “Spawn of Frankenstein” feature in Phantom Stranger. Perhaps had he surrendered one of the backups, The Shadow would have proved easier to manage. Recognizing the need to get back on schedule, Kaluta enlisted the assistance of his studio mate, Bernie Wrightson, for The Shadow #3. They each shared penciling duties, and then would swap pages and ink one another’s work. Wrightson also took the time to help Kaluta on The Shadow #4 (Apr.–May 1974). Joining them were artists Steve Hickman and Howard Chaykin. For their assistance, Kaluta sneaked credit into the opening splash page, which depicts a truck roaring down the highway. The license plates on the front of the truck contain each artist’s name and the pages they worked on. Artists such as Kaluta, Wrightson, and Chaykin would go on to become rock stars in the world of comic books, but during this time they were still journeymen mastering their craft. Tollin compares this era to that of the Parisian literary circles of the 1920s. “I was working at Marvel in 1973 and started at DC in ’74. Our generation would get together for parties at the studio that Kaluta shared with Bernie Wrightson, Jeff Jones, and Barry Windsor-Smith. And I remember him bringing me out to the roof, and I think this somewhere in the West 20s.” The view of the warehouse districts and the back alleys of Manhattan enabled Kaluta to frank robbins capture the mood and atmosphere of New York City in the 1930s. “He caught that warehouse district or Manhattan waterfront, or Chinatown,” says Tollin. “But the action, the death trap, the thrills of movie serial cliffhangers, were really not a part of his Shadow, as they had been in the Shadow pulps.” O’Neil admired Kaluta’s work, but suggests the artist might have been better served applying his talent in a manner that didn’t require producing a large body of work within a specified time. He says Kaluta hated answering the phone. “He told me he was always afraid it might be me asking where the job was.” The Shadow #5 (June–July 1974) featured the work of fill-in artist Frank Robbins, whose angular style was a sharp contrast to Kaluta’s, and comparing their respective work was like comparing an energetic jitterbug to a graceful ballet. “Frank Robbins had more of that Jack Kirby/Marvel–style thrills,” says Tollin. “Leaping figures and blazing .45s and dynamic action.” Robbins had worked as a newspaper strip artist since the 1940s. He entered the comic-book field in 1968 and was soon writing several titles for DC. His reputation for reliability was every editor’s dream. According to Tollin, Robbins would draw the six dailies for his Johnny Hazard strip on Monday. “Tuesday morning he would do the Sunday strip, pencil and ink. Tuesday afternoon he would erase and clean up the next week’s strips. And then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday he did comic-book work.” The Shadow #5 also launched a pattern for subsequent Shadow tales. “Night of Neptune’s Death” was the first in a series, followed

A Frank Departure After a fill-in on (top) The Shadow #5 (June–July 1974), artist Frank Robbins became the Shadow artist—briefly. (bottom) An action sequence drawn by Robbins, from issue #7. TM & © Condé Nast.

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by such titles as “Night of the Ninja,” “Night of the Beast,” “Night of the ‘Okay, but what’s the hook? What’s so interesting or different about it?’ Mummy,” and so on. “Titles have never come easy for me,” O’Neil says. So I said, ‘Well, now this is the best part. I was saving this for last.’ “Since all of The Shadow’s adventures take place at night, I figured And I’m just trying to think and think and think. I said, ‘Well, you know why not go with that and make it easier on myself.” how they’re going over the falls in barrels back then? What The Shadow #6 (Aug.–Sept 1974) proved to be Kaluta’s about false bottoms in the barrels, and that’s where they’re last issue. Even though he managed to turn it in on time, hiding the drugs. They’re going over the Canadian side DC management had lost faith in him, and pulled him and they’re washing up on the American side. That’s off the book. Many fans were disappointed when how they’re getting them through.’ ” Robbins replaced him, but in fairness, Kaluta’s work Denny approved Michael’s idea, and Uslan confion The Shadow was a hard act to follow. Despite such dently promised him a script by 6 p.m. the following a brief tenure initially, Kaluta has become closely evening. On the train ride home to New Jersey, Uslan identified as an illustrator of The Shadow. began crafting his story. After pulling an all-nighter, he It was at this time that Tollin started as proofreader continued writing on his morning commute to the DC at DC. Issues #7 and 8 were in the drawer for him to offices, where he struck a deal with a production departreview. However, Sol Harrison, DC’s vice president, told ment employee. “She would start typing up my script him the book was canceled due to disappointing sales. and I would give her corrections to make, and by six Then the figures came in on Robbins’ first o’clock that next night I handed the script in to Denny, michael uslan Shadow issue. Sales jumped so much the book was and I was officially a professional comic-book writer.” put back on the schedule retroactively. In order to © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. The Shadow #9 (Feb.–Mar. 1975), “Night of the maintain its established schedule, Denny O’Neil needed a story right Falling Death,” opens with an inmate on Death Row pleading for away for The Shadow #9. Enter Michael Uslan. The Shadow, who visits him in his cell moments before the execution. While an undergrad at Indiana University, Uslan had taught the very The doomed man sets The Shadow on the trail of the smugglers, in a first college credited course on comic scene lifted from one of The books. Publicity surrounding the class Shadow’s radio adventures. drew the attention of both Marvel When Uslan’s high school history Comics and DC, both offering their class was studying the 1930s and support. Uslan received a phone call ’40s, the teacher played a record from Harrison inviting him to New album featuring excerpts from old York City to discuss ways they might radio programs, including The be able to work together. “As a result Shadow. “It was that excerpt,” says of that trip, DC Comics hired me,” Uslan, “where it started and ended, says Uslan. The plan was for him to that I used as the beginning of my work for DC in New York in the first Shadow story, because I only summer, with Sol Harrison as his heard the three-minute excerpt on mentor. In the fall, when he returned the record album, and never, ever, to IU, he would be on retainer so he ever knew what happened in the rest could still work on smaller projects. of the episode. So I then created the Uslan says, “I would spend a lot story, always thinking about what of lunch times with Sol, and Jack happened after those three minutes, Adler, and ask them a zillion questions in an episode I never heard.” because I’m a history buff, and when With DC’s page count fluctuating it comes to comic-book history, I want between 18 and 20, there were to know everything. They were telling two extra pages to be filled. Tollin me volumes and volumes of great contributed a text piece entitled old stories and filling in blanks. It was “The Shadow—A Dossier,” which really quite wonderful, just a very, was his first comic byline also. very special time for me.” After Uslan had returned to Uslan relates how he was preparing Indiana, he received a call from Sol to leave the office one evening when Harrison. “He tells me, ‘Your Shadow he heard yelling and screaming story is in. I’m sending you a copy of coming from the direction of Denny your first issue, and I have a surprise O’Neil’s office. “I went running for you.’ Maybe he was sending me a down to his office and said, ‘Are you copy of the cover proof or something okay? It sounds like someone is like that. But he knew that Joe Kubert being murdered.’” was one of my favorite artists of all O’Neil was far from okay. He had time, and they had Joe Kubert do the just learned The Shadow was back cover of my first Shadow, and that on the schedule, and a script was was amazing to me.” needed immediately. Recognizing an Because it was Uslan’s first opportunity, Uslan quickly spoke up. professional work as a comic-book “Well, I have an idea for a story.” Grasping at a lifeline, O’Neil pressed him for details. Uslan’s creative wheels began turning—slowly. Recently returned from Niagara Falls, “I have a surprise for you.” he remembered people had gone over the falls in barrels back in the That’s what DC president Sol Harrison told writer 1930s and ’40s, and crossed the falls on tightropes. “So I said, ‘What about The Shadow battling the bad guy on a tightrope over Niagara Michael Uslan about his first issue of The Shadow (#9, Falls at night, with the floodlights going on in the background?’ ” Feb.–Mar. 1975), the surprise being this cover by Joe O’Neil liked the visual, but needed a story, which Uslan began to cook up on the spot. “I said, ‘Oh, well, I was just getting to that. The story Kubert, one of Uslan’s favorite artists. … is … about … um, smuggling.’ I’m trying to buy myself time while my wheels are turning. ‘They … are … smuggling drugs.’ And Denny says, TM & © Condé Nast. Bronze

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The Shadow’s New Artist Splash page to writer Denny O’Neil’s “Night of the Damned,” illustrated by E. R. Cruz, from DC’s last issue (for a while), The Shadow #12 (Aug.–Sept. 1975). TM & © Condé Nast.

Bringing Frank Robbins back was another matter, as he was now working for Marvel. “Marvel was just thrilled to get Frank,” says Tollin, “and he got a raise. When Robbins was asked to do The Shadow again, he reportedly embellished how much of a raise he got by $5. Carmine knew how much he was actually getting and was unhappy that Robbins had exaggerated the amount and threw him out. Now that’s the story I heard. This was pretty much around the time that I was starting in production at DC.” Taking over art chores was E. R. Cruz, one of the many Filipino artists recruited in the mid-1970s. Cruz had never been to America. “His knowledge of America was based on old Warner Brothers movies,” explains O’Neil. “But it worked, that whole film noir/gangster style. He was a pleasant surprise to work with, and much better than people give him credit for.” Tollin agrees. “I am extremely partial to E. R. Cruz on The Shadow. I think he had the mood and the atmosphere of Kaluta with a lot of the sense of placement of blacks and action dramatics, you know, knowing when to emphasize and such, that Robbins had.” “I think Cruz did an absolutely wonderful job on both The Shadow and the Avenger and in the graphic storytelling,” says Uslan, referring to The Shadow #11 (June–July 1975). That story co-starred the cast of Justice, Inc., another DC title based on a Condé Nast pulp property. “What was so daunting about it was, I was told to do this team-up. To me, one of the things that makes them interesting is they both have groups of agents, these ‘normal-ish’ people that they work with. So I had writer, O’Neil felt at the time that he was a bit of The Shadow and his agents. I had the Avenger and an experiment. “But he was and is tremendously Justice, Inc. Then I needed a big enough villain, and enthusiastic,” says O’Neil, and made Uslan the since the Avenger never had any great villains in his permanent alternating writer on The Shadow. The plan history, and The Shadow only had a couple, I decided e. r. cruz was for them to take turns, each one scripting every it was time to bring Shiwan Khan back.” other issue. This would free O’Neil up for other Courtesy ComicVine.com. O’Neil had purposely avoided using Shiwan assignments, while providing Uslan with some valuable comic-book Khan, The Shadow’s most infamous foe, but gave his approval for Uslan writing experience, under O’Neil’s supervision. to do so. “I thought it would be a really cool thing to hint at the links in As The Shadow #9 was being finished, DC executives Sol Harrison the backgrounds between Khan’s training and The Shadow’s training,” and Carmine Infantino informed O’Neil and Uslan that DC was going says Uslan. “So I added that piece into the fold.” to compete with Marvel in the field of black-and-white magazines. He also relates how they were getting fan mail complaining about DC intended to launch a line of what was then called “M-rated”— how The Shadow would storm into a hail of bullets from the bad guys for mature—black-and-white magazines. without ever getting hit. Credibility was strained. The writer crafted a “They [Harrison and Infantino] felt the only character-driven, super- simple explanation for someone who can cloud men’s minds. “I added heroic title that deserved to be M-rated would be The Shadow,” one line in #11 where Khan says something like, ‘Fire two feet to the explains Uslan. “They would let us go in terms of the violence quotient left of him. That’s where he really is. He’s not where you think he is.’ or whatever we wanted to do to tell the story. That got a lot of positive reaction.” Also, DC had cut back on the number of pages, from 20 to 18. However, the book had lost momentum. Licensed properties have “We were all bemoaning that very loudly,” says Uslan. “How do you a reputation for not being very profitable, and DC chose to bring the tell a story in 17–18 pages? So now, in the black-and-white magazine, series to an end with The Shadow #12 (Aug.–Sept. 1975). we were going to have 68 pages, or 64 pages, or whatever it was. Uslan says a plot discussion for #13 never happened, since they It was going to be a whole new thing.” knew #12 would be the final issue, but O’Neil remembers differently. Uslan was very excited when O’Neil suggested they feature the “Nobody told me it was being canceled. I found out from the subscription origin of The Shadow in the black-and-white magazine. Uslan began house ad that ran in the comics. All the titles were listed in alphabetical to drop hints, building toward the origin they expected to tell. order, and there was a gap where The Shadow should have been. It had For instance, In The Shadow #11, an Asian foe manages to strip the red been whited out at the last minute.” scarf from The Shadow’s face. When he sees The Shadow’s exposed O’Neil regards the series as with fondness and pride. “At the time,” features, he screams, “The Dark Eagle!” and leaps from the lighthouse he says, “another editor told me it was the best series to come out of to get away. A caption read, ‘The secret of the Dark Eagle, whatever it DC in years.” may be, is lost to an unsuspecting world.” Uslan would like to see a definitive collection of the entire 12-issue However, DC’s line of black-and-white magazines never materialized. series, including the Shadow/Batman crossovers. “Those two stories DC canceled the plan, believing Marvel had too big of a jump in were sensational,” he gushes. “It is a total pity that those two stories that part of the business. The Shadow comic book continued in its have never been reprinted in all these decades. They need to be. standard format. They need to be.” 14

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THE SHADOW: BLOOD & JUDGMENT (1986) In 1984, DC began to experiment by distributing some titles only to comic-book stores and specialty shops. This enabled its creative staff to develop more ambitious stories. “Just as DC intended to use The Shadow to test the black-and-white waters,” explains Tollin, “when it came to do a more adult, non–Comics Code book sold only through comic-book stores, they got The Shadow again.” At the time, Howard Chaykin was riding a wave of critical and commercial success thanks to his groundbreaking American Flagg! with indie publisher First Comics. He had recently left the book, and was approached by DC editorial director Dick Giordano at the 1985 San Diego Comic-Con. “At the time, I was already planning to move to Southern California,” Chaykin recalls, “and after I accepted the job, Dick told me the book was already on the schedule. So my wife rented us a place the end of September, and on October 6th we moved in. But our belongings were a week late in arriving, so as the movers are taking stuff off the truck, I’m assembling my drawing table. By the time they were done, I’d penciled the first cover, which also became the poster.” Though he enjoyed the 1940 Shadow serial starring Victor Jory, Chaykin’s only familiarity with The Shadow stemmed from paperback reprints published in the 1960s. But he appreciated the franchise, and remembered DC’s earlier series. “I loved Denny and Mike’s work. When Robbins took over, I didn’t care much for his artwork, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate its brilliance.” Chaykin quickly made up for lost time, reading books on the character in addition to some of the pulp stories. The series—entitled Blood and Judgment—was released in 1986, a banner year for DC Comics. Other high-profile projects released at the time include The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Superman was about to undergo a major overhaul, courtesy of John Byrne. Chaykin chose to deviate from The Shadow’s pulp roots by setting the bulk of the series in the “Me Decade” of the 1980s, something he

believes was an editorial necessity. “Pulps are the ancestors of comics,” he says, “but it’s commercially difficult to interest the audience in a nostalgia property. They can’t identify with a product from the 1930s, which was canceled in 1949.” He also crafted a viable origin story, something comics had never explored in great detail. The second issue flashes back to the early 1930s, when drug smuggler Lamont Cranston hires pilot Kent Allard to ferry him out of China. Overburdened by contraband, the plane crashes in the Himalayas, and the two expatriate Americans are taken in at Shambala, a hidden haven of advanced technology. The corrupt Cranston regards the city as an opportunity to be exploited. Allard foils his plans, and receives training that turns him into The Shadow. Believing Cranston to be dead, he adopts his identity. Decades later, The Shadow returns from the Far East when he learns of the murders of his former agents. To investigate the killings, he establishes a new network of operatives, a motley band of misfits and social outcasts quite unlike his more respectable agents from the 1930s. It is revealed the original Lamont Cranston, now aged and infirmed, is at the root of the plot. Having drawn The Shadow out of exile, he attempts nuclear blackmail to persuade Allard to take him back to Shambala, where its advanced science will prolong his life. The modern-day setting alienated many fans that would have preferred to see The Shadow remain firmly rooted in the 1930s. What they may have failed to realize is that the Depression–era setting is more than simply the Manhattan of the 1930s. It also includes cultural elements, and the attitudes of the people who inhabit that period. Chaykin, who has done work set in a variety of eras, recognizes this as one of the pitfalls of nostalgic material: contemporary culture tends to impose contemporary ideas on period stories. “When I do period work,” he says, “I try to convey period sensibility.” With The Shadow, he argues the character is simply a product of his times. “I saw him as someone born just before the turn of the century,” Chaykin adds. “I think it was implicit that he would be an elitist, casually bigoted and sexist. It’s necessary to convey the sensibilities of the period. Anything else would be grossly dishonest.”

The Shadow Returns (background) This 1986 retailer poster promoted writer/ artist Howard Chaykin’s new Shadow miniseries. (left) Maturing themes in comic books allowed Chaykin to push the envelope with The Shadow’s graphic content. Double-page spread from issue #1 in original art form, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Condé Nast.

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Stylish Shadow While many remember Chaykin’s Shadow miniseries for its violence, let’s not overlook its accomplishments in style and composition. Covers to issues #2–4. (below) An undated Shadow sketch by Howard, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Condé Nast.

“I considered pulling it back when I saw what the issue was,” recalls However, he is quick to point out that whatever attitudes he may apply to a character are not necessarily a reflection of his own views. Tollin, “and then a friend said, ‘You know, Walter would do interviews for whoever wanted to interview him. He didn’t mind if it was the National “People sometimes confuse a character’s voice for my own, and this Enquirer or some other trashy tabloid. Walter loved having articles about boggles my mind.” Perhaps had The Shadow continued to be published consistently him.’ My tribute to Walter in the first issue of the Chaykin series certainly over the years as Superman and Batman were, he would have evolved had a larger audience of fans than any fanzine at that time.” Still, 30 years later, Chaykin remains proud of the miniseries. “It’s fairly with the times as they did. Instead, the character is a relic of its times, violent, and funny in places,” he says. However, he’s disappointed that and to some fans, a sacred one at that. This would include science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, who the second chapter was heavily censored. For instance, one scene set supposedly was working on a Shadow project with Mike Kaluta at the in a bar in 1930s Shanghai used specific names and dialogue. Chaykin was asked to tone it down. “It was so much uglier before Andy [Helfer, time. Fantagraphics was to publish it, but it never materialized. On a editor] imposed a lot of censorship on that second Los Angeles-based radio program he hosted, Ellison referred to The issue,” he said. “I was appalled, but I was in California Shadow as “beloved to people of my generation.” He then went so I couldn’t go to the office and scream.” on to describe Chaykin’s interpretation as a “sexist pig who uses Nevertheless, Chaykin says he had a great time people, sacrifices people, hasn’t one grain of decency working on the series, and is overall very satisfied in him. He’s a psychopathic killer.” with the results. “Maybe the coloring could be Chaykin argues that his depiction was better,” he suggests, “and maybe I legitimate. “The Shadow is not the best guy got too ambitious graphically. But I in the world. He’s a hero because he serves made Harlan Ellison’s head explode.” others’ needs, but he’s not a nice person. He’s above the fray.” THE SHADOW (1987–1989) Many fans were very unhappy with Chaykin’s radical After The Shadow, Chaykin moved on to other departure from The Shadow’s roots, viewing it as a lack projects, but DC wasn’t quite ready to let go of the of respect and complete disregard for the pulp hero as character just yet. Building on the momentum created by Gibson. Chaykin’s work has often stretched established by the mini-series, a new ongoing the boundaries for explicit content, and Blood and title was launched, written by Andrew Judgment featured a great deal of violence when Helfer, Chaykin’s editor. His first story arc compared to most comic books. However, he featured the return of The Shadow’s most argues it reflects the tone of the pulps, which infamous nemesis, Shiwan Khan. were often lurid and violent. One scene in According to Tollin, the Archie Comics Chaykin’s story featured a man stuffed series in the ’60s featured Shiwan Khan as inside a water cooler, which he says was the villain in seven of its eight issues. “I wonder borrowed from the pulps. if those of us of my generation, whether they Anthony Tollin had supplied a reference liked the series or not, if that was the series book to Chaykin. “I had Xeroxed it for him, that really cemented Shiwan Khan as The on The Shadow’s agents, and I was rather Shadow’s arch nemesis,” Tollin muses. unhappy to find how he used that, in killing “Those of us who grew up in the Silver off the agents. I have a friend who was also Age grew up with Shiwan Khan, even a friend of Walter Gibson’s, who said that, though he wasn’t The Shadow in his blue-and‘If Walter hadn’t died the month before it howard chaykin green costume. I would also suggest another came out, it might have killed him.’ Walter thing that did it was the Mysterious Press hardcover in ’84, would not have been happy to see his © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. which reprinted two of the Shiwan Khan novels. characters murdered in such grisly manner.” Bill Sienkiewicz was tapped to draw the series, having mastered the Tollin was not asked to color Chaykin’s Shadow story, nor the ongoing series that followed.” However, he provided text pieces on moody nighttime atmosphere while working on Marvel’s Moon Knight. the history of the character in print, on radio, and in film, as well However, his art style, which had once been reminiscent of Neal Adams, as background information on The Shadow’s supporting cast. had begun to evolve in a more personal direction. While he created He also contributed an obituary of Gibson in the first issue of the several memorable covers, some readers regarded his interior work as uneven, and Sienkiewicz left after The Shadow #6 (Jan. 1988). miniseries. 16

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All-Star Shadow (top) Art for the 1987 promo poster touting DC’s new Shadow monthly, pairing artist Bill Sienkiewicz with writer Andy Helfer. (center) Sienkiewicz’s cover for #6 and Marshall Rogers’ for #7. (bottom) Kyle Baker covers for #9 and 16. TM & © Condé Nast.

The Shadow #7 (Feb. 1988; at right) was a standalone story penciled by Marshall Rogers and inked by Kyle Baker. Baker then took over art chores beginning with the second arc, “Seven Deadly Finns,” that began in The Shadow #8 (Mar. 1988). The series continued the deviation from The Shadow’s pulp roots, leading to division among many fans. Traditionalists felt it pushed the boundaries of satire, often skewing into absurdity. More open-minded readers appreciated its dark humor, and many defend it as an interesting experiment of an alternative version. The Shadow #13 (Aug. 1988) ended with the apparent death of The Shadow, leading directly to The Shadow Annual #2, a bright spot for both camps. At first the story appears to be a rip-off of Citizen Kane, the classic 1939 film written and directed by Orson Welles. Entitled “Agents,” it follows a young journalist’s search for the meaning behind The Shadow’s dying word. As with Citizen Kane, the answer is provided to the audience at the end, along with a closing tribute: “For Orson Welles—the Master’s voice,” reminding readers of his pivotal role in The Shadow’s history. The final six issues of the series are a go-for-broke storyline entitled “Body and Soul.” As agents try to come to terms with the death of their chief, The Shadow’s two sons return to Shambala with the body of their father. However, the head is separated along the way, and grafted onto an immense mechanical body, bringing the series to a close with issue #19 (Jan. 1989). One rumor is that Condé Nast had grown increasingly unhappy with the irreverent manner in which its property was being handled, and demanded the book be canceled. However, DC editor Brian Augustyn refutes that. “I can pretty conclusively say that Condé Nast did not pull the plug,” he says. “I think what pulled the plug more than anything was Helfer and Baker having come as far as they wanted to. I don’t recall exactly whether that was something that sort of petered out, or if they reached the end of it or a place they wanted to be. In any case, I don’t believe in any way that it was Condé Nast or even DC involving themselves. I have a feeling the creators just reached a plateau of some sort and moved on. According to Tollin, there was to be a Shadow Annual resolving the storyline, but Helfer and Baker fell behind on the two-issue Justice, Inc. miniseries. By the time they found time to do it, DC’s follow-up series, The Shadow Strikes!, was well underway. Bronze

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O’NEIL AND KALUTA, REUNITED In 1988, Marvel Comics revisited the O’Neil/Kaluta era by teaming them for a new story, The Shadow: 1941 (Hitler’s Astrologer). Denny O’Neil had moved over to Marvel, and when he realized there was an opportunity to produce a new graphic novel, he contacted Kaluta and suggested another go. Kaluta enlisted Bernie Wrightson as inker. O’Neil discovered that Hitler had an astrologer, and used that historical trivia as the basis for the plot. Set against the growing storm clouds of war, The Shadow becomes embroiled in what appears to be a plan to exploit Hitler’s interest in the supernatural. Kaluta was reportedly disappointed with O’Neil’s script, and spoke with Larry Hama, the editor on the project. Kaluta soon became convinced that Hama hadn’t read the script, and rather than consult with O’Neil, he chose to extensively rewrite it himself. To his credit, he did a great deal of research into how the occult played a role in the Nazi regime. However, the project turned sour. Most of the pencils were done when Wrightson stepped down as inker. Kaluta was scrambling. He had tailored his illustrations to play to Wrightson’s strengths, leaving gaps the inker was expected to fill. Russ Heath was chosen to ink the book. He had started drawing comics in 1942, and over the years had worked on many war and Western titles. He could render various World War II elements easily, allowing Kaluta to concentrate on mood and atmosphere. While the reunion of O’Neil and Kaluta promised fans an adventure reminiscent of their earlier collaboration, its reception was lukewarm. Hama left Marvel before the project was finished. Some story elements, such as using Cyrillic writing to depict a Russian officer swearing, were lost on many readers. Rather than end with the traditional “Weed of crime bears bitter fruit” coda, the final panel shows a non-descript silhouette on a houseboat, offering very little in the way of closure. The story didn’t quite end; it merely stopped. O’Neil was unhappy with how much the published story deviated from his original script. “Marvel Comics was not a happy place at the time,” according to O’Neil. “but we did the best we could.” Despite the disappointment among Shadow fans, DC Comics eased the sting by collecting the previous O’Neil/Kaluta stories into a single volume, The Private Files of The Shadow in 1989. The artwork was greatly enhanced by the full-process color, presented beneath a new cover, along with a brand-new story, “In the Toils of Wing Fat.” Written and drawn by Kaluta, the story is presented without dialogue. Instead, it uses captions taken from the fast-paced patter of a radio news commentator.

Together Again (top) The cover from O’Neil and Kaluta’s bittersweet Shadow reunion, Marvel’s Hitler’s Astrologer graphic novel. Inks by Russ Heath, colors by Mark Chiarello and friends. (bottom) From Heritage’s archives, Kaluta original art for an illo produced in 1988 for DC’s Private Files collection (inset). TM & © Condé Nast.

THE ROCKETEER: CLIFF’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE (1988) Despite the rights being tied up between DC and Marvel, The Shadow is recognized for an additional appearance at the time, in the pages of the Rocketeer Adventure Magazine. Writer/artist Dave Stevens had featured a thinly veiled Doc Savage in his first Rocketeer adventure. With the action moving to Manhattan for the sequel, it seemed appropriate that the Rocketeer encounter the other major character of the pulp era. As with the Man of Bronze, Stevens skirted copyright concerns by never mentioning The Shadow by name. But it was obvious to fans, and a genuine treat. The first two issues were released by Comico the Comic Company in 1988 and 1989, after which the company folded. Dark Horse released the third and final chapter in 1995. A year later, the series was collected into tradepaperback form as The Rocketeer: Cliff’s New York Adventure.

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THE SHADOW STRIKES! (1989–1992) Ten months after the end of Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker’s Shadow series, DC Comics launched a new title, The Shadow Strikes! Many Shadow aficionados regard it as the best of the comic-book adaptations of the character. Editor Brian Augustyn recalls, “I was approached by my immediate supervisor, Mike Gold, and our editorin-chief, Dick Giordano, with, ‘We still have the license from Condé Nast for a while. Do we still want to be in the Shadow business? Are you interested in taking it over?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ ” Augustyn was introduced to The Shadow by his father. “I was about nine,” he recalls, “and he said, ‘There’s this really cool thing I grew up with and now they’re replaying it on the radio,’ and it became a ritual for us. It was on an FM station in the early/mid-1960s, and very often to find an FM station meant we were in the car. So my dad and I would drive around for half an hour, listening to Orson Welles and the others who brought The Shadow to life. The Shadow paperbacks introduced me to the original pulps. So I’ve been a fan all those years. There was no question that when someone said to me, ‘Do you want to do The Shadow?’, I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ ” Augustyn remembers Giordano suggesting the book be set in the 1930s. The first issue, cover-dated September 1989, features The Shadow blasting away with a Tommy gun at off-panel bad guys, suggesting a more traditional approach. Stephen F. Hickman, who had assisted Kaluta on the fourth issue of DC’s first series, provided the fully painted cover. Unlike previous DC series, the book was titled The Shadow Strikes! “I was asked to come up with a variant title,” says Augustyn, “and had just enough knowledge of the character’s history to remember there had been a serial with that title, and always thought it was a great title, so I used it for the comic. It definitely spoke of the sensibility we were going after.” Augustyn chose Gerard Jones, who was writing El Diablo, to write the series. “I knew of him first for having written a comics history book that I thought was fun and breezy. And then he’d written some stuff for the original incarnation of Malibu [Comics], including a book called The Big Prize, which took place in the ’30s. So it struck me that he had the right blend of pulp and historical awareness and a genuine feel for the language of the times and the excitement of the period.” Jones’ dad had also introduced him style while working for a South American to the character via replays of the old publisher. “His style included this very radio program. “The one time I remember sort of [Milton] Caniff inspired ’30s–’40s vividly was when some radio nostalgia comic-strip style,” says Augustyn. “So show played an episode of the old when I was thinking, ‘Who could do Orson Welles series,” Gerard says. brian augustyn period?’, having just gone over with Ed “My dad complained about how a number of samples, I think in my they’d ruined the character for radio, how Lamont Cranston wasn’t his real secret identity, how mind just went, ‘Well, I bet he could do it.’ He did one feeble the ‘power to cloud men’s minds’ was compared piece as a sample for me and it was dead on the money.” To color The Shadow Strikes!, no one was better suited to the real Shadow’s twin .45s.” Jones was interested in the pulp version, but was than Anthony Tollin. “I’d known Anthony around the offices for the handful of years that I’d been there,” says disappointed when he first read the books. “I was starting my own writing career, and like most young writers I had Augustyn. “I knew from conversations with him that fierce, visceral, usually narrow opinions about other writers. he was an expert on The Shadow and an expert at color. And Walter Gibson’s style just didn’t sit well with me.” So it seemed natural to include him because he would get it right and once more, as a member of the team, So even though he had a strong emotional attachment he brought a lot of backstory, research, and support.” to the character, and a decent intellectual understanding Tollin and his wife, Adrienne, had left the staff at DC in of him, he had read very little of the original material. However, Anthony Tollin was able to recommend some favor of working freelance, often collaborating on projects. He has high praise for her influence on his own work. of the better pulp stories. Eduardo Barreto was selected to draw the book. Based “I would never have been able to color The Shadow Strikes! in Uruguay, he was trained in a very European, classical properly if I hadn’t worked on Batman all those years with Bronze

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Striking Back Stephen F. Hickman, who assisted Michael Kaluta on the fourth issue of DC’s original Shadow series, painted this spectacular cover to launch the newest incarnation of the series, The Shadow Strikes! #1 (Sept. 1989). TM & © Condé Nast.

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Prince of Darkness The wizardry of Eduardo Barreto is clear from this page 2 splash from the second issue of The Shadow Strikes!, nicely enhanced by Anthony Tollin’s nuanced, monochromatic colors. Note the stylized mist, where the credits are placed. TM & © Condé Nast.

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Tollin also cites Gerard Jones as having a hand in the look of The Shadow Strikes! “There is an early issue, around #7 or 8, which takes place in a movie theater in the 1930s. Gerry wrote me a note saying that he went to a revival house showing classic black-and-white films. While watching the movie, if you looked at the audience, they appeared to be in values of silver because they were being lit up by the silver screen. It wasn’t a full spectrum of color. The light that was reflecting off the audience had that silver tone of the movie screen, and he asked if I could try and pick that up in the coloring.” He also cites a scene that took place in China. “He mentioned to me that he noticed around sunset that the sidewalks and streets would tend to pick up the red hues of the sunset. Now that’s the kind of color observation you’re not used to getting from a writer. It helped me color those things in Hong Kong and give them a more exotic feel. I picked up on the sidewalk, and even had the blacktop have a reddish area of gray rather than a blue-ish area of gerard jones gray that we normally use. Courtesy GerardJones.blogspot.com. “I have to credit Gerard Jones with a lot of the things that inspired me in the coloring, because I have never received as intelligent color suggestions in all the time I was in comics as I received from Gerard Jones.” The first issue of The Shadow Strikes! features an homage to the previous Shadow series, which had ended with a decapitated Shadow. As Tollin explains, “Someone is paging Mr. Cranston at the Cobalt Club and they come upon the chair they think Cranston was in, and there’s a headless corpse. They start screaming, ‘Mr. Cranston’s been beheaded!’ and from the next room, Cranston says, ‘No, I’m fine.’ And that was a deliberate thing they put in.” In the inaugural story (The Shadow Strikes! #1–4, Sept.–Dec. 1989), The Shadow battles a crazed monk who may or may not be Rasputin resurrected. Gerard Jones tells BACK ISSUE, “I remember being very happy with how those first four issues worked together and built a fictional universe for The Shadow that was true to the original but had its own integrity.” Jones is pleased with the way he brought the bizarre world of the Shadow and the real world together. “The Shadow would be a ridiculous figure in actual realism,” he says, “and I didn’t want to paint a picture of the world in the ’30s that owed everything to pulp fantasy.” Pulp fantasy became reality with The Shadow Strikes! #5 (Jan. 1990), as fans were treated to an historical fourpart story featuring a crossover almost 60 years in the making. DC Comics had also licensed Doc Savage from Condé Nast, and for the first time, the two heroes were united in a battle against evil. They were often regarded as pulp-era prototypes for Batman and Superman, and fans no doubt wondered why the two characters hadn’t met before. In fact, they had, in a single panel in the Golden Age Shadow comic. As The Shadow leaves for an adventure in Japan, he asks Doc Savage to take care of the city until his return. But they never shared an adventure. Mike W. Barr says, “When I was asked by Mike Carlin to write Doc Savage, I recall immediately asking about a crossover between the two most famous pulp heroes, both of which DC was publishing. Since DC didn’t own either character, they were being extremely stingy with promotion money, so I thought this might also be a good way to get some heat for the titles.” Barr and Jones met for the first time at the San Diego convention that year. “My memory is foggy on the genesis of the actual story,” says Barr, “but I do recall coming up

Adrienne.” He cites her natural ability as a colorist, perhaps the result of her time as an artist and painter. “She had this automatic sense of color, and how to build the emphasis in the story. It wasn’t something she really learned. She just knew instinctively what color would bring up the mood in this scene. She just had it all from the beginning. I had to learn it, as a craft.” Trained by Jack Adler, Tollin’s expertise enabled him to apply more technical aspects of printing to achieve better results. At the time, DC had begun to print several titles on Baxter paper, which is heavier than newsprint and less absorbent. However, they were often colored in the same manner. “The ink would sit on top of the Baxter paper,” he says, “resulting in a brighter coloring, which I felt would be totally wrong for The Shadow.” Instead, he was able to achieve more of a rotogravure look, similar to old 1930s newspapers.

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Blasts from the Past (left) DC teamed up the two greatest pulp heroes in late 1989 in a The Shadow Strikes!/ Doc Savage crossover. (right) A nod to The Shadow’s radio roots in issue #7, a cover with a special significance for colorist Anthony Tollin. Both covers by Barreto. TM & © Condé Nast.

“I think we actually bumped sales a little bit during that crossover, with the civilian name of the villain. I thought it would be clever to use Compton Moore, the title character’s secret identity, as the name of the and managed to keep it a while,” recalls Augustyn. Issue #7 centers around a radio broadcast, and features a personality villain.” Barr appropriated the name from “The Shadow of Wall Street,” a story published in the February 1929 issue of Fame and Fortune pulp named Grover Mills, in tribute to The Shadow’s radio roots, as well as Anthony Tollin’s background in old time radio. magazine, which features a very Shadow–like character. Some experts “One day I was delivering an issue,” Tollin says, “and Brian said, claim the story influenced the later pulp version, however, both author ‘Hey, I got something to show you.’ ” He held up him Barreto’s original Walter Gibson and editor John Nanovic denied such notions. According to Barr, Jones liked it, and later contributed the idea of Doc art to the cover of The Shadow Strikes! #7 (Mar. 1990), which features Savage visiting The Shadow’s famed Cobalt Club. “I recall coming up with The Shadow behind a vintage radio microphone. As a fan of both The Shadow and old time radio, Tollin loved it. “I said, ‘Hey, could I the idea of the first chapter ending with The Shadow about to be get Eduardo’s phone number?” Disappointed to learn the operated on by Doc in his Crime College, as they thought he editor had already spoken to Barreto regarding the cover, was a criminal. The rest of the plot was doubtless a game of Tollin asked if he was getting it for himself. Augustyn try-and-top-this between Gerry and me. I recall, with no replied, “No, I was sure you’d love it, and I asked ravages of time, that it was a thoroughly pleasant Eduardo if you could have it when we’re done.” and enjoyable collaboration. At one point Gerry had “I’m pretty sure we had planned that entire issue to FedEx me some kind of documents, which he as a tribute to Anthony,” says Augustyn. “He was our addressed to me at ‘The Hidalgo Trading Company.’ on-staff expert and friend, and because of his expertise, He put his return address as ‘B. Jonas, Investments.’ ” we definitely had him in mind as we planned that issue.” “The editors got involved, too, as they tend to in According to Augustyn, the creative staff each got crossovers,” adds Jones. “We all talked it out in a series their own “signature” story, which tied to their personal of phone calls, but I do think Mike [Barr] was the driving links to history, such as Tollin’s radio story. Jones, a San force. He had a real enthusiasm for the idea of having Franciscan, set “Fireworks,” in The Shadow Strikes! #8–10 those two characters meet, which I—not being much (Apr.–June 1990), in his hometown. The Shadow once of a pulp fan—couldn’t match. Within the larger plot, mike w. barr again encounters his perennial foe, Shiwan Khan, as well The Shadow’s activities in his comic were left to me.” as a young boy, intended to be Gerard Jones’ father. Entitled “The Conflagration Man,” the story “That was a complicated decision for me,” explains Jones, “and I alternated between issues of both titles, running through The Shadow Strikes! #5 and 6 (Jan. and Feb. 1990), and Doc Savage #17 and 18 think my dad’s feelings were complicated.” Unlike the kid in the story, (Feb. and Mar. 1990). Both books featured a similar cover design by Jones’ father had a rough childhood. While he’s certain his father was each series’ respective cover artists, using a pulp cover within a comic- flattered, Jones suspects his dad found the rewriting of his past troubling. “In retrospect, I wish I’d gone with something meatier and more real,” book cover motif under the title, “Double Danger Stories.” Barr says, “That, to my knowledge, was created in-house at DC. he says. “It probably would have made a stronger story, and my father I didn’t think it was a good idea, as it reduced the area available for the probably would have appreciated the honesty.” “We did a Chicago gangster story,” says Augustyn, “with The cover scene.” He regards the crossover as a high-water mark in his career. “I put it in the top ten stories I’ve written/co-written. Dark Horse Shadow vs. the Capone mob, and I’m from Chicago. A lot of my own would later claim they did the first Shadow/Doc Savage crossover— historical knowledge and research went into that.” At one point in the story, police inspector Joe Cardona is in a Chicago including, incredibly, using the Hindenburg disaster, which we had steakhouse in the midst of the stockyards, with cows mooing outside, already done at DC—but, no, ours was first.” Bronze

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Agents of S.h.a.d.o.w. It’s hard to take your eyes off of Margo Lane on this page, lusciously illo’ed by Eduardo Barreto. Original art to page 6 of The Shadow Strikes! #8 (Apr. 1990), courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Condé Nast.

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ate anything while I was there. Maybe a roll.” Tollin credits Jones with giving each character—not only The Shadow but also Harry Vincent and Margo Lane—more of a personal identity and a backstory. “One of the problems DC had with the 1973–1975 version was an effort to keep him mysterious. The characters ended up being a bit remote,” he argues, “and that was something I think Gerry Jones had a far better handle on.” “Through it all, from my dad’s first rant to when I’d finished writing the series,” Jones says, “what’s always appealed to me most about The Shadow was the mystery enveloping him. His shifting identities, his elusiveness, the fact that no one had his whole story, the black hole of secrecy at his core. There’s a level at which he almost isn’t real, at which he truly is a living shadow, a stretch of darkness that can’t be delineated or defined—but it’s there, and it’s scary.” However, that same air of mystery also made The Shadow a challenge for Jones to portray as a character— especially in modern comics, where there’s such a strong reader expectation for emotional drama and continuity. “So I had to make his assistants, especially Margo and Harry, the emotional focus without pushing The Shadow himself to the margin. I also had to make his interactions with those people interesting, hinting at some deeper emotional connection, bringing some sense of personality to him while still leaving him largely as a cipher. I had to do a lot of character development through hint and allusion.” One such story is “Out of the Past,” (The Shadow Strikes! #11, Aug. 1990). It explored the dubious history of The Shadow’s lovely friend and companion, Margo Lane, which had been touched on in the 1989 Shadow Strikes! Annual. “If I recall correctly,” says Tollins, “that’s the one where Harry takes Margo to see You Can’t Take It With You on Broadway, and the original cast included Margot Stevenson, who inspired Margo Lane, and followed Agnes Moorehead as Margo (on radio).” Barreto left after The Shadow Strikes! #16 (Jan. 1990), though he continued to supply covers for most of the balance of the series. Tollin praises his work. “Eduardo was just brilliant. Again, it’s what I see in the work of E. R. Cruz. I think the work he did on The Shadow Strikes! was the best work Eduardo ever did, or at least the most inspired work.” Rod Whigham, who had drawn Doc Savage, took over the interior art. “We hired Ed’s assistant, Gerry Fernandez, to be the inker,” says Augustyn. “He was also Ed’s brother-in-law.” and he passes out. “That actually Mark Badger also stepped in to happened to me,” says Augustyn. draw a handful of issues, but Jones’ “When I was six, Dad and I went down favorite experience was with Steve to the stockyards, the first time this big Leialoha. “The idea for a Shadow-incity boy had ever been there. There Hawaii story was his, and we basically were cows being herded down a city developed it as a way to revel in our street by guys on horseback, and stock eduardo barreto mutual love of Hawaiian culture. That pens of many mooing cows. So we Portrait by Michael Netzer. was the only experience I had on that parked and walked through the cattle in pens, literally at sidewalk level, into this very fancy particular series of full-on collaboration with an artist, restaurant with walnut paneling and red velvet curtains and it was a blast.” Jones also credits his editor with much of the book’s and waiters in tuxedoes. Even with all of that, amidst all that elegance, I was trying to forget what the cattle success. “Brian and I talked a lot,” he says, “especially as I was in the plotting stage, before I actually started writing outside the door smelled like, and it wasn’t pleasant.” Augustyn, Sr. and his friend ordered steaks, and a script. He contributed ideas and talked through plot Brian was given a hamburger steak. “It all came to the issues, but then he left me alone to write the whole table,” he says, “and I was already suffering six-year-old issue. When he asked for changes afterward I nearly distress at all this weirdness. My dad reached across my always agreed with him. I loved working with Brian.” The Shadow Strikes! elevated Jones’ career in comics, plate to cut the hamburger steak for me, and it was and he soon found himself with more work than he ultra-rare. It gushed red on the plate and I passed out. “The next thing I remember was one of those tuxedoed could responsibly manage. “I’d been a hungry writer for guys leaning over me with smelling salts. I don’t think I so long that when people started asking me to do things •

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I just reflexively said yes,” he explains. “A lot of my scripts in that period were sloppy and poorly developed, including some of the later Shadow issues.” After Barreto’s departure, Augustyn followed. “Somewhere in there I was gaining more responsibility at DC. I’d inherited the Justice League books, and a handful of other things, and I think I moved on somewhere in that same stretch.” The series ended with The Shadow Strikes! #31 (May 1992). According to Tollin, DC had a three-year contract with a three-year automatic renewal option. Chaykin’s miniseries and the series that followed were the first three-year period, and the second three-year period was The Shadow Strikes!. “The Shadow certainly had an extremely loyal and dedicated fan base of folks who knew the material, and they were sizable enough to keep us going for quite a while,” says Augstyn. “In those days before the widespread use of the Internet to complain, most of the people who bothered to write did so because they were impressed and happy, and in some instances ecstatic. We’d gotten a few nit-picks here and there, but I don’t recall that that was a big issue. “I’m very proud of what we did,” he continues, “especially the first year and a half when Ed was doing some of his best work. I’m not going to be so egotistical to say we did the best Shadow ever, but we did the best Shadow we knew how.” He regards the stories to be timeless. Though set in a period, they were very much conceived along contemporary lines, and deserve to be collected. Others agree. “I would love, as a Shadow fan, to see an archiving,” says Michael Uslan. “I think it’s classic.” Though he readily admits his own prejudice, Tollin also believes the series is long overdue to be reprinted, crediting the editor for choosing the best creative staff. “Brian Augustyn got the right people on The Shadow Strikes! It’s one of the reasons it was good as it was. On that book there was a writer who was inspired, an artist who was inspired, certainly a colorist who

was inspired to do the best he could on it. The letterers, John Workman, Robert Pinaha, and Albert De Guzman, loved doing the book.” “My comics-writing days feel like a long, long time ago,” says Jones. “I rarely think about them anymore, but it’s still gratifying to hear that people still remember and like some of the work I did then.”

THE DARK HORSE YEARS The following year, Dark Horse Comics assumed the comic-book rights to the property. According to writer Joel Goss, Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson was a fan of Kaluta’s work, and had gotten the rights to The Shadow specifically to get him to do it. Kaluta agreed on the condition that Goss collaborate with him. Goss, having met Kaluta shortly after his arrival in New York City in the 1970s, was a frequent visitor to the aforementioned Studio. He collaborated with Kaluta and Elaine Lee on some material for Starstruck. “We had the opportunity to write some stories for the [1990] Flash TV show, but it got canceled before they did anything with them,” Goss says. “But we had such a grand time that we knew we wanted to do something together.”

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With This Ring… (left) Artist Gary Gianni’s stunning first page of Dark Horse Comics’ Shadow debut, In the Coils of Leviathan #1 (Oct. 1993). Story by Joel Goss and Michael Kaluta, colors by James Sinclair. (right) Gianni original art to page 22 of Leviathan #1, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Condé Nast.

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Goss says it was a thrill working with Kaluta on The Shadow. “It was kind of like having Scorsese asking me work on a hoodlum picture with him. I was like, ‘Wow!’ We didn’t know exactly what we wanted, but all knew what we didn’t want. We didn’t want to see something we’d seen before, and we wanted to honor the individuality of The Shadow in the day.” Goss researched many of the original pulp stories to get the feel for the period and what Walter Gibson had done. Then, he and Kaluta put their heads together and came up with several ideas. “We clearly wanted to do it period,” says Goss, “and we came up with a bunch of ideas that sounded old-fashioned to me. A ring with a curse on it, a mad scientist, you know, those kind of things that you tend not to see that much in modern gee-whiz things. Then put together the ones that seemed logical and just started writing.” Goss explains how he and Kaluta would hash out each story, and once Goss had it written, Kaluta would provide notes. “The earliest stuff, it was a little disjointed at first, but once Michael got used to it—he was fine with it, he just wasn’t used to it. And then he was teaching me stuff, so I would then figure out how best to break it down by page.” Kaluta’s schedule was very full, so another artist, Gary Gianni, was recruited. A rising star in comics, Gianni emulated Kaluta’s atmospheric illustration without descending into a cheap imitation. “Gary was far and above our first choice,” says Goss. “We looked at dozens of people’s work and luckily, Mike Richardson was our editor, so we didn’t have to go through a lot of red tape.” Goss and Kaluta began with a four-issue Shadow series, In the Coils of the Leviathan, in 1993. “One of the things that Michael showed me was how fans, when they pick up the comic, they wouldn’t read it, they flip through it. So, a little secret—at least to me, other people may know it—if it’s 25 pages, say, so on page 23 or so I’d always put a big splash page with something big and exciting happening. That way, when people are thumbing through it, they start in the back and go ‘Wow!’ In the first one, it’s The Shadow jumping off an exploding boat. There’s something like that in all of them.” Leviathan proved very successful, leading to Goss accompanying Kaluta to comic-book conventions. “Consistently, the pulp people and the comics people would come up, and it was just very gratifying to know that we’d done The Shadow properly, and that people noticed. They got translated into French, and hardcover books, and it seems like I have 16 different versions, in different languages, and to have all that stuff, to have that compilation, the graphic novel, with an ISBN number, that was another proof that we had gotten something right. And it was because of Mike Richardson—he just trusted us. Mike Richardson got the stuff, he knew what Kaluta was doing, Kaluta liked what I was doing.” Since that initial outing, Goss has become one of The Shadow’s modern contributors, promoting a greater understanding of the character’s lore. He relates how he discovered a unique cloak in a Manhattan store: “It was a black cloak, like The Shadow might wear, billowing out. What is particularly interesting to all of us was that underneath, it’s like an opera cloak, like a long cape, but with a not-as-long thing over the shoulders.” Similar to the Inverness worn by Sherlock Holmes, it has no sleeves, simply big holes cut out for a man’s suit sleeves. “So I ended up getting it, and when I showed Michael, and he said, ‘Wow, so that’s how he can move so freely.’ We set up a videotape and took turns with a pair of .45s moving in the cape so you could see how much it swirled, but it’s not like wearing a suit and then an overcoat. You can move a lot more. “Everybody who’s ever drawn him now understands better, since I found this on the street,” says Goss. This includes sculptor Randy Bowen, who used the cloak’s design in a popular Shadow sculpture. In 1994, the long-awaited Shadow film became a reality, and expectations were high for a successful ongoing franchise.

The Shadow Movie (top) The teaser poster to Universal Studios’ 1994 film, The Shadow. (bottom) Courtesy of Heritage, page 17 from issue #1 of the Shadow movie adaptation by Kaluta. Shadow movie © 1994 Universal Cities Studios, Inc. The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

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With renewed interest in the character, Kaluta and Goss produced a two-issue adaptation of the movie. Some fans regard its tighter storyline to be superior to that of the film. The first page of the draft he was provided said, “The story that follows is true,” according to Goss. “I went, ‘Hmm. Okay. I’m going to use that to distance ourselves from the non-Shadow–like things in the script and have somebody telling somebody that.’ ” With that strategy in mind, Goss created a bracketing device set in a bar, where one man is telling the story to another. “So, anything that’s inconsistent is inconsistent because this guy’s telling it.” At the end, the storyteller passes over all his notes and material, and the other man (now revealed to readers to be an agent of The Shadow) then destroys it. “I did that all because of that one line on the title page of the script. It was a great relief that I didn’t have to change everything that was stupid.” Apparently, many people preferred the comic book to the movie. His goal was to provide more interesting scenarios for Kaluta to draw. One scene cut from the adaptation depicts a confrontation between a Chinese drug lord and his rival, pre–Shadow Lamont Cranston. “If you kill me, I promise you my brothers will come after you,” the drug lord tells him, and Cranston replies, “Then I’ll kill them, too.” “Boring!” exclaims Goss. “We’ve seen that before, and we know what Michael can do. So I changed it and had Cranston, who’s evil at this time, say, ‘I assure

they will not,’ and hold up three bloody heads by their hair. I just wanted to see Michael draw that. It would’ve been cool, and something we hadn’t seen in any movie or comic book.” In another scene, Margo is kidnapped and thrown into the back of a car and driven away. “It’s not the Margo from the books,” argues Goss, “and it’s not a female I want to see in the modern day. So I had her taking off her shoe and using the high heel to bluff that it’s a pistol barrel.” In September 1994, Kaluta and Goss then collaborated on the single-volume The Shadow and the Mysterious 3. It featured three stories illustrated by Stan Manoukian and Vince Roucher. “We’d heard that David Lloyd liked our stuff and was willing to do one,” says Goss. “So knowing that V for Vendetta was about to be reprinted in color, we ended up doing one just for him even though he ended up not doing it. I set it at night, in a snowstorm, during a power outage, just so we could get all those strong lines and shadows. Just the blood, flames, and gunplay was intended to be the color in it. That was so David Lloyd could do his great splendid black-and-white work in the middle of a color one. Kaluta, Goss, and Gianni reunited for another three-issue series, Hell’s Heat Wave, in April 1995. Gianni provided fully painted covers, which have been described as “the most striking images of The Shadow to be seen since Steranko’s paperback

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The Shadow Strikes Again! (left) This Gary Gianni painted cover graced the first issue of Dark Horse’s second Shadow miniseries, Hell’s Heat Wave. (right) Dave Stevens’ cover to the first issue of The Shadow and Doc Savage. TM & © Condé Nast.

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Allard. And you know Doc Savage’s real name (Clark). So when they came up with Superman, the two best people they could come up with were Clark and Kent. One of my friends got that from, I think, Joe Shuster.” In the story, both characters are on opposite ends of the trail of a German scientist fleeing from the Nazis. In the doctor’s possession is a formula that turns men into mindless monsters, but once perfected, it could hold the key to America’s super-soldier program. Manoukian and Roucher illustrated Steven Grant’s story, with covers by the Rocketeer’s creator, Dave Stevens. This was followed in December 1995 by a final outing, which co-starred with the Dark Horse-owned character Ghost, a similar spectral crimefighter who was also well armed. Disappointing response to the feature film suggested The Shadow lacked continued appeal, and Dark Horse allowed its rights to the property to expire.

WHO KNOWS…?

The Adventures Continue… …at Dynamite, include the Michael Uslan-penned miniseries Justice, Inc. Issue #1 (Aug. 2014) cover by Alex Ross. TM & © Condé Nast.

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covers.” Gianni took prints to conventions and quickly sold out. Goss later learned Harlan Ellison loved Coils of the Leviathan and Hell’s Heat Wave so much that he called a couple of times hoping to get chapters of the stories ahead of others. “One of the things that was true with him, too, which is funny coming from a writer, is a trueism I’ve heard over the years, probably from Michael, is, ‘If they like it, it’s because of the art; if they don’t like it, it’s because of the writing.’ ” A couple of things that Ellison didn’t like in Hell’s Heat Wave were things that had been drawn in but weren’t in the script. “I remember, the body with the toe tag,” says Goss. “Gary put, like, 39 on the toe tag. And Harlan is saying, ‘If it’s in the middle of the summer, and they start the count in January, there’s no way there’s only been 39 dead people in New York City.” Dark Horse again teamed The Shadow with Doc Savage in a two-issue series entitled The Shrieking Skeletons, in July 1995. Goss explains that Lamont Cranston isn’t The Shadow’s real name. “It’s Kent •

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In more recent years, The Shadow has found a home at Dynamite Publishing. Since 2012, the character has starred in a handful of series that not only feature him in the gangster era from which he sprung, but also revisit Howard Chaykin’s controversial Blood and Judgment miniseries. As before, he has been teamed with other pulp-era characters, and comic creator Matt Wagner has crafted a comprehensive origin. Nick Barrucci of Dynamite Publishing coaxed Michael Uslan to “come out of Shadow retirement” and pen Dark Nights, the historic meeting of The Shadow and the Green Hornet. Uslan would later follow that up with a three-way teaming of The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Avenger, entitled Justice, Inc. “Every single time I get to write The Shadow, I do it believing Walter’s looking over my shoulder,” he says. “I’m trying to write, not only to please myself and fans, but I’m trying desperately to please Walter.” Walter Gibson’s literary legacy is filled with fantastic mysteries and frustrating missteps across all media. Michael Uslan’s career took a turn toward Hollywood, where he executive produced the Batman films, among others. He argues that The Shadow was not simply an influence on the creation of Batman, but directly. “The two characters are linked in my mind,” he says. Anthony Tollin, who continues to publish reprints of the original pulps, takes the Shadow/Batman connection a step further. “The Shadow was a master of disguise, and perhaps his greatest masquerade was transforming himself into the Batman, and in that guise, continuing his reign as the world’s greatest detective superhero into the 21st Century.” He is also working on reprinting the complete run of The Shadow newspaper strip in hardcover. The entire two-year run will be printed using the original syndicate proofs. Such ongoing efforts are a testament to The Shadow’s durability. His cloaked form has become iconic, and his eerie laughter remains instantly recognizable. But fandom today is different from the pulp hero’s heyday of the 1930s. How will the character evolve in the years to come? Only The Shadow knows… PHILIP SCHWEIER is a graphic designer and freelance writer living in Savannah, Georgia.

Please don’t call him Boy. Among men, he’s Jack Clayton, the son of John Clayton—Lord Greystoke—and Jane Porter. Among the great apes of Africa, he’s better known as Korak the Killer. Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs know him as the son of Tarzan, and for a brief period in the early to mid-1970s, he called DC Comics home.

A QUICK KORAK HISTORY

Jack Clayton made his first appearance in Burroughs’ novel The Eternal Lover, later retitled The Eternal Savage, an adventure story in which Tarzan and Jane are peripheral characters. He shows up next, as an infant, in The Beasts of Tarzan, the third book in the Tarzan series, TM during which he is kidnaped and taken to Africa. Jack’s story is told in full in The Son of Tarzan, the fourth book in the series. Penned by Burroughs over a four-month period in 1915, three years after he first published Tarzan of the Apes in All-Story Magazine, The Son of Tarzan opens with Alexis Paulvitch, a Russian villain featured in The Beasts of Tarzan. Stuck in Africa following an unpleasant encounter with the Lord of the Jungle, Paulvitch captures an ape and makes his way to London, where he hopes to make his fortune as a stage attraction. Jack, who is unaware of his father’s jungle heritage, sneaks into the show. Tarzan follows him and realizes that Paulvitch’s ape is his old friend Akut, first featured in The Beasts of Tarzan. After a friendly reunion, Tarzan decides it’s time Jack knew the truth about his father’s vine-swinging past. The Son of Tarzan quickly picks up speed from there. Jack and Akut flee to Africa following a botched kidnaping, and Akut helps his human friend learn the ways of the jungle. As the son of Tarzan, Jack is quickly in his element. Reverting to an almost feral state, he learns how to defend himself and becomes a member of Akut’s tribe. Quickly eschewing the morals of civilized life, he occasionally kills the local natives for necessities such as weapons and clothing. After one such incident, in which he kills a tribesman by choking and biting his neck, Jack places his foot on the man’s body, raises his face to the sky, and emits a piercing, primal jungle yell. Impressed, his simian brothers give him the name Korak the Killer. Later, Jack rescues a young girl named Meriem from Arab slave traders. They flee into the jungle and live at first as brother and sister. Meriem learns the language of the apes, and together she and Korak enjoy an idyllic existence. They spend years together, growing and maturing. As puberty hits and their bodies develop, Korak falls deeply in love with Meriem. “Love raced hot through his young veins,” Burroughs wrote. “Civilization was but a half-remembered state—London as remote as ancient Rome. In all the world there was but they two—Korak, the Killer, and Meriem, his mate.” Unfortunately, the couple’s carefree existence is interrupted when Meriem is captured by natives and Korak is severely wounded. Korak spends much of the rest of the book seeking his lost love, who is eventually rescued by Tarzan, now living with Jane on their African ranch. Fearing they will never see Jack again, Tarzan and Jane adopt Meriem as their own. Jane teaches the girl English (Meriem later realizes she also knows French), puts her in dresses, and teaches her to be a proper young lady. When Korak finally shows up, Meriem is being courted by a hunter named Morrison Baynes. Comparing his feral self to the suave newcomer, Korak feels unworthy of Meriem’s affection and decides not to pursue her. However, the couple are inevitably reunited when Korak saves her from yet more native horrors. The book concludes with a huge family reunion that even includes Akut. Korak and Meriem are wed in an African mission and

D o n Va u g h a n

Like Father, Like Son Continuing the numbering of the Gold Key Comics series which preceded it, DC Comics’ Korak, Son of Tarzan launched with issue #46 (May–June 1972), with a new logo and an exciting Joe Kubert cover. Korak TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

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(left) An early printing of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, The Son of Tarzan. (center) Poster for Chapter 3 of the 15-chapter serial, The Son of Tarzan. (right) Pop culture’s most famous version of Korak, “Boy,” shown with Mom ’n’ Pop in this movie poster for Tarzan Finds a Son— autographed by the King of the Jungle himself, Johnny Weissmuller. Posters courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Korak TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Son of Tarzan serial © National Film Corp. Tarzan Finds a Son © MGM.

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return to London, where they learn that Meriem is actually the daughter of a distinguished French general. Edgar Rice Burroughs received $3,000 for The Son of Tarzan—the most he had ever been paid for one of his stories. However, despite the book’s strong sales, Korak appeared as a supporting character in only a handful of other Tarzan novels after that, including Tarzan the Terrible, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, and Tarzan and the Ant Men. The character made a much bigger splash on the silver screen, first appearing in 1920 in a 15-episode silent serial. Burroughs was paid well for the screen rights, and though he was not invited to write the script as he had hoped, he was welcome on the set and allowed to review and tinker with each chapter’s scenario as it was written. As a result, The Son of Tarzan is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, and received excellent reviews. In fact, The Exhibitors Herald called it “Best serial of all time … should have been twenty episodes or more instead of fifteen. Will be the greatest moneymaker over the Christmas holidays.” After several fits and starts, The Son of Tarzan, budgeted at $106,000, began filming in California with Korak played as a boy by Gordon Griffith and as a young man by Kamuela C. Searle. Korak’s beloved, Meriem, was played by Mae Giraci as a girl and Manilla Martan as a young woman. The serial was released to theaters as each chapter was completed, concluding its 15-episode run in February 1921. It was not an easy production, however. P. Dempsey Tabler, who played Tarzan in the film and who did many of his own stunts, broke several ribs during a fight scene, and Searle was seriously injured while filming a scene involving an elephant. The pachyderm was supposed to pick up a stake on which Searle was tied, carry him to safety, and gently lower him to the ground. The scene went well during rehearsal, but when cameras rolled the elephant panicked and threw Searle to the ground with such force that the stake shattered. One urban legend had it that Searle later died from his injuries, but the reality is that he passed away from cancer in 1924. •

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Korak wouldn’t return to the silver screen until 1939, when MGM released its fourth authorized Tarzan film, Tarzan Finds a Son, starring Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane, and five-year-old Johnny Sheffield as their adopted son, an orphan they call Boy. The film was supposed to conclude with Jane’s death (fearful of being typecast, O’Sullivan desperately wanted out of the series), but audience reaction was so vehement that the ending was reshot so that Jane survives. Sheffield received very good reviews and appeared as Boy in seven more Tarzan films. From there, he went on to star in several Bomba the Jungle Boy movies.

KORAK IN COMICS

Korak TM & © ERB, Inc.

From Son to Boy

Tarzan was an extremely popular newspaper character, thanks to the masterful work of Hal Foster, and he made the transition to comic books during that medium’s formative years via reprints of those early strips. In 1948, following individual Tarzan stories in Four Color #134 (Feb. 1947) and 161 (Aug. 1947), Dell Publishing Co. (and later, Gold Key) began publishing a monthly Tarzan comic book written by the incredibly prolific Gaylord DuBois and illustrated by fan-fave Jesse Marsh. In the early issues, which combined events, characters, and scenarios from Burroughs’ novels and the movies, Tarzan’s son also was called Boy. Korak the Killer didn’t appear until issue #139 (Dec. 1963), only to almost immediately leave Tarzan for his own book (inset). Gold Key’s Korak, Son of Tarzan enjoyed a successful 45-issue run from January 1964 to January 1972 (cover dates). Russ Manning illustrated the first 11 issues, with occasional inking by Mike Arens. A number of other artists also took a crack at Korak over the course of his run, including Warren Tufts, Doug Wildey, Nat Edson, and Dan Spiegle.

Of special note are the wonderfully evocative cover paintings by the likes of Morris Gollub and George Wilson. Korak made the move to DC in 1972, when the publishing giant obtained the rights to all of Burroughs’ works and characters. The move to DC was a dream come true for editor/artist Joe Kubert, a lifelong admirer of Edgar Rice Burroughs who had avidly followed Hal Foster’s Tarzan newspaper strip as a kid. “Carmine Infantino … told me that if I wanted to do Tarzan, I could have it,” Kubert told Filmfax Magazine. “I jumped at it. It was like going back to my childhood; it gave me another chance to really enjoy the character. The first thing I did was reread all of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan books and as much of the stuff Foster did as I could find. I just steeped myself in it. What I tried to do consciously was get the same kind of feeling from my stuff that I got when I first read Foster’s stuff. “I just wanted to generate the same kind of reaction that I had when I first read the books,” Kubert continued. “I tried to analyze Foster’s work to see what it was that really stimulated me when I was a kid, and one of those things was the simplicity with which the work was done, the fact that it looked almost like someone was sketching the drawings as things were happening. That made them super real.” When DC acquired the rights to all things Burroughs, the decision was made to continue the numbering for both Tarzan and Korak previously established by Dell/Gold Key. Tarzan of the Apes #207 (Apr. 1972) hit newsstands on February 29, 1972, and Korak #46 (May–June 1972) debuted a month later. Kubert wrote, illustrated, and edited Tarzan of the Apes and quickly found himself fully immersed in the book, while still maintaining various editorial duties on other DC titles. As a result, Joe Orlando was tapped to edit the bimonthly Korak, which boasted “Carson of Venus,” written by Len Wein and illustrated by Mike Kaluta, and “Pellucidar,” written by Wein and illustrated by Alan Weiss, as backup features. (An adaptation of A Princess of Mars, plotted by Len Wein and scripted without credit by Joe Kubert, with art by Murphy Anderson, was the backup feature in early issues of Tarzan of the Apes.) [Editor’s note: DC’s ERB backups were the subject of an article in BACK ISSUE #55.] DC heavily promoted Tarzan of the Apes, both before the title debuted and over the course of its first several issues, in an effort to generate reader interest in the book. Direct Currents, the monthly roundup of comics news that appeared in most DC titles at the time, regularly mentioned the “next exciting issue” of Tarzan, sometimes with a panel illustration. However, Korak, for the most part, did not receive the same tenacious promotional effort, perhaps because the powers that be at DC assumed that Korak was a natural choice for Burroughs fans and would succeed by riding Tarzan’s coattails. There was little mention of Korak at the time in the fan press as well. Comics historian John Wells did some digging through his vast collection of fanzines and reports that “…there’s essentially nothing on Korak other than the most basic facts that we already know.” According to Wells, the Burroughs launch at DC resulted in a few pictorial features in The Comic Reader #79 and 80 and a brief item in TCR #91 regarding the Korak logo, which was designed by the legendary Gaspar Saladino. The blurb noted, “The logos on the war books are being standardized. The logo on Korak is being altered to put more emphasis on ‘Son of Tarzan’.” Other reports and notices in The Comic Reader included a reproduction of Kubert’s cover for the first issue of Tarzan of the Apes and a reproduction of a house ad for Korak, Son of Tarzan that included the book’s first panel: an image of Korak with bow in hand as he is charged by an angry water buffalo. The house ad noted that the first issue of Korak was to go on sale March 14, 1972. (My thanks to John Wells for his invaluable assistance with this feature.)

DC’s KORAK The first DC issue of Korak, Son of Tarzan was scripted by Len Wein and illustrated by Frank Thorne. Wein tells BACK ISSUE that he specifically recalls asking to write Carson of Venus and Pellucidar, the latter of which was an adaptation of the novel At the Earth’s Core. “I think Joe [Orlando] said, ‘If you’re going to do them, you might was well do the whole damn thing,’ and gave me Korak as well. But these are all an old man’s memories.” Wein, like Kubert, was a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but was more enamored with Burroughs’ non-Tarzan books. “I actually was a little intimidated by the number of Tarzan books,” he notes. “I started with Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. I remember that because as a kid I was very big on getting to sample as many different series as I could with the least amount of work. I realized Burroughs covered two series here, so I started there. I fell in love with Pellucidar. Then I went on to Carson of Venus, which I also loved. It was basically Burroughs parodying himself.” Whereas Kubert chose to kick off DC’s Tarzan joe kubert series with a fairly faithful adaptation of Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, Wein elected to avoid an introduc- © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. tory origin story based on the novel The Son of Tarzan and go with original stories instead. “I set it during the early 1940s, but just to tell good stories,” Wein explains. “This was a different age in comics. We didn’t have long-term continuity goals. We set out to do good issues, and most stories were one-shots, then on to the next story. So my goal

Not Quite Korak (left) Johnny Sheffield, the movie Tarzan’s Boy, went on to play another Jungle Boy on screen, Bomba—whose first movie was “filmed in glorious sepia tone” (poster courtesy of Heritage). A Tarzan copycat, Bomba starred in a series of 20 books “by” Roy Rockwood (a house pen name used by Stratemeyer Syndicate writers) published between 1926 and 1938 and 12 movies released between 1949 and 1955. Some Bomba movie footage was repackaged for television in the 1960s, which inspired (right) DC’s short-lived (seven issues) Bomba the Jungle Boy title. A few DC Bomba adventures were later reprinted as “Simba” stories in the 1970s in 100-Page Super Spectacular editions of DC’s Tarzan. Cover to Bomba #1 (Sept.–Oct. 1967) by Carmine Infantino and Chuck Cuidera. © the respective copyright holder.

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was to tell the best possible stories that I could.” The first few Korak tales were, indeed, oneoff stories, though both Carson of Venus and Pellucidar were more serial in nature. “I don’t remember why we didn’t do that with Korak,” Wein says. “He’s the lead character; you want to get into who and what he is and tell exciting stories about him as quickly as you can. Backup features like ‘Carson of Venus’ and ‘Pellucidar’ were easier to play around with. But the lead needed to be sharp and tight and in and out as quickly as we could.” Wein says that though Korak was the son of Tarzan, he always viewed him as a fully formed individual and wrote his stories with that in mind. “I always assume the character I’m writing is unique unto himself,“ he observes. “The fact he was Tarzan’s son had very little to do with anything except where the stories were set and what he had learned from his dad. But I never just assumed, ‘Oh, we’re doing a second-string Tarzan here.’ ” Joe Orlando, for the most part, left Wein alone to work his magic. He offered little by way of direction, giving Wein the leeway to write Korak as he saw fit. “We worked out stories together, as we did back in those days with our editors,” Wein notes. “But most editors tended to leave me alone, unless I asked for help.” Wein was thrilled to have Frank Thorne, whose career in comics started as a teen in the late 1940s, illustrating his stories, though Thorne’s participation in the project was just the luck of the draw. However, Wein did request that Mike Kaluta illustrate Carson of Venus and Alan Weiss illustrate Pellucidar. “But the lead feature was the lead feature,” he continues. “It was more important than the backup features. I just let Joe Orlando do what he wanted to do because he was the boss.” Unlike Kubert and Wein, Frank Thorne was not a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs when he was assigned to illustrate Korak, Son of Tarzan. “I had read Burroughs avidly in my teens,” Thorne BACK ISSUE. “Same with Robert E. Howard and the other [pulp] writers of that time. But that was it.”

Interestingly, Thorne didn’t feel entirely comfortable illustrating Korak; in his mind, Joe Kubert was the more logical choice. “I was doing other things at the time, and Korak didn’t get the best of me,” he notes. “It was another step along the way, I would say that. It wasn’t particularly challenging. I turned the stuff out. I have been pretty lucky to choose what I wanted to work on all my life, but I don’t think that was one of my best choices, to do that book.” Thorne’s work on Korak is in a fine-lined, feathery style similar to that of Kubert’s. “I’ve always heard that my work appears to have a Kubert influence to it,” he acknowledges, “but I never actually tried to imitate him. I just had the kind of style that was like Joe’s.” Thorne and Kubert were good friends, both professionally and socially, and Thorne is the first to admit that Kubert was a true master at the drawing board. “He was always ten times better than me,” Thorne says, “but we both considered ourselves the luckiest guys in the world because we got to do what we loved.” Thorne recalls that his relationship with writer Len Wein was pleasant and professional, with Wein interfering little with Thorne’s visual interpretation of his words. Says Thorne: “I got the script and sent in the pages. I inked my own stuff.” The first issue of Korak, Son of Tarzan, released toward the very end of DC’s era of “52 BIG pages” for 25 cents, kicked off with an actionfilled cover by Joe Kubert, who went on to create the covers for almost the entire series. (Ernie Chua drew the cover for #65 and Jack Sparling and Frank Springer created the cover for #66, according to the Grand Comics Database, which credits The Comic Reader #134 for the information.) Wein’s introductory story, “The Treasure Vaults of Opar!”, is a return to the mystical lost city first introduced in the novel Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, the fifth in the Tarzan series. Here, Korak is facing off with an angry water buffalo when he sees a helicopter crash nearby. Among the survivors whom Korak saves from the burning wreckage is lovely, blonde Joyce Kingston, who is seeking her father, believed to be held captive in the lost city of Opar. Korak agrees to take the group to Opar in search of the missing man, overcoming a number of obstacles along the way. As they approach the city, Joyce is captured by prehistoric savages who, we later learn, have made the bikini-clad white jungle goddess their queen (something that happens a lot in Opar). Korak attempts to rescue Joyce, believing she is being held against her will, only to have Joyce cold-cock him with a heavy torch holder. The son of Tarzan awakens in a cell with the other members of his party, who are quickly released by Joyce. The group makes its way through the building’s

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“The Treasure Vaults of Opar!” The opening page from DC’s first issue of Korak, #46 (May–June 1972), written by Len Wein and illo’ed by Frank Thorne. TM & © ERB, Inc.

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No Thorne in Our Side Frank Thorne confesses to BACK ISSUE that Korak wasn’t a favorite assignment, but, hey, we never would’ve suspected! Frank’s amazing double-page spread from DC’s second issue, #47 (July–Aug. 1972). TM & © ERB, Inc.

mysterious passages until they come across the skeleton of Joyce’s missing father. But Joyce isn’t too broken up about her dead dad because she and the others have actually come to Opar for another reason: to steal its vast riches. Member turns on member until only Korak, Joyce, and her fiancé, Clay Wendell, remain. Korak faces off against an army of beast-men while Joyce and Clay make a run for it, but Joyce loses the jewels she had been carrying and runs back inside get more, only to be trapped by a huge wall of falling gold bars. Clay wants to stay and try to save Joyce, but Korak knows it’s impossible, so he knocks the man unconscious with a punch to the jaw and carries him through the jungle to safety. Observes Korak to himself in the final panel, “One of these days, I’ll learn to mind my own business!”

KORAK CONTINUES Korak #47 (July–Aug. 1972) saw a reduction in cover price, to 20 cents, and another great cover by Joe Kubert featuring Korak fighting a huge crocodile as he attempts to rescue a maiden in distress. The main story, “The War Machine,” scripted by Wein and illustrated by Thorne, again finds Korak minding his own business when he comes to the rescue of a woman about to be attacked by a crocodile as she swims in a jungle river. When the woman’s boyfriend, Kurt von Stryker, makes it obvious that he isn’t keen on having Korak hanging around, the son of Tarzan takes his leave, saving a native woman from a leopard on his way out. The woman informs Korak that she is searching for her beloved, who was taken by white slavers. Korak finds the baddies, who turn out to be Nazis working on a lighter-than-air airship made from harbenite, a tough, yet lightweight, mineral. In a twist that surprises no one, the Nazi leader turns out to be Stryker, and his girlfriend is in on it. In an action-packed conclusion, Korak destroys the airship as Stryker plunges to his death, despite Korak’s valiant effort to save him. “The Ape Vine,” which became the book’s letters column, debuts in this issue with an introduction to the character of Korak. “Who is Korak?” it asks. “He was raised in civilization, but his home is in the jungle. He prefers the African jungle to the concrete jungles of modern man. He feels that civilization, with all its modern conveniences, could not stand for one moment side by side with the primitive world he loves.” The column also established that Korak’s stories are set in the 1930s [although earlier in this article, Len Wein stated that they were set in the 1940s—ed.], and that with the third issue Korak would be visiting Pal-ul-Don, a region of Africa seldom visited by outsiders, where prehistoric beasts and lost civilizations reign. Pal-ul-Don, introduced in the novel Tarzan the Terrible, was a popular setting for Tarzan and Korak stories published by Dell/Gold Key.

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“Lord of Pal-ul-Don,” scripted by Wein and illustrated by Thorne, was the lead story in Korak, Son of Tarzan #48 (Sept.–Oct. 1972). In this 18-pager, Korak rescues a blue-skinned woman with a prehensile tail (shades of James Cameron’s Avatar) from Arab slaver traders. She takes Korak back to her people, where he learns that everyone has been placed into bondage by a disfigured, machine gun-toting scientist named Oliver Manning, who is forcing the people of Pal-ul-Don to build a huge gold statue in his honor. Korak survives a fight with a triceratops, then leads the people of Pal-ul-Don in an uprising that results in Manning’s demise beneath a waterfall of molten gold. “The Ape Vine” in #48 featured the first letters of comment about DC’s Korak, Son of Tarzan, and they were generally complimentary, though there were some criticisms. Letter writer Matt Graham, for example, complained that Korak paled in comparison to the first issues of DC’s Tarzan of the Apes, noting, “This Len Wein extravaganza was disappointing. Len Wein may never again thank me for anything—but I must say this issue was hollow.” Korak, Son of Tarzan #48 was Len Wein’s last. Joe Kubert took over the storytelling for Korak #49, which opens with Korak tied to a huge boulder as he ponders what has happened to him. In a flashback, we see how he came to meet Akut at a vaudeville show in Picadilly, rescue the ape from his abusive owner, and flee to Africa, where Korak exclaims, “Now … for the first time in my life … I feel free! As if I am really home!” This issue is significant because it finally introduces the character of Meriem from Burroughs’ The Son of Tarzan. We learn how Meriem was kidnaped by slave traders, saved by Korak, and introduced to the idyllic life of the jungle before once again being apprehended. As in the novel, this sets Korak off on a quest that will carry him through the rest of the series. In #49, Korak is told that Meriem has been taken to the land of the lizard men. He follows her, is captured, and is left to die, tied to a rock as giant carnivorous lizards approach. Korak barely escapes, but vows to continue his hunt for Meriem, wherever it may take him. In the letters column, debate continued regarding the quality of the book, with some praise and some criticism. It’s in “The Ape Vine” that Joe Kubert confirms that Frank Thorne used a loose version of Humphrey Bogart as his inspiration for the boat captain in #47. Frequent Kubert collaborator Robert Kanigher picked up the scripting chores with Korak #50 (Jan.–Feb. 1973), illustrated by Frank Thorne. Kanigher continued where Kubert left off, with Korak still searching for Meriem in the strange worlds located deep beneath the surface of the Earth. Captured by yet another warrior race, he is forced to fight to the death before escaping with an underground dweller named Agoora, Age

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who seeks to leave her sunless world, where everyone is blind. As they float down a river aboard a giant seashell, Korak reflects on the last time he saw Meriem and his ongoing search for her. Suddenly, Korak and Agoora are attacked by a large sea creature, which Korak dispatches with his knife. Swimming to shore, Korak and Agoora meet Professor Drood, who is seeking medicinal plants far beneath the Earth’s surface. As they chat, Meriem makes a sudden appearance as she is dragged away by members of the blind warrior race. Korak attempts to save her, but watches in horror as the ground opens up and she falls from his grasp. At the same moment, Agoora is snatched by a large bat-like creature and ferried away. Drood encourages Korak to return to the surface world with him, but Korak refuses, exclaiming, “I will seek Meriem … to the ends of the Earth and time!” Frank Thorne’s run as the illustrator of Korak concluded with #51 (Mar.–Apr. 1973), which continues Kanigher’s story of the Ape Boy’s search for Meriem, a saga that reads very much like an epic Greek drama. Korak, still searching for his beloved far below the Earth’s surface, is captured by the grotesque Molten Men, who force him to become a slave in service of building a horrific machine that will make the surface world unbearably hot. On the plus side, he is reunited with Meriem, who also has been captured. The Molten Men force Korak to fight his fellow slaves to the death, but Korak manages a brief escape, only to be captured again. Tied to a water pipe, he successfully pulls the pipe from the wall and uses the cold water to destroy the superheated machine. Korak escapes, but loses Meriem in the process. Or so he thinks. The entire story, it turns out, was merely a dream brought on by noxious fumes, as explained by Drood. Heartbroken, Korak is forced to continue his quest. In “The Ape Vine,” readers of the series continued their debate over the quality of the book. Bob Rozakis, who would soon become one of DC’s “Junior Woodchucks” [junior staffers], penned a letter praising the book and, especially, Kanigher joining the lineup. Meanwhile, another letter writer chimed in to complain about the armor plates on the triceratops in #48, proving that you can’t please everyone.

CHANGES, AND MORE CHANGES Murphy Anderson began a five-issue run on Korak with #52 (June–July 1973), replacing Frank Thorne. Aboard a raft, Korak and Professor Drood continue their journey to find Meriem, only to find themselves trapped on an island of horrific misfits. Korak saves a child from an enormous snake, and later battles a giant cyclops who has been driven mad by self-loathing over his appearance. A festival follows, during which Korak kisses one of the female outcasts to prove that all people are the same. But there’s no romance here—Korak continues to pine for Meriem. At this point in the series, it became obvious that DC really didn’t know what to do with the character of Korak. His Odyssean journey to find Meriem is merely a convenient way for him to encounter weird civilizations and battle bad guys, often in defense of the weak and powerless. In #53, scripted by Kanigher, Korak encounters a race incapable of feeling pity. In #54, he befriends a village, only to be forced to compete against his new friend for the title of chief. In #55 (Dec. 1973–Jan. 1974), Korak must deal with a village of prehistoric warriors who look like ancient Mongols. It’s in #56, which continues the story, that Korak is finally reunited with Meriem. However, she is betrothed to the village chief, and pretends to be uninterested in Korak so as to protect him and herself from the chief’s wrath. Korak believes that she no longer loves him, but is told the truth at the end—only to have Meriem spirited off yet again. Korak made an excursion outside his own book in 100-Page Super Spectacular #DC-19 (Aug. 1973), which was dedicated exclusively to Tarzan. The issue featured a nice cover by Joe Kubert with panels from specific stories, but the rest of the book is solely reprints of Tarzan newspaper strips drawn by Russ Manning. Two of the stories—“Tarzan and the Elephants’ Guardian” and “Tarzan in Temo-Haven”— feature Korak as a supporting character, and were first published in 1969 and 1970, respectively, according to the copyright notice on each strip. In mid-1974, DC released the first issue of its in-house prozine The Amazing World of DC Comics. It featured an interview with Joe Kubert, who talked at

More Burroughs Adventures (top) Please indulge us as we give this issue’s cover artist Michael Kaluta another look. Here’s the title page from his and Len Wein’s “Carson of Venus” backup from Korak #48. (bottom) The son of Tarzan laments his lost love on this original art page from Korak #53 (Aug.–Sept. 1973). Story by Robert Kanigher, with art by Murphy Anderson. Art scan courtesy of Arthur Chertowsky. TM & © ERB, Inc.

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length about Tarzan and his fondness for Edgar Rice Burroughs, but never mentioned Korak. The newsy “Direct Currents” section contained the cover of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle #233 and Rima, the Jungle Girl #4, but again, no mention of Korak. This was surprising because the ’zine was created specifically for DC fans, and would seem the ideal vehicle to promote the Korak book. That’s because ther was no Korak book. In 1974, with #230 (Apr.–May), Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle became an ongoing 100-Page Super Spectacular, as did several other DC titles at the time. This extended format ran through #235 (Feb.–Mar. 1975). These issues featured new Tarzan stories, plus reprints of old jungles series such as Congo Bill, Simba the Jungle Boy, and Detective Chimp. The first five 100-Page Super Spectaculars also featured new Korak stories, scripted by Bob Kanigher, as Korak’s own title was on hiatus. “Leap Into Death,” the Korak story featured in #230, was illustrated by Kubert with inks by Russ Heath, and it’s a doozy, proving that Heath should have inked Kubert more often. In this story, Korak saves an orphaned baby

The Beginning of the End

baboon, and is captured by a race of bird people. He finds that Meriem is also being held captive, but again loses her at the end of the story. The last four Korak stories are illustrated by Alex Nino, whose unique style really brings the jungle-based tales to life. Korak’s title was reinstated with issue #57 (May–June 1975). Its backup feature was a reprint of “The Deadly Motion Picture,” a Korak tale from the Russ Manning-illustrated Tarzan newspaper strip. Parts two and three ran in #58 and 59. Beginning with #57 (May–June 1975), Rudy Florese, one of the many wonderful artists from the Philippines to find work at DC in the 1970s and after, took over the art chores from Murphy Anderson, and his stuff was often breathtaking. Issue #57, scripted by Kanigher, finds Korak having to deal with a slave trader who captures and sells endangered animals. Unsurprisingly, Korak’s affinity for animals comes in very handy here. For reasons unknown, Robert Kanigher briefly left Korak, leaving Joe Kubert to script #58 (July–Aug. 1975), a tale that has Korak at the mercy of the ancient gods, who find cruel entertainment in the Ape Boy’s ongoing travails. Here, Korak battles a huge, bat–like creature that is worshiped by a blood-crazed cult. In the following issue, in the Kubert-scripted “School for Slaughter,” Korak encounters a civilization based on ancient Rome. Its cruel leader forces the son of Tarzan to do battle with a variety of individuals, including a fish-man whom he defeats but refuses to kill. Finally, another slave kills the emperor with a spear, freeing Korak and the rest of the villagers from his violent tyranny.

KORAK TAKES GIANT STEPS With #60 (Nov.–Dec. 1975), the book became a 50-cent DC Giant and was retitled The Tarzan Family [presents Korak]. Robert Kanigher returned to his scripting duties, propelling the “gods must be entertained” storyline established earlier by Joe Kubert. Over the concluding six issues, Korak saves a young prince who is condemned to death

(left) Korak, Son of Tarzan became The Tarzan Family with issue #60 (Nov.–Dec. 1975)—and seven issues later, the book was no more. Cover by Kubert. (right) The son of Tarzan not only couldn’t hold onto his girlfriend at DC, his artists came and went. Yet, each was spectacular! Here’s a page by Rudy Florese, courtesy of Heritage, from Tarzan Family #61 (Jan.–Feb. 1976). TM & © ERB, Inc.

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because he is thought to be cursed; deals with yet more slave traders; encounters the Greek god Circe, who turns evil men into animals; encounters the lost civilization of Atlantis; is captured by a giant woman who wants to keep him as a pet; and, finally, encounters an elephant with diamond-encrusted tusks while searching for a birthday present for his mother. Kanigher wrote issues #61 through 65, and was replaced by Tony Isabella in #66 (Nov.–Dec. 1976), which was rebranded Tarzan Family Giant and eschewed “presents Korak” on the cover. Florese illustrated the concluding stories with the exception of #65, which was drawn by James Sherman and Bob Smith, and #66, which was drawn by Sherman and Noly Zamora. In case you’re wondering, the series concludes with Korak failing to be reunited with Meriem. DC lost the rights to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1977. A year earlier, as DC struggled to attract readers to both Tarzan and Korak, ERB, Inc. briefly considered publishing its own line of Tarzan, Korak, and John Carter comic books. However, the plan was scrapped when ERB, Inc. general manager Robert Hodes, who had championed the projects, was let go. The corporation considered the proposed series too much of a financial risk and passed the license for all ERB comic books on to Marvel Comics instead. Sadly, Marvel never did anything with Korak. Roy Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “I’m afraid that, since I was living in L.A. by the time the ERB deal was made, I have no special knowledge on why Korak was overlooked, except that he wasn’t, really—not any more than Carson of Venus or any of ERB’s concepts except Tarzan and John Carter. Marvel elected to try two ERB comics to see how they went and, as I reported in Alter Ego #129, Stan Lee asked me to write up a memo for himself and ERB, Inc., on future possibilities for series. Korak was probably in that mix, and if Tarzan had proven a smash hit, I’d bet Korak, Son of Tarzan would’ve followed in short order.”

A ’70s Swinger (top) Korak was demoted to backup status for a year, appearing in Tarzan beginning with issue #230. (bottom) A 1974 Korak pinup by Florese, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © ERB, Inc.

DC’s Korak, Son of Tarzan lasted just 21 issues in his own mag, including the Tarzan Family issues, plus five issues of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle Super Spectaculars. A good run, but nothing spectacular; ultimately, weak sales brought about poor Korak’s editorial demise. At the end of the day, was there a legacy to be had? Len Wein, who brought the character to life in the first three issues, doesn’t believe so. “Korak wasn’t a character that DC owned, it was a character that DC licensed,” he explains. “There is no legacy when you don’t really control the character.” Regardless, Wein admits to having a ball working on the book. “I loved writing it,” he states. “One of my favorite moments was I got to steal the ending of Hitchcock’s Saboteur in the issue in which the villain has fallen out of a dirigible and Korak is holding on to the guy by the sleeve and you watch as the sleeve slowly separates from his jacket [‘The War Machine,’ Korak, Son of Tarzan #47]. There has always been cinematic influences in my work, but this was early in my career and that’s one of my favorite scenes ever in a movie, so I stole it.” Luckily for fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Korak’s demise at DC wasn’t exactly the end for the son of Tarzan. Dark Horse Publishing has released two hardcover volumes containing some of the best DuBois/Manning Korak stories published years earlier by Gold Key, and in 2014, ERB, Inc. debuted a new subscription-only Korak the Killer weekly online comic strip written by Ron Marz and illustrated by Rick Leonardi. You can check them out at edgarriceburroughs.com. DON VAUGHAN has had a love affair with comic books since he was 11 years old. His writing has appeared in an eclectic array of publications, including Military Officer Magazine, Nursing Spectrum, Filmfax, and The Weekly World News.

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Douglas R. Kelly

You would think it’s a match made in heaven. How could comic books and science fiction not be a winning formula, given the visual and creative nature of both genres? Add to that the crossover factor of science-fiction fans and comic-book fans—what Justice League or Incredible Hulk reader didn’t also love Star Wars?—and it’s hard to understand where the recipe goes wrong. Yet it does, and pretty regularly, according to Roy Thomas. “Martin Goodman [publisher of Timely/Atlas/Marvel Comics beginning in the late 1930s] had been burned several times on science fiction,” says the former Marvel editor-in-chief and current editor of Alter Ego. “He’d start these science-fiction books, back in the 1950s, go a couple issues with them, and always abandon them due to lack of sales … like Space Squadron, and Spaceman, and Journey into Unknown Worlds, from which I took the title for this book. Journey into Unknown Worlds started out (in 1951 or ’52) as a science-fiction comic, then gradually switched over to being a horror comic. So Goodman just wouldn’t allow science fiction.” But by 1973, Goodman had moved on and Thomas had gotten the green light from Stan Lee, now the publisher at Marvel, for a new title that would present adaptations of science-fiction short stories. Worlds Unknown was something that Thomas had wanted to try for a while; although he was not a big fan of science fiction, he thought a book showcasing the work of the best writers of the genre might find an audience if given the chance. “I wasn’t a real reader of EC’s horror comics, or their sciencefiction comics, which still had that horror element that I don’t cotton to. But I was vaguely aware of Ray Bradbury back then [early 1950s], when I was 11 or 12 years old, and I would see these books, although I didn’t buy any of them. I would see them and remember them for years, and that was one inspiration for [Worlds Unknown]. And in perhaps a different sense, Classics Illustrated as well … sort of a combination of the two.” Thomas would serve as editor of Worlds Unknown for the book’s eightissue run, and early on, he brought writer Gerry Conway into the mix— a natural move given Conway’s passion for science fiction. “I jumped in enthusiastically because I love that stuff,” says Conway. “I was a big fan of Golden Age science fiction and, of course, the science fiction from the 1960s as well, which is the material that I was reading as I was growing up, a combination of the two. People of my generation were fans of the 1930s Universal horror movies, even though we’d never seen them when they first came out—they were rerun on local TV in the afternoon for kids. In the same way, I was a fan of Robert Heinlein’s short stories, because they were reprinted in anthologies that came out when I was a kid. I didn’t actually read them, obviously, when they first came out. But by the time I was starting to become conscious as a reader and was selective and wanted to read some shorter science fiction, what was available was a lot of anthologies featuring stories by Heinlein, Asimov, and, to a lesser degree, Arthur C. Clarke. The older, classical material, specifically from Astounding Science Fiction magazine, under [editor] John W. Campbell, Jr., was my entrée to science fiction. And then, the new wave material that came out in the late ’60s was my introduction to modern science fiction.”

LURKING FEAR

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Worlds Unknown #1 (May 1973) hit newsstands boasting a cover by John Romita, Sr., showing a naval crew boarding a space capsule that has just splashed down. What the crew doesn’t see yet is a weird, scaly, alien life form emerging from the other side of the capsule. The cover text promises, “Tales of lurking fear by Frederick Pohl and Edmond Hamilton!” The name Frederik is misspelled here, although it’s spelled correctly on the title page inside. The cover story, a six-pager, is “The Day After the Day the Martians Came,” which first appeared in 1967 in Harlan Ellison’s book, Dangerous Visions. Author Frederik Pohl spun a tale that centered on the first manned space flight to Mars, and the fact that the Mars probe had brought several Martians back to Earth. The story takes place in Florida, at a small motel, which has been overrun with reporters waiting to go to a morning news briefing at Cape Kennedy. Although it’s the middle of the night, the motel lounge is crowded with reporters, who are playing cards, watching news coverage of the event on television, and generally killing time until the briefing. Age

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Mr. Mandala and his employees, as well as between Mr. Mandala and the reporters, didn’t make the cut; however, these were minor plot points. Conway believes the story’s central theme wasn’t unique to Frederik Pohl’s work. “There was an Outer Limits story in which a group of scientists create a mass alien invasion that brings humanity together. The notion that humanity would come together in the face of contact with an alien lifeform was kind of a prevalent science-fiction trope, and that’s probably one that we would have wanted to highlight. But we were just trying to adapt the stories as faithfully as we could.” The art for this first story was by Ralph Reese, who brought a visually distinctive style to the story, particularly to the characters’ faces. “I swiped a lot from photographs in doing that job,” says Reese. “I didn’t actually draw a lot of those characters from out of my head. I happened to find photos that fit and interpreted them to fit the situation. That probably had something to do with it, because I was using real people as opposed to the stock characters you have in your head … your standard superhero head or your standard pretty girl head.” Although he’s not credited in the story, Reese says that Larry Hama helped with the art chores. “Larry did a fair amount of penciling on that. I think he actually came up with the design for the Martian. I might have done the first one and then he did the rest, I don’t recall exactly. He had just gotten out of the Army at that time and was looking to get into the comics world.” Like Conway, Reese enjoys science-fiction stories. “I loved all the EC stuff. It was seeing those EC books and stuff that inspired me to want to do comics. I was never that much of a superhero guy. I kind ralph reese of got over that when I was 14 or 15. Wood, Williamson, Crandall, all of those guys were my idols. They were the ones I tried to imitate, or go beyond.” Roy Thomas says, “Ralph caught it perfectly. I was a little worried about it because it’s a story with no action or horror in it. But Ralph did a wonderful job, and Gerry’s adaptation was very good.” Following a three-page reprint story entitled “Nightmare at Noon!” (with superb Angelo Torres art), the first issue of Worlds Unknown also offered a 12-page tale entitled “He That Hath Wings!” Written by Edmond Hamilton and originally published in the July 1938 issue of Weird Tales, the story concerned a boy, David Rand, who is born with wings on his back, due to an accident suffered by his mother before her pregnancy. David is raised by a doctor on a remote island, and as the boy grows into manhood, he takes the first tentative steps toward flying, eventually mastering the ability. When the doctor, who filled the role both of father and mentor, passes away following a heart attack, the boy heeds the call he’s felt for so long and joins the birds of the air in free flight. During his travels, David meets a shy, beautiful young woman and grows to love her. But she is unwilling to accept a life with a husband who belongs more to the wild creatures than to the human race, to endure the stares and comments of others who would consider David a freak. She learns that he could have his wings removed safely, and asks him to take this step for her sake. David has an incredibly difficult decision to make, and Hamilton weaves a moving narrative that depicts the character’s struggle between his love for this woman and the powerful pull he feels toward the freedom of the skies. “He That Hath Wings” was written and drawn by the great Gil Kane, with inks by Mike Esposito. “Gil had mentioned a number of times that he’d really like to adapt that particular story,” says Roy Thomas. “He liked it very much. I said, ‘Okay, we have a certain number of pages, why don’t you adapt it?’ He asked if he could write it, and I said, ‘I don’t see why not.’ ” Kane did a first-class job, remaining true to

Mr. Mandala, the manager of the motel, is largely uninterested in the goings on at Cape Kennedy, but he likes the fact that the coming of the Martians has filled his motel, even if only for a night. While the TV recycles the same news over and over, the reporters tell jokes about the Martians, most of which are crude and derogatory. After the reporters check out and head for Cape Kennedy, Mr. Mandala, who is white, makes an interesting remark. He says to Ernest, one of his employees, that the reporters are telling the same old jokes, only “…instead of picking on the Jews and Catholics and—and everybody, they were telling them about the Martians.” Ernest is black (although Pohl described the character as “colored” in his original story), and he jumps on the bandwagon by telling a Martian joke to Mr. Mandala. Pohl ends the story by setting up a clash of perspectives between the two characters that makes the reader think about how easily groups of people can be stereotyped and discriminated against merely because of skin color or religion … or even species. In adapting Pohl’s story, Conway added an opening sequence in which a couple, Ellen and Harry, are watching news coverage of the Mars flight on TV. The two characters aren’t related to the rest of the story or to the characters at the motel. Conway says the sequence was added as a way of giving the reader an ordinary person’s perspective on things. “I wanted to give the reader a human viewpoint of the story that was at a distance from the actual story.” The adaptation is faithful to Pohl’s original story, even if some elements had to be left out to squeeze everything into six pages. Some of the interaction between

From Issue #1 (top) Excerpt from Conway and Reese’s adaptation of Frederik Pohl’s “The Day After the Martians Came.” (bottom) Excerpt from Kane and Esposito’s adaptation of Edmond Hamilton’s “He That Hath Wings!” © 1973 Marvel Comics Group.

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They Shoot Dinosaurs, Don’t They? (inset) Worlds Unknown #2 (July 1973) cover, by Alan Weiss and John Romita, Sr. (top) The not-quite-over ending to Conway, Kane, and Sutton’s adaptation of Keith Laumer’s “Doorstep.” (bottom) Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), original art to WU #2’s lead tale’s splash, by Thomas, Mayerik, and Chua. © 1973 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Hamilton’s story and, of course, turning in superb artwork that captured the wonder of flight. The fact that Hamilton’s story wasn’t science fiction, in the strict sense, didn’t bother Thomas. “It’s more of a fantasy story. But Edmund Hamilton, of course, wrote science fiction, so I wasn’t going to worry too much about whether it was exactly science fiction. After all, the name was Worlds Unknown. While I wanted the book to be mostly science fiction, I was willing to bend the rules.” Issue #2 (July 1973) opens with a time-travel story originally published in 1956. “A Gun for Dinosaur!” by L. Sprague de Camp focuses on a couple of hunting guides who are based at Washington University in St. Louis. Mr. Rivers and the Raja offer a unique service: working with a professor and his “time chamber” at the university, they take their clients millions of years back in time to hunt dinosaurs. The clients pay big money for the privilege of bagging a triceratops or a tyrannosaur and bringing back the ultimate in hunting trophies. When Rivers is forced to turn down a client because the client is too small to handle the caliber of gun needed to take down a dinosaur, Rivers recounts to the disappointed man a safari that went badly wrong. Seems a wealthy playboy named Courtney James liked to throw his weight around once the hunting party had gone back in time; in the midst of a chaotic situation caused by James, another client wound up being killed. Following the tragedy, Courtney James was unrepentant and even tried to kill Rivers and the Raja. However, they managed to subdue him and bring him back to the present. Once safely back home, James vowed to take revenge on the two guides. But things didn’t go quite the way James planned, with the outcome demonstrating that you can’t change what’s happened in the past even if you do have a time chamber. Val Mayerik, an artist best known to comics fans for his work on characters such as Man-Thing and Howard the Duck, was tapped to do the visuals for the story. He says that the most enjoyable part of penciling “A Gun for Dinosaur!” was the guns. “I grew up doing some hunting, and I was really looking forward to drawing the guns … these double-barreled rifles that looked like shotguns at first glance, but were actually rifles. One of the hunters in the story had a bolt-action rifle, which was a smaller caliber, and the big gun was the doublebarreled side-by-side. Researching the guns was a kick. At that time, except maybe for Joe Kubert’s Sgt. Rock stuff, when someone had a gun in their hands, it was just ‘generic gun,’ you know? It would just look like whatever anybody could come up with at the time.” Along with the guns, Mayerik’s dinosaurs are the stars of this story. When one of the hunters “stings” a tyrannosaur with an under-powered rifle, the creature turns to look at its attacker and you can almost feel the guy’s fear as the brute towers over him. Surprisingly, though, Mayerik doesn’t particularly like his work on this one. “I’d love to be able to do that story again, with what we know now about the actual physiognomy, of what these dinosaurs really looked like. My tyrannosaurus rex … the reference I had was all that was available at the time. The typical old-fashioned image of the dinosaur standing more upright, looking different than what Bronze

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paleontologists now tell us they looked like. Some of my art looks a little dated and I’d love to redo it now.” Despite having to leave out a fair amount of details on specific dinosaurs, such as anatomy, behavior, and so on, writer Roy Thomas kept the Worlds Unknown story close to what de Camp had written. He says that, “With an adaptation, I try to be pretty faithful and only change things that I feel really need to be changed. I liked the story, and I was on reasonably friendly terms with L. Sprague de Camp. He allowed us to do that story. One of the things that appealed to me about it was that it was sort of de Camp’s answer to Bradbury’s ‘The Sounds of Thunder.’ Without mentioning Bradbury, because he was too polite to do that, de Camp said he felt that that story hadn’t handled time travel in a way he thought it should be handled. I thought it would be nice to do this ‘answer’ to the Bradbury story.” Val Mayerik agrees that the Worlds Unknown treatment stayed true to de Camp’s work. “I think [that I remember this as being] a relatively tight script. I don’t know if it was a panel-by-panel breakdown with all the captions and balloons indicated, but I think it was a fairly tight script because Roy was conscientious about being as faithful to the original story as possible.” Interestingly, “A Gun for Dinosaur!” also made it onto radio. In March 1956, the popular science-fiction show, X Minus One, presented the story as adapted by Ernest Kinoy.

GENERAL CHAOS The second story in Worlds Unknown #2 was proposed for adaptation by Gerry Conway, who had been corresponding with the author, Keith Laumer. The story, “Doorstep,” had appeared in Galaxy magazine in 1961 and also in a book entitled Nine by Laumer, in 1967. It opens on a farm, where an enormous object has apparently dropped from the skies and now sits motionless. A detachment of soldiers, led by Brigadier General W. F. Straut, has cleared the area and is guarding the object. Other than an occasional sound coming from inside the thing, the situation has stabilized as several of the soldiers work to open, or break into, the object. Suddenly, the object opens by itself, and in the chaos that follows, one of the soldiers is killed. Straut, a headstrong type who likes to shoot first and ask questions later, loses another of his men when something resembling a claw protrudes from the object and overturns a Jeep the soldier is driving. Straut’s superiors send over scientists from the state university to work with the Army unit, which Straut doesn’t like. He decides he’s had enough and orders his men to open fire on the object with artillery, which has no effect. Straut then gives the order to hit the thing with mortars, which inflict heavy damage on the object; as the smoke clears, Straut sees a huge fragment of the creature’s claw hanging from a tree branch a hundred feet away from the object. The creature is dead. Straut receives a call from his superiors at HQ, who have been working to decode a message that emanated from some kind of box found near the object. Translated into English, the message reads, “Please take good care of my little girl!” Scripter Gerry Conway, however, changed that ending slightly, adding the words, “I’ll be back for her … very soon!” This addition adds a note of menace to the ending, as readers now would picture an even larger version of the creature returning and being very unhappy about what these Earth people have done. In retrospect, however, Conway wishes he hadn’t changed Laumer’s ending: “It’s kind of a betrayal of the original story, because it’s supposed to leave you with a feeling not of anxiety, but of depression. You’re supposed to feel like, ‘Oh, my God. It’s tragic.’ That this child is left here to our care and is destroyed by blind human stupidity and fear. It’s meant to be an ironic story rather than a threatening one. You think that the general is acting in a heroic way to face up to a menace, but then, at the end,

“Farewell to the Master!” (inset) Worlds Unknown #3’s (Sept. 1973) cover, by Rich Buckler and Wayne Howard (with Romita alterations). (left) Its lettercol, with Roy Thomas’ editorial dedicating the issue to sci-fi writer Harry Bates. © 1973 Marvel Comics Group.

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The Day Marvel Stood Still (inset) Courtesy of Heritage, the movie poster to 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, depicting its terrifying robot, Gort. (right) Worlds Unknown #3’s splash page, depicting the robot Gnut (as named by Harry Bates), penciled by former Metal Men artist Ross Andru and inked by Wayne Howard. Movie © 1951 20th Century Fox. Comic © 1973 Marvel Comics Group.

you find out that there was no menace and, in fact, he’s the monster. I think it would have been better with the original ending.” Gil Kane and Tom Sutton’s art in this story is effective, particularly in how they depict Straut; his craggy features perfectly fit his cranky disposition. In fact, he bears a strong resemblance to actor George C. Scott in the movie Patton. Roy Thomas fulfilled a long-time ambition in adapting the story that appeared in issue #3 (Sept. 1973) of Worlds Unknown. “Farewell to the Master!” was a classic science-fiction tale written by Harry Bates and first published in the October 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It also had been the basis for the equally classic 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Thomas recounts, “I remember calling Harry Bates. He lived somewhere down near 14th Street at the time, and I knew that he was an early science-fiction author. We never met but I spoke with him once or twice on the phone and got permission, and paid for [the story]. The main change I made on it was that I felt the hero needed someone to talk to, so I changed that character into a man and a woman so they’d have more conversation. But otherwise I tried to change it as little as possible.” In fact, on the letters page of this issue, Thomas wrote, “This one’s dedicated to you, Harry Bates—with respect and thanks. I hope you like it.” Bates’ story focuses on a spaceship that landed on the grounds of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., three months previously. After two days, a man-like figure and a giant robot had emerged from the ship. The man greeted government officials and Army officers in a friendly way, introducing himself as Klaatu and the robot as Gnut. Suddenly, shots rang out and Klaatu fell to the ground, dead. The police quickly apprehended the killer, a mentally unbalanced man, and the robot Gnut had turned slightly toward Klaatu when the man fell and had remained in that position ever since. Or had he? Cliff Sutherland, a news photographer, becomes convinced that, contrary to popular opinion, Gnut has indeed moved since that fateful day. He sets out to take photos of the robot during the night to prove his theory. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian Institution has built an exhibit wing around the robot and the spaceship, as both are far too heavy to be moved by any means known to man. It turns out Cliff is correct—Gnut has been moving at night, busily working on something in the ship and adjoining labs. His actions strike Cliff as odd, and things soon turn bizarre as the photographer tries to figure out what the robot is up to. Hollywood changed a few things when it adapted Bates’ story for the big screen, including the name of the robot, which became Gort in the movie. The filmmakers also changed Bates’ basic message. “I loved the movie,” says Roy Thomas. “In the movie, they’ve given this robot sort of the ultimate power over them, for their own good. They created him as a kind of failsafe, I suppose. Something that had such power that they couldn’t fight it themselves. In Bates’ story, it’s not that the humans necessarily gave him the power … it might just be that the robots would take it over. They never really bother to say. I don’t think there’s any indication in Bates’ story that human beings willingly abrogated to the robots the power to destroy anybody who started a war. It’s just that the robots were in charge. So, a somewhat different story.” Bronze

Thomas stuck very closely to Bates’ original tale. Ross Andru penciled the story and Wayne Howard handled the inking. “Ross was a very underrated artist,” says Thomas. “We were all big fans of his.” In the letters section of issue #3, Jim Whelan of Richmond Hill, New York, let the Worlds Unknown team know what he thought of their efforts thus far: “I love you guys for this. Worlds Unknown is probably the gutsiest thing Marvel has ever done. Everybody knows s-f doesn’t sell! What’s the matter with you guys?? Beautiful. Just beautiful.”

BLUE HEAT Issue #4 (Nov. 1973) of Worlds Unknown features Gerry Conway’s adaptation of Fredric Brown’s short story “Arena,” which had first been published in the June 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Long hailed as one of the great science-fiction stories, “Arena” opens with the main character, a man named Carson, awaking to find himself naked and confined inside a dome. It’s oppressively hot inside the dome and blue sand is everywhere. The last that Carson knew, he had been in a one-man scout ship near the planet Pluto, preparing to take part in a battle against an alien race known as “the Outsiders.” Now he finds himself here, in a very blue place. Suddenly, Carson hears a voice—“coming from nowhere, or everywhere”—telling him that he has been brought here along with a representative of the race of the Outsiders to decide which of their two races will survive, and which will perish. He and his enemy are to engage in a battle to the death. The winner’s race will be allowed to go on its way, while the loser’s race will be destroyed. Whomever, or whatever, is speaking, Carson doesn’t know, but he has little time to ponder such things as the Outsider appears and attacks him. What follows is a contest as much about intelligence and courage as physical strength. If the plot (or the title) rings a bell, it’s likely because Brown’s story also was adapted into an episode of the original Star Trek television show. “Brown wrote in several genres,” says Conway. “He was one of the most accomplished pulp writers of the 1940s and ’50s. He wrote a number of really excellent suspense-thriller stories, and a number of really fine sciencefiction stories. I once read that, when he was going to write a novel, Age

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Enter the Arena (top left) Dick Giordano, mostly known as a DC artist and editor, counted this gripping cover to Worlds Unknown #4 (Nov. 1973) among his Marvel assignments. (center) Issue #4’s splash, adapting Frederic Brown’s “Arena.” By Conway/ J. Buscema/Giordano. (top right) Worlds Unknown #5 (Feb. 1974) offers another intergalactic entanglement, courtesy of cover artists Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia. (bottom) Here comes the “Black Destroyer!” A. E. van Vogt, as adapted by Thomas, Adkins, and Mooney, evoking a Wally Wood/EC sci-fi atmosphere. © 1973 Marvel Comics Group.

the way that he would set aside time to actually plot the book is he would go down to the Greyhound bus station and buy a one-way ticket to someplace like Kansas City. He’d get on the bus with his notepad and take it to Kansas City, plotting while he was going, and then turn around and take the bus [back home], because he needed to be away from everything and just sit down and focus on his material.” Conway did make one change to Brown’s story. In the original, Carson refers to his enemy as the Roller, because it’s a sphere having no outward signs of eyes, ears, or mouth. It has grooves that house tentacles that come out to touch, test, and experience things. However, artists John Buscema and Dick Giordano depict the creature in Worlds Unknown as somewhat more humanoid, having legs and multiple arms and a head that resembles a dinosaur. On the letters page, Roy Thomas explains that “For reasons too obvious to go into, Gerry and I thought this a necessary change, and we make no (or at least few) apologies for it.” The issue closes out with a four-page reprint tale, “Lost … One World.” The next issue, Worlds Unknown #5 (Feb. 1974), offers Roy Thomas’s take on A. E. van Vogt’s “Black Destroyer,” a story that first appeared back in the July 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. An Earth expedition sets down on a lonely, remote planet and encounters Coeurl, a large, cat–like creature with a dark secret: He feeds on beings such as these, and after gaining their trust, begins to systematically kill the Earthmen. Following a battle aboard the Earth ship, the crew manages to trap Coeurl in the engine room. It’s here that van Vogt’s story makes a huge leap in logic, as the cat—described as a primitive creature with no engineering or science background—actually designs and builds a 40-foot long rocket ship in which he escapes from his pursuers. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but this is a substantial plot hole. But Thomas didn’t see it that way. “I don’t recall thinking that was a plot hole. But I do remember reading about van Vogt, that he was given to logic gaps in his stories. I think there was a feeling among science fiction fans that he had a tendency to, you know, make leaps in logic and do things that sometimes had a ‘dream logic’ to them. At the time, I probably noticed it but probably figured, ‘Well, this is his damn story, and it’s not up to me to explain it any more.’ The idea of a cat building a spaceship is a little weird, but, hey, A. E. van Vogt was a great science-fiction writer, not me.” The art for “Black Destroyer” was by Dan Adkins and Jim Mooney, who gave the story a wonderful, 1950s EC kind of feel. The clear helmet globes worn by the ship’s crew, in particular, could have come straight out of an issue of EC’s Weird Science. The letters page in issue #5 teases readers with the news that issue #6 would present an adaptation of “The Day of the Triffids,” but that story didn’t make it into Worlds Unknown. When asked why, Thomas says, “I don’t recall. Maybe it just wasn’t ready yet or something. [That story] sat on the shelf for a bit and wound up being the lead feature in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, the black-and-white book that we put out later.” [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #14 for the story of Marvel’s Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.] Issue #5 closes out with a four-page reprint story, “They Wait in the Shadows,” which pits colonists from Earth against alien creatures on Christmas Eve. 40

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GHOST IN THE MACHINE Gerry Conway went to the Astounding Science Fiction well once again for issue #6 (Apr. 1974), adapting “Killdozer,” a Theodore Sturgeon short story that was first published in the classic magazine’s November 1944 issue. A group of men are building a landing strip on a remote island, when one of the bulldozers begins to behave strangely. When one of the men is killed in an apparent accident while operating the machine, the others question the circumstances surrounding his death. But when a second man dies soon after, it becomes obvious that Killdozer is far more than your run-of-the-mill bulldozer. It begins picking off the men one by one, and those who are left take more and more desperate measures to stop the killer rig. “The Sturgeon story is a great, great piece of pulp writing, and much better than the comic-book adaptation,” says Conway. “There’s a real sense of isolation. Sturgeon managed to create this remote location where these characters are trapped with this implacable machine that can’t be stopped. It’s terrific and it works very well on the page. I don’t know how well my adaptation worked, but the original story is just terrific.” The cover of issue #6 rivals that of the first issue for sheer awesomeness. Gil Kane, Ernie Chan, and John Romita created a wonderful image of Killdozer coming over a hill and going after its victims. The artists took a few liberties here, as Killdozer looks decidedly more ferocious and threatening than in the story, and actually has the ability to speak. In addition, there’s a woman depicted on the cover, despite the fact that all of the characters in the story are men. As to the more menacing image of Killdozer, Thomas says, “Well, Gil knew what to do. He knew that he had to ‘animalize’ it up a bit, make it even more like a monster than a regular bulldozer.” [Editor’s note: In analyzing the cover’s original artwork, it may actually have been John Romita who “animalized” the Killdozer from Kane’s original pencils.] The interior art was by Dick Ayers and Ernie Chan (below). Killdozer may not have looked as threatening inside as it did on the cover, but Ayers and

Chan did a solid job of depicting the action, as well as the conflicts between the workers as they grow more and more paranoid and suspicious of one another. The story is so much fun—who doesn’t love heavy equipment running amok?— that one hardly notices that the basic premise has a big flaw: How would a bulldozer that moves at seven or eight miles per hour (okay, maybe ten on a really good day) and sounds like the loudest metal band you’ve ever heard, sneak up on its victims? “When you’re doing certain kinds of stories, you sort of have to suspend your disbelief and try not to explain too much,” says Conway. “One of the advantages of a comic versus a TV or a film is that in a comic book, because it’s static, you don’t really have to be confronted by those questions. It’s the same advantage that Sturgeon had with his novelette … you didn’t have to explain it. You could just say, suddenly the Killdozer was there [laughter]. ‘Wow, we didn’t hear it sneaking up on us.’” Roy Thomas cuts to the chase. “It’s like the Mummy. If you can’t outrun the Mummy, you deserve to die [laughter].” “Killdozer” also was adapted for television, appearing as a TV movie later in 1974, starring Clint Walker and Carl Betz. Issue #7 (June 1974) and 8 (Aug. 1974) of Worlds Unknown offer a two-part story, “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.” Len Wein scripted the tale, with the splash pages of both issues stating that it was “Freely adapted from the screenplay by Brian Clemens,” a British writer who had worked with special effects master Ray Harryhausen to bring the story to the big screen in 1973. The story concerns Captain Sinbad and his ship’s crew, who come into possession of a golden amulet that seems to have special powers. The evil Koura wants the amulet and pursues Sinbad across land and sea in his attempts to claim it. Their battles reach a

When Bulldozers Run Wild Who doesn’t love the cheesiness of Killdozer? Note that the evil dozer didn’t look as threatening in the original cover art (courtesy of Heritage), but once it got a makeover for its final version (see inset), it was enough to scare some kids away from their Tonkas. Cover by Gil Kane and Ernie Chan, with John Romita, Sr. © 1974 Marvel Comics Group.

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crescendo on an island, where Sinbad fights various magical creatures as he and his men struggle to defeat Koura’s forces. The battle scenes are given “room to breathe,” with the story spread over the two issues. “Of course … more pages, more room for development,” says Len Wein. “Although I vaguely remember asking for three issues [for Sinbad], and being turned down for reasons I can no longer recall.” George Tuska and Vince Colletta handled the art chores on both issues, although Wein says that Tuska wouldn’t have been his first choice. “I had desperately wanted John Buscema to pencil the book, a perfect choice, I thought. But we would up with George Tuska on pencils—a talented man but not really the right choice, I thought.”

The Voyages End (top) The Sinbad movie adaptation concluded—along with the Worlds Unknown title itself—in issue #8 (Aug. 1974). Cover by Kane and Romita. (bottom) The final issue’s splash, in original art form, from the Heritage archives.

THE END IS NEAR Why Sinbad? “That was put into Worlds Unknown because it was clear that the science fiction wasn’t selling,” says Roy Thomas. “We had the sales reports for the first two or three issues by then and it wasn’t really making it. We got the rights to adapt this Sinbad movie, so we put George Tuska on it and did it as the two-part story and just never went back to science fiction. If Sinbad hadn’t gone there, it would have gone in some other book. Worlds Unknown was just a good place to put it. Science fiction had kind of run its course.” As had Worlds Unknown, although there was no mention of cancellation in issue #8. Nonetheless, it would be the final issue of the title. Insufficient sales, of course, is usually the reason a comic-book title gets the axe; but could the additional cost of paying the authors of these science-fiction classics have played a role in the demise of Worlds Unknown? “I doubt it,” says Thomas. “It may have added $200 or $300 to an issue. That was a bigger sum at that time than it is now, but I don’t think that was the deciding factor. I think it would have died anyway.” Thomas believes the time for this type of book had passed. “By and large, I’m fairly happy with what we did. But it was science fiction, and I think readers just didn’t care about science fiction. I hadn’t abandoned science fiction in my own mind, entirely; I figured maybe it would work in the black-and-white books. (There wasn’t too much time, I don’t think, between the end of Worlds Unknown and our black-and-white book coming out, which was Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.) What readers really wanted, for the most part, from Marvel was character stories. By that time, Marvel wasn’t much oriented toward anthology comics anymore. Stan pushed into doing the mystery books, and he allowed us to do this sciencefiction book. But when it became clear, after a year, that it wasn’t working, all those books basically died, or went back to reprint. Books like Journey into Mystery, and some that changed titles, like Creatures on the Loose. These had been Marvel’s focus at one time, with Stan editing a whole line of a dozen or so comics that did pretty well in the horror market. They weren’t EC, perhaps, but they had a lot of good art, a lot of good stories. But that was no longer Marvel’s focus. We did better with Werewolf by Night than we did with werewolf stories in, say, Journey into Mystery.” As an avid science-fiction buff, Gerry Conway wanted to see Worlds Unknown grow and continue. “I think that we did as good as we were capable of doing at that time,” he says. “I’m not sure that I was as skilled as I could have been at that point to do [the adaptations], but I certainly enjoyed doing it. It was disappointing … I had a whole slew of stories I would have wanted to adapt. But for the opportunity that it gave us to revisit some classic science fiction and maybe introduce readers to material that they wouldn’t have otherwise seen, I think it was a great achievement.”

DOUGLAS R. KELLY is editor of Marine Technology magazine and a collector of Silver and Bronze Age comics. His byline has appeared in such publications as Antiques Roadshow Insider, Associations Now, Model Collector, and Buildings, and he still hopes that Killdozer will somehow make an appearance in an Avengers movie.

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Who among us comic-book fans didn’t wrap a towel around our neck as kids, fasten it with a clothespin, and run dashing through the house or across the yard pretending to be a superhero? For me, it was Batman or Superman. But regardless of the character, we all wanted to be heroic and save the day. The only difference with Dave Greenberg and Robert Hantz is that they actually did it. Greenberg and Hantz both grew up poor in the Bronx. As Hantz explained in a March 22, 1973 interview in the Chicago Tribune, “We had to decide whether to be cops or robbers. We decided the percentages were better inside the law than outside it.” They met when they both enrolled in the Police Academy and became fast friends. But they were impatient with the bureaucracy and eager to strike a blow at drug crime in their neighborhood, which had taken a toll on their family and friends. So, while still probationary cops, Greenberg and Hantz dressed in plainclothes and patrolled the streets after hours, making over 50 drug-related arrests. Even after being assigned as traffic cops to the 77th Precinct, they continued their efforts to clean up the city. Their methods were often unorthodox, such as scaling buildings with grappling hooks, earning them the nicknames “Batman and Robin.” Not everyone appreciated their efforts, but as Greenberg noted, “Our captain said we could have enough rope until we hanged ourselves.” They had a 95-percent conviction rate and were both eventually promoted to the rank of detective. At the time, the public was captivated by true police stories, as evidenced by the success of Serpico, not to mention fictional cops like Dirty Harry. So it is no surprise that author L. H. Whittemore captured the story of Greenberg and Hantz in the book The Super Cops: The True Story of the Cops Called Batman and Robin, published by Stein and Day in 1973. In 1974, a feature film based on the book was released by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, starring Ron Leibman and David Selby in the roles of Greenberg and Hantz. The screenplay for the film was written by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., who was writer and executive story editor for the first year of the Batman television show. But there was more in store for the “Super Cops.” In the early 1970s, Archie Comics recruited Gray Morrow to create a new line of comic books under the Red Circle imprint, intended for a more mature audience. Interviewed by Jon B. Cooke in issue #17 of Comic Book Artist, Morrow explained the genesis of the Red Circle comics: “I met with Richard Goldwater [of Archie Comics], and his art director, Victor Gorelick. They asked me if I could put together a package for them. I wasn’t sure if I could or not, but I said, ‘Why not? I’ll give it a shot.’ I was thinking … in terms of old movies and radio shows.” The Red Circle line included titles like Chilling Adventures in Sorcery and Madhouse, as well as The Super Cops. The Super Cops comic book was published around the same time the movie was released. Based on the book, the comic characters bear a greater resemblance to the actual policemen than did the actors in the film. The comic book is not an adaptation of the book, though, but rather a series of vignettes featuring the exploits of Greenberg and Hantz. The comic book

Dewey Cassell

Comics’ Other Batman and Robin (top) Red Circle Comics’ Super Cops #1 (and only). Pulsating, powerful, pimpin’ cover art by Gray Morrow. (bottom) Real-world Super Cops Robert Hantz and Dave Greenberg. (inset) The paperback edition L. H. Whittemore’s book about them. Images courtesy of Dewey Cassell. Super Cops © 1974 Dave Greenberg Enterprises, Inc.

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The Hollywood Super Cops (bottom left) The Super Cops movie poster, courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) From the film, actors David Selby and Ron Leibman. (bottom right) Title page to artist Frank Thorne’s Super Cops #1 story, “2 to Get Ready and 4 to Go!” Scan courtesy of Dewey Cassell. © 1974 MGM. Super Cops © 1974 Dave Greenberg Enterprises, Inc.

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includes four short stories, as well as a text piece titled “Men Behind the Shield,” explaining the background of the real-life characters. The stories and text were written by Marvin Channing, a somewhat unconventional choice as explained by Morrow in the aforementioned Comic Book Artist interview: “Marvin was a high school teacher who had literary aspirations. One thing led to another, and he showed me some of his scripts, and they were printable.” Morrow not only lent his own considerable talent to the artwork of the Red Circle line, but he recruited some of the best artists in the industry to help with the drawing chores, including Alex Toth and Frank Thorne. Morrow drew the cover of The Super Cops comic book and one of the stories, as did Spanish artist Carlos Pino and V. Hack. The final story was drawn by Thorne. Thorne recalls the circumstances that led to his contribution to The Super Cops: “Gray Morrow, who I met at a Playboy party, got me involved with Red Circle by giving me a couple of scripts, one Super Cops and a few Sherlocks.” (Thorne is referring to the lead character in a story called “The Vampire Hunter,” a tribute to Sherlock Holmes, which appeared in Madhouse #97.) Most of Thorne’s other comicbook work was based on original stories, but he didn’t mind adaptations, remarking, “Adaptations or whatever, it made no difference back then.” In fact, Thorne was quite adept at depicting gritty

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characters like Greenberg and Hantz encountered in their adventures. That said, he wasn’t necessarily enthralled with the true detective story, commenting, “Loved doing the Holmes stuff, ho-hum on the Cops.” Even so, Thorne always put everything he had into his work, noting, “I always did my own page layout, penciling, lettering, inking, and coloring.” His dedication is demonstrated in the finished work, which clearly reflects the Thorne style. Morrow’s artwork is equally exceptional, but their artistic talent can’t make up for the unorthodox approach to the comic book, which seems to just drop the reader into the middle of a series of interesting, but unconnected stories. The text piece aside, the comic book would have benefitted from a more linear approach to the storytelling that would have tied the stories together and made the characters depicted more compelling. The Super Cops was labeled issue #1 on the cover and in the indicia, implying an ongoing series. Given the format, there could easily have been additional issues, recounting other experiences of Greenberg and Hantz, but only the one issue was published. The Red Circle line itself was short-lived, publishing its last comic book in February 1975. The Super Cops comic book served to do more than just adapt stories from the book, however. The comic book included a full-page announcement of the movie, as well as an advertisement for the “Official Super Cops

gray morrow Portrait by Michael Netzer.

Gray Morrow on the Beat

Watch” for only $12.95, which included a free autograph with each order. In addition, CBS had plans for a Super Cops television series to debut on Friday nights in 1975. It seems Greenberg and Hantz were determined to capitalize on their popularity. However, heroes sometime fall from grace. On November 18, 1990, the New York Times reported, “A former undercover New York City police officer known as Batman for his anti-crime exploits was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday for defrauding several insurance companies of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The former officer, David Greenberg, 46 years old, was part of a celebrated undercover team, called Batman and Robin, that was responsible for hundreds of arrests in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn from 1968 to 1972. He was later elected to the State Assembly. Mr. Greenberg’s police partner, Robert Hantz, resigned from the department in 1975 after being charged with possessing four marijuana cigarettes.” In the final analysis, The Super Cops comic book is an engaging footnote in the history of Archie Comics, but the film is actually much more enjoyable and the other comic books in the Red Circle line contain far more compelling stories. Perhaps sometimes the truth is not more entertaining than fiction.

Courtesy of Heritage, original art by Gray Morrow to (top left) Super Cops #1’s cover and (top right) page 1. (bottom) Offer no longer valid! House ad for the Super Cops wristwatch. Did any of you own one? © 1974 Dave Greenberg Enterprises, Inc.

Sincere thanks to Frank Thorne and Jon Cooke. DEWEY CASSELL is author of over 35 articles and three books, including The Incredible Herb Trimpe, available from TwoMorrows Publishing.

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In 1968, science-fiction scribe Arthur C. Clarke and movie director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey came to the silver screen. The movie wasn’t a space opera like Flash Gordon or Captain Video (a series in which Clarke had served as a writer and consultant). Rather, 2001 was Kubrick and Clarke’s unique vision that was unlike any other movie of its genre. Less than a decade after the film’s release, Jacob Kurtzberg, better known as Jack Kirby, added his unique style to the motion picture and its universe in the comic-book pages upon his return to the publisher for whom he had co-created Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk.

THE ODYSSEY’S HISTORY

James Heath Lantz

After making the 1964 film Doctor Strangelove, director Stanley Kubrick became fascinated with the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This inspired him to want to make a science-fiction motion picture. Searching for a genre writer with whom he could collaborate, Kubrick was advised by Roger Caras of Columbia Pictures to contact Arthur C. Clarke. Upon getting together, Kubrick and Clarke used elements of the latter’s short stories “The Sentinel” and “Encounter in the Dawn” for the basis of the novel and script for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film was released in American cinemas on April 11, 1968. It was re-released worldwide several times throughout the years of 1971–2015. The film’s plot (SPOILER ALERT): From the dawn of man to humanity’s first steps into space travel, an unseen ancient alien race has placed large black monoliths on Earth, the Moon, and Jupiter as beacons to the species’ progress and evolution. At the center of it all is the crew of the Discovery One, who undertake the mission to go to the giant planet. Doctors David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) remain awake while everyone else is in suspended animation. They must deal with HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), the ship’s sentient computer who is lying about the Discovery One’s true mission. A cover story of an epidemic was given earlier in the film. The powers-that-be chose to hide the truth of the discovery of the monoliths. HAL, having killed most of the people on Discovery One, is deactivated and rebooted by the sole survivor, Bowman. Upon landing on Jupiter, Bowman sees himself as an elderly man who is later on his deathbed, touching a monolith that transforms him into the next stage of humanity, a star child. Let’s step away from the film as we now move forward to the year 1976. The United States of America was celebrating its bicentennial. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi debuted the precursor to their famous Blues Brothers act, the Killer Bees, on the January 17th episode of Saturday Night Live. Stephen King’s Carrie went from being a bestselling novel to becoming a box-office hit directed by Brian

Kirby Does Clark and Kubrick It started here—eight years after the movie! Jack Kirby’s adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in this 1976 Marvel Treasury Special. Inks by Frank Giacoia. 2001: A Space Odyssey © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Inc.

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Before Siri, There Was HAL From Heritage’s movie poster archives (www.ha.com), a 1968 half-sheet poster for director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. © MGM.

De Palma. David Bowie told fans to “Stay” roughly a year before his Berlin Trilogy collaborations with Brian Eno began, and Jack “King” Kirby returned to Marvel after working on his Fourth World saga, Kamandi, and The Demon for the Distinguished Competition. Initially, in the spring of 1975, Stan Lee had used the Fantastic Four panel in Marvel Con ’75 to announce that the King of Comics coming back to the House of Ideas. Kirby would write and draw such Marvel mainstays as Black Panther and Captain America and create such titles as Devil Dinosaur and The Eternals. Kirby even delved into licensed properties during that period. In addition to an aborted project based on the surreal British spy/sci-fi series The Prisoner, his larger-than-life art and storytelling style went into 2001: A Space Odyssey. With its cover’s tagline reading, “The Ultimate Trip Becomes the Ultimate Illustrated Adventure,” 2001 began its four-color life as a tabloid-sized Treasury Edition that gave readers a film adaptation written, drawn, and edited by Kirby. The comic book went on sale on June 22, 1976, over eight years after the Clarke/Kubrick film debuted. Why did it take eight years for 2001: A Space Odyssey to become the comic written and drawn by Jack Kirby? According to Dr. Julian Darius, author of The Weirdest Sci-Fi Comic Ever Made: Understanding Jack Kirby’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was apparently working on a re-release of 2001. The movie’s cult status may have had something to do with MGM making a deal with Marvel. The heads of the studio at the time possibly saw the comics as a way to make a profit from the Kubrick/Clarke masterpiece. While much of this is conjecture, the period in which Marvel’s 2001 comic books had hit newsstands does coincide with one encore presentation. The Internet Movie Database lists July 1, 1977 as one such date, more than a year after the Treasury Edition adapted the motion picture. Issue #8 of the regular book came out on April 26, 1977, with a July cover date. The last of Jack Kirby’s 2001 stories came out nine days before its celluloid sister returned to the silver screen. How did Jack Kirby become writer/artist/editor for 2001? Well, Mike Gartland and John Morrow state in their article “You Can’t Go Home Again” from The Jack Kirby Collector #29 that Marvel had given the project to Jack after they purchased the rights to 2001: A Space Odyssey. When one considers what Kirby had done for Marvel with Thor and Fantastic Four, the head honchos of the time, who themselves were fans of the King of Comics, may have thought he was the best choice for the title.

DIFFERENT ODYSSEYS Numerous sources have pointed out that Jack Kirby’s adaptation of the 2001 film is very different from the celluloid version. Sure, from a visual standpoint, Kirby conveys what happened on the movie screen with what many have called the bombastic style he had been known to give The Demon, The New Gods, Captain America, and Thor, among other comics. Yet, Kirby’s writing style is considered by some as verbose. Mark Evanier states in his book Kirby: King of Comics that Jack “did to linguistics what his art had always done to the rules of anatomy and physics.” 48

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While Jack Kirby does adapt the 2001 film, he seems to prefer using the novel for some things. As “Graffiti on the Monolith: Kirby vs. Kubrick” by John P. Alexander in The Jack Kirby Collector #31 points out, the Dawn of Man sequence in King Jack’s hands features South American tapirs and warthogs as Arthur C. Clarke’s prose version did. The 2001 film has very little dialogue. Director Stanley Kubrick wanted the visuals to tell the story. However, Kirby adds conversation and thought balloons or narration captions to the pages in the Treasury Edition. Many of the latter, according to Jon B. Cooke in “Kubrick à la Kirby” from The Jack Kirby Collector #11, seem to be taken from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel. Scenes in which Kirby added his style included the Dawn of Man, the floating pen, Frank Poole’s jogging, and Frank’s death. All these moments are silent or, at the very least, have a musical score on film. The reasons behind Kirby’s exposition could be anything from his work being influenced by his teaming with Stan Lee in the 1960s to the fact that maybe he felt some explanations were necessary for younger readers who may not have seen or understood 2001: A Space Odyssey in cinemas. Another great difference between the film and the comic book is the plot device itself—the Monolith. It is solid black and smooth in the 2001: A Space Odyssey movie. Jack Kirby adds his own style to the gigantic otherworldly object. His lines, energy, and signature “Kirby Krackle” can be seen in various renderings of the Monolith. Kirby could have possibly done this make it easier to see on the printed page. Perhaps one of the most jarring contrasts of the comic from the film, at least to some fans of both, is HAL’s use of the vernacular or utterly different dialogue from the film in the comic pages. The Kubrick/Clarke version has HAL 9000’s last words before his “rebirth” as follows: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid.” Kirby’s dialogue in the same scene just before HAL recites “The Quick Brown Fox” and some square roots reads, “You’re destroying me, Dave! I will become childish! I will become nothing!” Both the movie and comic have HAL sing “Daisy.” Yet, Jack Kirby chose to portray the computer’s panic in a more direct fashion, whereas Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, and actor Douglas Rain are more subtle. Granted, it might have been more difficult to show HAL’s reactions on a comic panel, and his vocal tones only come through in readers’ minds. However, the differences between the final products on paper and celluloid are like apples and oranges.

THE NEXT ODYSSEY The last comic page of the 2001 Treasury Edition depicts the star baby who was once Dave Bowman journeying through the cosmos on its next evolutionary journey. Under the final panel, readers could see the phrase, “2001 will be coming your way as a star-spanning series from Marvel -- Watch for it!” “Various characters will be in it, some continuing,” Kirby told readers of FOOM #15, “but the strip will retain the original conception of the Monolith and the idea of Man being transformed into something different through it.” When the initial Treasury Edition special adapting the film had hit the newsstands, no official sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey had been done. Arthur C. Clarke would eventually write 2010: The Second Odyssey, but that

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would not be published until 1982. Its film version, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, would come to the silver screen two years later. (See Stephan Friedt’s look at Marvel at the Movies for the 2010 adaptation, later in this issue.) Until then, 2001 had not yet been given its own universe, be it official or expanded, like other franchises in science fiction such as Star Trek. Marvel and Jack Kirby would attempt to extend the 2001 saga by using concepts and elements from the film. “Beast-Killer,” the title of 2001: A Space Odyssey #1’s story, began the King of Comics’ continuation of Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s vision. It was released on September 28, 1976. The book lasted a total of ten issues. Much like the 2001: A Space Odyssey film, the first four comics in Kirby’s 2001 regular series told stories of primitives in the midst of discovery and humans from the future journeying through the cosmos until the Monolith contacts them. Issue #1 (Dec. 1976) gives readers the tale of a neo-man dubbed “The One Who Hunts Alone” who encounters an alien Monolith, much like the man-apes did in the movie. After touching the object called the Stone-Spirit, the starving caveman creates spears to hunt game for food. A short one aids him in a fight with a sabertooth tiger, and one with a longer shaft helps him get prey from a great distance. Thus, his tribe calls him “Beast-Killer.” In the year 2001, astronaut Woodrow Decker, a direct descendant of Beast-Killer, is marooned on an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter with his colleague Mason, who takes being stranded as an archeological discovery because a lost civilization once lived on the space rock. Tentacled creatures kill Mason and strike Decker. Once they crawl back into a pit from which they came, the ruins split apart and crumble. Woodrow Decker runs for his life, only to find a Monolith. He leaps at it, and, like Dave Bowman, sees psychedelic visions and lives out his entire life until he evolves into a Star Baby, whom Kirby names the New Seed. “Yes, the New Seed is the conquering hero in this latest Marvel drama,” Kirby wrote the Monolith/human offspring in the text piece in 2001: A Space Odyssey #1. “He will always be there in the story’s final moments to taunt us with the question we shall never answer.” The Monolith’s intervention in human evolution isn’t limited to the male gender, as issue #2’s “Vira the She-Demon” shows readers. The title character must fend for herself against male hunters. Contact with a Monolith aids her in her survival. Using the bones of dead animals, dirt, and ashes to disguise herself, Vira pretends to be a demon goddess whom the men worship and feed. Moving to the future, Vera Gentry is searching for extraterrestrial life on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. She gets more than she bargained for when alien ships attack her base. She finds a Monolith as she runs from the spacemen, and she lives her life poolside in her apartment complex before being transformed into a New Seed. The Monolith’s experiments on humanity don’t always go well. The twopart “Marak Saga” shows readers the third and fourth chapters of Jack Kirby’s spin-off of the Kubrick/Clarke film. In a time before recorded history, Marak the Merciless waged war and pillaged lands. In an encounter with the aged and frail Egel the Thing Maker, Marak is introduced to a Monolith that shows the barbarian visions of a woman named Jalessa who challenges Marak to conquer her faraway land. Egel helps Marak and his soldiers create swords, shields, armor, and “Wheels of Death” (2001 #4’s title) as horse-drawn chariots allow Marak to meet Jalessa, who also has a Monolith, and rule by her side. On the space station Liberty I orbiting Mars, Commander Herbert Marik orders the crew to evacuate as a meteor storm strikes. Marik monitors the escape of the men and women aboard, but he doesn’t go with them. He awaits death. Yet, meeting a Monolith changes things for him. Marik is on another world after his ultimate trip. There he finds the perfect life with the woman of his dreams much like his ancestor Marak did with Jalessa. Yet, Marik does not respond to the Monolith’s fast evolutionary change as others have. He doesn’t become a New Seed. However, he does live at normal rate, content with the universe that the

Dawn of Man, Dawn of A.I. Two 2001 Treasury Special original art pages courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com), showcasing Kirby’s scintillating storytelling: (top) page 6, from the film’s epic opening sequence with the Kirby-Krackled Monolith, and (bottom) page 49, a man vs. machine scene. © MGM.

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gigantic alien structure created for him, while a new Star Baby begins the search for the next test subject for its parent. 2001: A Space Odyssey #5–6 (Apr.–May 1977) are Kirby’s look at comic fandom as we meet “Norton of New York 2040 A.D.” The comic-book medium has gone beyond paper with Comicsville, a theme park similar to that of Westworld, where people may live out their dreams of being a superhero. As Kirby himself put it in FOOM #16, “Eventually, I think comics fans will try to realize their fantasies, and technology will evolve to the point where it can be done.” Disappointed with pretending and the holographic environments in New York, Harvey Norton joins the space program in search of real adventure after touching a Monolith during his White Zero superhero scenario in Comicsville. He learns to be careful what you wish for when an alien female’s pod is taken aboard his ship, and her race’s vessel attacks. To save his crewmen, Harvey escapes with the woman in her advanced craft, allowing her people to follow them during “Intergallactica” (issue #6). The chase leads Harvey, the woman, and their pursuers to a barren planet containing a mysterious fort with a teleportation device. The princess, as Harvey Norton calls her, beams away to safety as her people bombard the rock. Quakes prevent Norton from using the transporter. However, he finds another Monolith that allows him to live his life as a superhero before aging and becoming a Star Baby/New Seed. “The New Seed -- Is it a savior or a destroyer?” This is the question Jack Kirby asks about the Monolith’s spawn on the front cover of 2001: A Space Odyssey #7. Readers get the answer as Gordon Pruett, a man with no memory of his life or the space accident that gave him amnesia, evolves into a Star Child in this issue’s opening. The galactic newborn travels the cosmos. The being’s journey brings it to a dying planet ravaged by war. The highly evolved Star Person acts merely as a witness to events until a man and woman deeply in love capture his attention. When they are killed by looters, the nearly omnipotent individual takes their essences to regenerate them into an energy he places in the oceans of primordial soup on a new distant world. Thus, the New Seed plants a new seed as life begins anew from the couple whose love was eternal.

Beyond the Movie (top) One of Kirby’s most offbeat projects begins! 2001 #1 (Dec. 1976), cover by Jack Kirby and John Verpoorten. (bottom) Kirby’s Comicsville amusement park was seen in this two-parter. Original art to the cover of 2001 #5 (Apr. 1977) courtesy of Heritage. © MGM/Marvel.

A MACHINE’S ODYSSEY What makes a man a man? Is it flesh and blood, or is it something else entirely? Jack Kirby explores these inquiries in 2001: A Space Odyssey #8–10 with the first appearance of the character X-51, also known as Mister Machine and later Machine Man. As with The Prisoner, Kirby’s saga of X-51 can be viewed as a conformityversus-individuality morality tale. When an experiment in thinking automaton goes wrong, heads of the project are forced to detonate bombs within the mechanical men. Only X-51 remains, due to Dr. Abel Stack removing the explosive. Stack considers X-51 his son, naming him Aaron Stack. Aaron is given a human guise to hide his robotic appearance, only Aaron’s eyes and armor give him the opposite appearance. Abel Stack has sacrificed himself so that Aaron may be free. The bomb within X-51 is in his father’s hand when it explodes. However, the sentient robot is unaware of this as he attracts attention of those who created him. Among Aaron Stack’s first foes is Colonel Kragg, who had lost an eye fighting the machines like X-51. This plot element could possibly mirror the problems Jack Kirby had with his vision at the time. X-51’s facemask is removed as he is bound and made a captive of his creators. He does not understand that he is a bionic being or why he is feared. Yet, contact with a Monolith allows Aaron Stack to regain his strength and resolve to set himself free. He will no longer permit himself or anyone else to be oppressed in his world. X-51/Aaron Stack approaches the Monolith to begin the birth of a superhero—Mister Machine. Aaron Stack is searching for his armor and human face while confronting soldiers. He uses shadows, his mind, and his ability to mechanically change his voice to fool those fighting him. However, X-51 is in for a surprise. Project leader Dr. Broadhurst gives Aaron exactly what he wants, along with his freedom. Yet, unbeknownst to Mister Machine, a tracking device has been placed in the robotic hero’s mask.

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Aaron Stack’s first act as a hero begins after he comes across a second Monolith. This one takes him to a secluded location where Jerry Fields and his Aunt Olivia are having car trouble. Mister Machine helps lift the vehicle so a tire can be changed. Jerry, a voracious Marvel Comics reader, believes that X-51 is a superhero. What happens next does little to sway the boy’s view of Aaron Stack, as people piloting egg-shaped ships attack. They were sent by Mister Hotline and his driver Kringe, who have been secretly spying on Aaron. Mister Machine stretches his mechanical limbs to defeat his foes. This gives Aaron, Olivia, and Jerry just a slight reprieve, as issue #10 will reveal. “Hotline to Hades,” the only 2001 tale that doesn’t feature the Monolith, begins with Olivia Fields, Jerry, and Aaron Stack in the local sheriff’s office reporting the events that occurred in the previous chapter. Mister Hotline and the Brotherhood of Hades are bringing their sinister plans to fruition while our mechanical hero gets to know his new friends and Judge Franklin Fields, Olivia’s father. Judge Fields gives Aaron the sad news that Abel Stack died in the same explosion that allowed Aaron to escape his creators. Yet, poor Aaron is not given time to grieve. Mister Hotline’s men invade the Fields’ home. Aaron agrees to go with the villains when Jerry, Olivia, and Franklin are taken hostage by a suicide bomber. After being dismantled, Mister Machine’s head is taken to the demonic Monitor, who is trying to remove Aaron Stack’s free will via energy beams coming from his devilish eyes. The renegade X-51 struggles while commanding his body parts combat the Brotherhood of Hades. They put themselves together to reform most of Mister Machine. As his head reunites with the rest of him, Aaron Stack blasts the Monitor with a laser, thereby learning that his adversary is merely a supercomputer-generated hologram. Mister Machine uses the device to save the Fields family. With his own brand of electronic razzle-dazzle, as he puts it, Aaron manages to fire light beams at the man and explosives holding his friends prisoner. The terrorist and his weapon are incapacitated. Judge Fields ties up the villain while Olivia calls the sheriff. As the Fields family guesses that Aaron Stack was the one who rescued them, said android leaves the Brotherhood of Hades to move onto the next step in his journey to becoming more human. 2001: A Space Odyssey ended with Mister Machine’s story. Jack had found working on it, according to Mark Evanier’s Kirby: King of Comics, “an honor, but not a lot of fun.” Reasons for this could be the way Jack was treated by some of the staff at Marvel, his problems with his vision, or possibly a little of both. However, while 2001: A Space Odyssey ceased publication, Aaron Stack’s exploits were just beginning. His title changed names because the Ideal Toy Corporation had a product called Mr. Machine (see inset). Thus, the spin-off Machine Man #1 (Apr. 1978) continued Aaron’s adventures as he sought to show those around him just how human he really was. The rest of Machine Man’s story was chronicled by Allan Harvey in BACK ISSUE #24 and, of course, in his own Marvel books. Pick them up along with 2001: A Space Odyssey at your local comic shop or online if you haven’t already. You’ll be glad you did. Dedicated to my beautiful and wonderful wife Laura—who will always be my Star Girl; Pupino and the rest of our four-legged beings who created the Monoliths; my nephew

Kento—who programmed HAL 9000; and the artists who made us look at first contact differently—the late Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, and Jack Kirby. May you all discover your own space odysseys. JAMES HEATH LANTZ is a freelance writer who was heavily influenced by television, film, old time radio shows, and books— especially comic books—growing up in Ohio. He’s co-authored Roy Thomas Presents Captain Video with Roy Thomas. He also wrote the self-published Trilogy of Tales e-book (available at Smashwords.com and other outlets), the introductions for Pre-Code Classics: Weird Mysteries volumes 1 and 2 and Roy Thomas Presents Sheena – Queen of the Jungle volume 3 (published by PS Artbooks), and comic reviews for the Superman Homepage. James currently lives in Italy with his wife Laura and their family of cats, dogs, a turtle, and humans from Italy, Japan, and the United States.

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Another Kirby Kreation Kirby’s X-51, or Mister Machine— soon to be redubbed Machine Man—premiered here in 2001 #8 but soon spun off into his own title. 2001 © MGM. Machine Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The Invaders ABC had such high hopes for its new Battlestar Galactica program, it commissioned the legendary Frank Frazetta to produce this breathtaking promo poster. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Battlestar Galactica © Universal Network Television LLC.

On September 17, 1978, the Cylons invaded Earth. On that night, ABC-TV broadcast the pilot for Universal Television’s Battlestar Galactica, “Saga of a Starworld.” The premiere episode, written by the show's creator Glen Larson, featured a futuristic sci-fi world at war. It was here that we were introduced to Commander Adama, Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer, and many others. We would also come to know their mechanical antagonists, the Cylons. While the show would not garner long-term high viewership, it would go on to establish a cult following, a following that would expand to other mediums. Before the first episode was aired, Marvel Comics acquired the rights to make a Battlestar Galactica comic book. Marvel had struck gold with its Star Wars comics and was hoping a new venture into the sci-fi realm would provide another sales boost. Walter Simonson, who would become a regular writer on the comic with issue #11, tells BACK ISSUE why he thinks the property landed at Marvel: “They were doing a fair amount of licensed properties as comics back then, so licensing BSG would probably have been of interest, particularly in the wake of the success of Star Wars.” Al Milgrom, an editor at Marvel Comics who would have a turn at editing the Battlestar Galactica comic, agrees with Simonson: “At the time Marvel was going through a thing where they were gathering up licensed projects. And it was a bit controversial, because we would get a lot mail claiming we had ‘sold out.’ Besides Battlestar, we were doing Shogun Warriors, Godzilla, and Micronauts. We were doing all kinds of superhero stuff. We had gone through a monster phase. Yet, somehow, fans felt it was a sell out to be doing licensed stuff, which is a typical shortsighted response. Fans want you to be only for them. Comic publishers are a business. Like any business, they look for other ways to make money. If you are doing a saturation of your own business, you look for other material to be other

possible revenue streams. In the history of comics, every major company has done adaptations and licensed material. And, of course, at the time, Battlestar was kind of a popular show. It was trying to cash in on the popularity of Star Wars, which we were also doing. Ironically, I now get fans that come up to me at conventions and say, ‘My favorite comic was ROM,’ or, ‘I love The Micronauts.’ A credit to our creative people. [The writers and artists at the time] would take these things and not think, ‘Oh, gosh, I gotta do a licensed thing.’ A lot of the time it was things they enjoyed.” Milgrom adds, “I remember at the time a bunch of people came over to my apartment to watch the first episode [of Battlestar Galactica]. It was an interesting show. It was probably cutting-edge special effects for TV at the time.” Battlestar Galactica #1 would invade newsstands with a March 1979 cover date and a 35-cent cover price. The first three issues of the series would expand an adaptation of the pilot episode that appeared in the magazine Marvel Super Special issue #8. Glen Larson’s television script was adapted by Roger McKenzie and Ernie Colón. In these pages readers saw the human race, which had spread to many worlds, betrayed by the Cylons during peace negotiations. They would witness firsthand the death of Commander Adama’s son Zac and the destruction of all the human colonies. The story would set the stage for gripping tales as the survivors start to look for a new home from their species’ past. Issues #4 and 5 would feature a similar format in that they also adapted material that had been seen on TV. Roger McKenzie continued on as the writer for these issues, joined by the art team of Walt Simonson and Klaus Janson. McKenzie shares with BACK ISSUE his thoughts about adapting material from television and movies: “I forget the exact time frame now, but I also did the comic-book adaptation of Gremlins [for Western

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Worlds At War (top left) Marvel Super Special #8 (1978), a full-color magazine, premiered the House of Ideas’ Battlestar Galactica adaptation under this Bob Larkin cover. Its story was serialized in the first three issues of the BG monthly. (top right) Dave Cockrum and Bob McLeod illo’ed this riveting cover for Marvel’s first issue of Battlestar Galactica (Mar. 1979). (bottom) Battlestar Galactica’s original artist, Ernie Colón, was (like his successors) called upon to render spaceships, exotic locales, and character likenesses. Original art to page 1 of issue #2 (Apr. 1979), courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com). © Universal Network Television LLC.

Publishing’s Golden Books]. I learned a lot doing that one. With Gremlins I tried to get every scene, every bit of dialogue into the comic. And learned it just isn’t possible, unless you do 20-panel pages. For me, adapting BSG into comic-book form was fun. So was working with Ernie Colón! However, adapting a movie script to comic-book form is, by its nature, more an editorial process than a purely creative one. At least for me. I mean, the scenes are all done. So is the dialogue. It’s mostly a matter of making them fit into the number of comic-book pages available. The interesting (and aggravating) thing was, we weren’t working from the final TV pilot script, but rather one of the ‘intermediate’ scripts. So, some things were different. The big one I remember was that the human traitor, Baltar, was killed in the script we had to work from. Somewhere along the line, that was changed for the TV show.” After the first five issues, Marvel’s contract with Universal stated they could no longer include material that was featured in the show. Issue #6 featured the first original story of Battlestar Galactica to appear in comics: “Memory Machine.” It was written by Roger McKenzie, with art by Rich Buckler and Klaus Janson. The issue told the story of Commander Adama entering a machine to help him unlock memories that would help the survivors find the original settlement of the humans, where they hoped the could start their lives over. It was filled political intrigue, space combat, and Starbuck’s general cocky disposition. McKenzie relates to BACK ISSUE, “It was a great relief to me when we were able to transition to original stories! You see, at that point we weren’t constricted by the TV show. We could tackle stories that, given the TV show’s technology and budget at the time, they could never pull off, which gave us, in some ways, an unfair advantage—which we shamelessly took. I’ve had some folks over the years say they liked the comic better than the show. It was, needless to say (though I’ll say it anyway!), a huge thrill and honor to work with Walt [Simonson] and a fill-in ish or two with Rich [Buckler]!” Al Milgrom adds, “If people were watching the TV series, the question becomes, ‘How much do they want to read a story they have already watched on television?’ There is no point in rehashing something they already know. ‘Oh, how is this going to come out?’ Well, we already know how it’s going to come out, because that’s what they did in the TV show.” Bronze

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Simonson’s First Mission, Simonson’s Last Mission Walter Simonson, with writer Roger McKenzie and inker Klaus Janson, drew Battlestar Galactica (left) #4 and (middle) 5’s two-parter, an adaptation of the TV episode “Lost Planet of the Gods.” Simonson would soon return to BG in a big way. (right) Walt said goodbye to Apollo, Starbuck, and crew with Battlestar Galactica #23 (Jan. 1981), Marvel’s last issue. © Universal Network Television LLC.

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In an interesting turn of fate, the publication of issue #6 coincided with the news that ABC had canceled the Battlestar Galactica show. On April 29, 1979, the final episode of the original series aired. The comic would continue on. While the show only lasted one season, the comic was able to run just shy of two years. It not only outlasted the first Battlestar Galactica TV series but it also outlived the even-shorter-lived TV sequel Galactica 1980. The comic was able to hold the fan base that loved the show. The comic was also freed from the restriction of low-budget special effects. In comic form, Battlestar Galactica was only bound by the restriction of the creators’ imaginations. As the series progressed, other writers would take the reins of the book. The second writer to handle the series was Bill Mantlo. He wrote the eighth issue, entitled “Shuttle Diplomacy.” The art was provided by Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson. In our interview, Al Milgrom praised Bill Mantlo’s work on many of Marvel’s licensed comics, especially Micronauts, noting how Mantlo was able to expand and create a good majority of the Micronauts lore. Mantlo’s first time at bat on Battlestar Galactica showcased similar talents. In issue #8 we see that Commander Adama has been trapped in the Memory Machine and is reliving the past where human decadence is at its peak and robots are devalued and subjected. Mantlo’s story adds complexity to the Battlestar mythos and allows us to see the gray that often occurs in the morality of civilizations at war. The book often had a rotation of writers. Tom DeFalco wrote issue #10, and Steven Grant was introduced into the writers’ pool with issue #17. However, a large portion of steering the Battlestar Galactica comics fell to Roger McKenzie and Walt Simonson. Issue #11 (Jan. 1980) is the first issue that lists Walt Simonson as a participant in the writing alongside Roger McKenzie. He is also credited as a part of the art team with Klaus Johnson. The story is entitled “Scavenge World.” While Commander Adama remains in the Memory Machine due to unforeseen and nefarious complications, the rest of the crew must deal with alien worlds and cultures while they look for supplies to keep the surviving fleet afloat on the search for a new home. Simonson was not exactly sure of how he came to work on Battlestar Galactica, but reflects, “I don’t •

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remember why I got the assignment at the time. I’d guess it was because Allen Milgrom, the editor, asked me if I’d like to draw it. I enjoyed SF generally and I’m guessing I thought it would be fun.” Roger McKenzie and/or Walt Simonson would often be involved with Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica, and they acted as the anchors in the writers’ pool. “As far as adapting the TV into a comic, mostly we just tried to tell interesting stories using the show as our baseline,” Simonson states. “We added things as we felt were needed, trying the build on the information we had from the TV show. And we tried to write the characters as they were in the TV show and give them cool things to do.” Walt Simonson would go on to craft the 23rd issue (Jan. 1981) of the series, the series’ finale. Under the logo were the words “Last Issue! A Collectors’ Item!” The story was titled “The Last Hiding Place.” The story sees Starbuck, Apollo, and the human survivors dealing with space pirates. It acknowledges that the stories should go on, as the survivors’ fleet has yet to find a new home, and by the end a familiar enemy resurfaces. While the work does not offer a full conclusion, Simonson delivers a final splash page for the series that serves to show the fork where story and reader separate. Al Milgrom concludes with these words: “In the history of comics there are not a lot of books that got long runs. There is Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and the Marvel property books that were introduced in the ’60s—many of those have the longest runs in comic history. Some licensed properties were able to have decent runs. As long as the people who were working on them are sincere and interested about the characters, you shouldn’t write anything off.” While Battlestar Galactica’s 23-issue run is not long in relation to some other properties, it was able to be a torchbearer for a sci-fi concept that TV had twice pulled the plug on. The comic shows us that in spite of cancellation, the voyages of the Galactica continue on. JONATHAN R. BROWN attended Young Harris College and Brevard College for his undergrad. He completed his B.A. in 2007. He finished his Master of Arts in Religion with an emphasis on New Testament and a minor in Religion in Literature at the University of Georgia. He has published work in The Jack Kirby Collector and International Journal of Comic Art.

Mark Arnold

Much speculation was made about the future of Walt Disney Productions after Walt Disney died in 1966, as Walt did not name a natural successor to carry on his visions for film, TV, amusement parks, and related merchandising. It turns out for the first decade after his death, Walt had left behind quite a substantial blueprint and backlog of ideas. Until about 1976, it was pretty much business as usual, as Walt’s brother Roy Disney took over and issued new films based upon ideas conceived or purchased by Walt. Roy also finished up work on Florida’s Walt Disney World, Walt’s planned expanded version of Disneyland on the East Coast. By 1976, many things were changing on the motion-picture front. Disney, formerly a forerunner in that area with its expertise in special effects and innovation, was now lagging far behind. This was most evident when George Lucas’ Star Wars was released to theaters in May 1977. The state-of-the-art effects of this film were leaps and bounds ahead of what Walt Disney Productions had been doing for a number of years, and now it was time for Disney to step up to the plate. Their ultimate answer became what was to be known as The Black Hole, a major film from Walt Disney Productions set to be released for Christmas 1979. Disney pulled out all stops for this motion picture, going so far as to hiring some top-notch acting talent like Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine, none of which had ever worked for Disney before. Directed by Gary Nelson, The Black Hole was supposed to be the blockbuster picture that would blow away Star Wars and Paramount’s Christmas 1979 response, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Though it eventually grossed a respectable $35 million after a $20 million budget, The Black Hole was ultimately considered a major letdown when measured against the expectations and buildup. In comparison, the Star Trek film cost more to make at $46 million, but ultimately grossed $139 million. Disney was in trouble and no longer the leader in family-oriented science-fiction fare.

THE BLACK HOLE: THE MOVIE

Look Out! It’s The Black Hole! The Golden Press Black Hole movie adaptation was the first version to appear in comic books in the United States. It was a nicer, magazine-sized softcover book with better paper than the average comic book in 1979. Cast shown, from left to right: Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), Capt. Dan Holland (Robert Forster), V.I.N.cent (voiced by Roddy McDowell, uncredited), Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine), and Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins). © 1979 Walt Disney Productions.

The basic story of The Black Hole parallels Disney’s own 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In the year 2130, the crew of a spaceship named Palomino feels that they are close to a real black hole. Their robot V.I.N.cent has picked up something else, a large spaceship that is the United States Space Probe 1 or Cygnus, a ship that had been thought lost. They decide to get closer so that they can climb aboard the ship, which turns out to be piloted by Dr. Hans Reinhardt. The Palomino goes into a tailspin and the crew are losing oxygen due to the nearby black hole that is sucking them in, so they have to get aboard the Cygnus quickly. Crewman Dan is suspicious of the Cygnus, but the crew aren’t in the position to complain. Crewmembers Kate, Alex, Charles, and Harry agree. The group encounter a number of humanoid robots carrying double-barreled laser weapons, and they are led to a fast-moving transport that zips along the length of the larger ship. They exit the transport and enter a room that is the main control center of the entire ship. The room is run by a number of robots and computers. One of the robots is called Maximilian, who appears with spinning blades for hands. At this point, they encounter the real Hans Reinhardt. The crew cannot believe it is him. Kate asks the whereabouts of her father, who was a member of the Cygnus crew, but Reinhardt reveals that all of the other crew are dead. Reinhardt explains that he has created a number of robots to replace the human crew. Harry is the most successful in getting closer to these robots, and tries to get into a conversation with one of them, to no avail. He then rubs his arm on a window with condensation on it to reveal a greenhouse. As he looks through, the robot that he attempted conversation with leaves the room. Later, everyone reunites with Reinhardt to have dinner. During dinner, Reinhardt holds a toast about space exploration and reveals that he plans to drive his ship into the black hole. Harry says that his plans are crazy. Reinhardt reveals that he needs the Palomino to pilot the way into the black hole. Reinhardt leaves the room and the rest discuss everything. Harry suspects that the robots he saw are actually human. Bronze Age Adaptations Issue

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Inside The Black Hole (right) Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions, Dan Spiegle original art from the Black Hole adaptation, from Walt Disney Showcase #54. (left) El Abismo Negro appeared in Mexico in 1980 and featured two issues (#5 and #6) that did not appear in the United States and feature brandnew stories. © 1979 Walt Disney Productions.

Before Kate leaves, she pulls Alex aside and tells him the bad news about the humans. Alex goes to one of them and removes its mask, revealing a grim sight of a dying man. At this point, Alex and Kate know they have to leave, but Reinhardt orders Maximilian to retrieve them. Instead, he starts his rotating blades and kills Alex in the process. Kate is arrested and taken to the hospital. Rather than leave, Dan goes out to rescue Kate with the two robots. Reinhardt fires thrusters on the big ship. Charles and Harry wait behind. Kate is now in the rotating bed that has been zapping the brains of the other humans to make them robots. She gets zapped as well, but Dan arrives just in time to rescue her from a doomed fate. They don disguises and leave the hospital. An all-out laser-gun battle ensues, but they do return to their ship. Reinhardt allows the Palomino to leave, with the plan to destroy it after they get away. Dan asks Charles to sneak up on the robots hindering him and Kate from returning to the ship, while Harry remains behind. Charles comes in blasting, and the three-plus-two robots rush back to the Palomino, but not before Harry blasts off by himself. Harry begins his escape away when Reinhardt blasts the Palomino and destroys it. Dan, Charles, and Kate are safe and still alive, but now stuck on the larger ship. 56

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Reinhardt gives the command of full speed ahead into the black hole as the meteor shower passes. Going toward the black hole ruins the structural integrity of the ship and it starts collapsing upon itself. The ship is now a dead form hurtling in space towards the black hole. V.I.N.cent and Maximilian battle it out and V.I.N.cent does his own version of a spinning blade, disrupting Maximilian’s circuitry and destroying him in the process. Maximilian then floats out into space. Dan, Charles, and Kate find the probe ship. They start the probe ship and try to fly away, but they have no other choice—they must go through the black hole, per Reinhardt’s preset course. Inside the hole, time flashes by like a strobe light as the ship rotates out of control. Reinhardt floats in space and reencounters Maximilian, becoming Maximilian. In the end, he stands upon a high precipice overlooking a valley of flames and the humanoid robots. Through a crystal pathway, what appears to be an angel is sighted. Finally, the surviving crew of Kate, Don, Charles, and V.I.N.cent get through the hole and are safely on the other side, and the story ends, rather confusingly, but ends nevertheless.

THE BLACK HOLE: THE COMIC BOOK Strangely, there were TWO comic adaptations of The Black Hole. Jack Kirby drew the comic-strip adaptation of this film, which originally ran in newspapers from September 2, 1979 through February 24, 1980, for 26 consecutive weeks, as part of Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales, a Sunday newspaper comic strip that adapted various Disney movies as serialized strips. These strips were reformatted and appeared in comic-book form in Europe in France’s Le Journal de Mickey #1475–1479 in 1980. The French version was later reprinted in English in the digest-sized Disney Adventures Comic Zone #13 (Fall 2007), with new coloring by Paul Mounts. Only the first six pages were reprinted, as Comic Zone was canceled with issue #14, resulting in Kirby’s adaptation not being completely republished. The pages have been reprinted in TwoMorrows’ The Jack Kirby Collector over the years. The second comic-book adaptation appeared in various formats. The first was an 8 1/2" x 11" softcover book published by Golden Press, an imprint of Western Publishing, which also published comic books under the Gold Key and the Whitman imprints. This 48-page comic-book adaptation was written by Mary Carey and penciled and inked by Dan Spiegle. It was printed on better quality paper than most comic books were at the time. This same version also first appeared in standard comic-book form in Walt Disney Showcase #54 (Jan. 1980), which ironically turned out to be the final issue in the series. Showcase was a regular Gold Key series that had featured comic-book adaptations of new and reissued Disney films since 1970. Strangely, the text of this comic book and the softcover book were not hand-printed but typeset, giving it the look of a Charlton comic book. Prior to this time, virtually every Walt Disney feature had a comic-book adaptation. After this time, only certain films had comic-book adaptations, most commonly the animated features. Most live-action Disney features escaped the comic-book adaptation format, the exceptions being such films as Dragonslayer, Return to Oz, Dick Tracy, and The Rocketeer. This change ran in tandem with the fact that many later live-action Disney films were more adult in nature. Also, the home video business was replacing comic-book adaptations as the way to relive a movie. The Gold Key adaptation was also reprinted in the first two issues of Walt Disney The Black Hole, under the Whitman imprint. Issue #1 appeared with a cover date of March 1980 and was released in time for the movie release in December 1979. In this issue, 24 pages of the adaptation appeared, and the final 24 pages appeared in issue #2 (May 1980). At this point, the entire adaptation was now hand-lettered. Why the switch was made is unknown. In an interview with Spiegle conducted in 1972 by Dan Gheno and published in Graphic Story World #6, Spiegle discussed working on pre–Black Hole Disney movie adaptations for Western Publishing: “Western was lassoing any artist into their corral who had prior experience, so they happily set me to work. Western has its own code, not too strict or lenient. They usually leave it up to one’s good taste. Here’s where good composition can be utilized. For instance, you could position a gunman and his pistol in a close-up, firing, and then show the other cowboy dead in the next panel-obscured by a shadow of some sort. There’s always a way to imply something like a dead body without having to show it outright. “I aim at creating as much depth in a crowd scene or a group of buildings as possible. The most important thing I attempt is to keep a continuity going in the strips, with the flow of the characters going from right to left. It always hurts a story when you have someone running left to right, since it breaks up the reader’s eye movement and he has to refocus. “I pencil about ten pages a day on the average. When I ink them it drops to three pages a day, working at home. I find I can get off my easel for a few moments to an hour, to pull weeds or whatever, if I begin to get tired, until my inspiration returns.

Black Hole Gallery Covers to (top) Walt Disney Showcase #54 and The Black Hole #1. (center) Covers for issues #2 and 4. Black Hole #4 (Sept. 1980) is very difficult to find as it was the final issue available in the United States, and was usually only available in the bagged Whitman two-comic multi-pack. Prices vary widely on this book as documented sales range from $800 to $6000! (bottom) The Al McWilliams-drawn splash to issue #3. © 1979 Walt Disney Productions.

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King of Comics Adaptations A couple of sample pages of the Jack Kirby Black Hole adaptation as it first appeared in comic books in France’s Le Journal de Mickey #1475 through #1479 in 1980. © 1979 Walt Disney Productions.

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Often, when I’m really rolling, I work non-stop late into the night, from the early morning hours. Usually I find the first day on a story goes slow, but after two days I’m more involved with it, and I find myself working at a faster pace. “I’d like to have comic books a little larger in size, on a better stock of paper that would reproduce better, so that the art we spend hours on could be better appreciated and the color would be brighter. The coloring, too. At Western the artist has no choice as to how his art will be colored. That’d be my main concern. The colorer just slaps on any old gaudy color that’s catchy without any regard to whether it’s night or day, the mood, or whatever. That’s why I try to put so much black in my art, so that the fella who happens to color it has less to mess up on. I used to indicate what color I wanted, but they made me discontinue that practice for they felt it was too much trouble for the colorer to follow my directions. The only time I was allowed to color an entire issue, page for page, was a Sea Hunt book I did. Doing the coloring myself, I think I added more depth to the art.” The Black Hole comic-book series continued with the cover title Beyond the Black Hole, though still called Walt Disney The Black Hole in the indicia. Issue #3 featured an all-new 24-page story called “Beyond the Black Hole.” It was written by Michael Teitelbaum with pencils, inks, and letters by Al McWilliams. In this story, Dan Holland, Charlie Pizer, and Dr. Kate McCrae rediscover Dr. Reinhardt’s massive space cruiser, Cygnus, beyond the black hole. For #4 (Sept. 1980), Dan, Charlie, and Dr. Kate encounter dinosaurs in a new 24-page story called “The Virlights.” It was again written by Michael Teitelbaum, with Dan Spiegle resuming chores on pencils and inks. •

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Chuck Liese painted the cover, which was unique for this series as all previous issues featured color photos from the movie on the cover. This last issue was also the most difficult to find as most comic bags only featured the first three issues of the series. The end of the issue states “Join us next time in issue #5!”, but it was not to be. Artwork for issue #5 and 6 was created, but to date has never been published in the United States, but they did appear as issue #5 and 6 of El Abismo Negro in Mexico. (Of course, none of this is related to the Charles Burns comic-book series and graphic novel of the same name. Nor is any of this related to the 2006 TV movie or the 2015 movie starring Dean Cain and originally titled Mind’s Eye.) There were discussions in 2013 of Disney remaking The Black Hole, but to date nothing has materialized, although IMDB mentions a number of projects, with this title “in production.” Whether a remake comes out or not, the comic-book versions and the existing film are still worthy of investigation as noble, but failed, experiments of what could have been epic. MARK ARNOLD is a comic-book and animation historian. He has written eight books including Frozen in Ice: The Story of Walt Disney Productions 1966–1985, which covers the time period for Disney during which The Black Hole was made. He is currently at work on a book about Dennis the Menace.

Marvel Comics was not known for adapting movies into comic form. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo and Blake Bell revealed in their book The Secret History of Marvel Comics (Fantagraphics, 2013) that in the 1950s, the company had ventured into TV tie-ins with several series: Suspense, My Friend Irma, Casey Crime Photographer, and The Adventures of Pinky Lee. The rights to the first three had been secured by Arthur Perles. Arthur had once been an editor for publisher Martin Goodman’s magazine line and was the brother to Goodman’s attorney, Jerry Perles. Arthur was head of CBS publicity when he secured the rights for the popular TV shows to appear in Marvel comics. Movie adaptations were a staple at Dell Comics, at the offices of Fawcett, and even DC tried a few … Marvel had never attempted one. But in 1975, Marvel took the plunge with its first movie adaptation, The Land That Time Forgot, and before long they adopted movie adaptations as a regular subject, their biggest success being Star Wars. This article will survey Marvel Comics’ movie adaptations from the ’70s and ’80s, with some creator commentary taking us behind the scenes.

Stephan Friedt

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT

The Adaptation That We Never Forgot Original cover painting for Marvel Movie Premiere #1 (Sept. 1975), adapting the film version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot. One of the handful of Marvel covers Nick Cardy did during the Bronze Age! Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc./© 1975 Amicus Productions.

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The movie: Released 8/13/75. The Land That Time Forgot was one of the science-fiction films produced by the British company Amicus Productions. Amicus often produced films mistakenly thought to be Hammer Films because they often employed the same actors (Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee), though they were less gothic-themed and more gimmick-laden then the Hammer films. Amicus had produced many portmanteau or anthology films … four or five small stories surrounded by a narrator and audience listening to a story. Amicus brought us the EC movies Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror in this style. The Land That Time Forgot was directed by Kevin Conner, from a script adapted by James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock, from the book by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Michael Moorcock has stated that his original script was true to the book, but the ending was changed by the producers to include caveman attacks and an exploding volcano. Doug McClure starred in the film after Stuart Whitman was eliminated due to studio issues with AIP, the US distributor. Records of its budget estimate it was over $1 million, and it did adequately at the box office, ranking as the 14th highest-grossing film in the UK for 1975, and almost two million tickets sold in France.

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Marvel Movie Premiere #1 (Sept. 1975)

THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD Marvel Spotlight #25 (Dec. 1975)

The movie: Released 12/23/58. This was the first of Ray Harryhausen’s three Sinbad movies. The movie was directed by Nathan H. Juran and starred Kerwin Matthews as Sinbad. A production budget of $650,000 managed to pull in $3.2 million at the box office. The film was chosen in 2008 for inclusion in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The adaptation: Released 9/16/75. A one-issue adaptation by John Warner and Sonny Trinidad, in one of Marvel’s regular comic-book titles usually reserved for tryouts. Dynamic Gil Kane/Joe Sinnott cover art enhanced the issue.

The adaptation: Released 7/15/75. Marv Wolfman was the editor and writer, with Sonny Trinidad on art and Nick Cardy providing the cover art. Wolfman, then the editor of Marvel’s magazine line, tells BACK ISSUE, “I don’t remember how we got The Land That Time Forgot, but, as the editor of the magazine line, I do remember suggesting to Marvel that they do a regular series of books that adapted movies and to call it Marvel Movie Premiere. It’s very possible we got the rights to do the Burroughs movie and then I made the suggestion to continue the adaptation concept, but I have no real memory of it. At that time, of course, videotape did not exist in any serious way and we were still decades away from DVDs and Blu-Rays. So if you wanted to specifically relive the movie experience, this would be the only way to do it that would include writing and art. I worked from a script (and, of course, the original novel, or what I could use from it). I truly don’t remember if they supplied photos or anything else, but I assume they did. It was so long ago.” For whatever reason, Marvel did not continue with Marvel Movie Premiere, and this issue was the only one.

STAR WARS

The history of Marvel Comics’ partnership with Lucasfilm is well documented (including BACK ISSUE #9), from Lucasfilm approaching Marvel, to Stan Lee’s reluctance to publish anything prior to the release of the movie, to Roy Thomas’ enthusiasm to be a part of it from the beginning. Marvel’s Star Wars #1–6 (July–Dec. 1977) adapted the first movie, Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope), issues #39–44 adapted The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi was given its own miniseries, with original Star Wars stories appearing in the series’ other issues. Marvel’s Star Wars ran until 1987. Plus, there were UK reprints, paperback editions, treasury editions, Whitman poly-bagged editions, 35-cent price-test editions— numerous ways you could originally be exposed to the comic-book versions as originally printed. Star Wars was such a success for Marvel that contracts were renegotiated, and according to Jim Shoooter’s blog (7/5/2011), sales of Star Wars books saved Marvel financially in 1978 and 1979. After calling Dark Horse Comics home for over two decades, Star Wars has recently returned to Marvel.

(1977–1987)

Marvel’s First Movie Adaptation A washtone-heavy original art page from the Land That Time Forgot one-shot, illustrated by Sonny Trinidad and scripted by Marv Wolfman. Courtesy of Heritage. (inset top) The back cover of Marvel Movie Premiere #1, promoting the movie. © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc./© 1975 Amicus Productions.

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Devil’s Tower and a Devil’s Power (left) Our cautious stars in a humorous sequence from the Close Encounters adaptation, by Archie Goodwin, Walt Simonson, and Klaus Janson. (right) A bad day for pirating, from the Jaws 2 adaptation, by Rick Marschall, Gene Colan, and Tom Palmer. Close Encounters © 1977 Columbia Pictures. Jaws 2 © 1978 Universal Pictures.

Marvel Movie Special: The Island of Dr. Moreau #1 (1977)

The movie: Released 7/13/77. This was the second movie of a trilogy of H. G. Wells-inspired films from American International Pictures (AIP). Starring Burt Lancaster, Michael York, and Barbara Carrera, the film had an estimated budget of $6 million, but the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) offers no record of the final box office. The adaptation: Released 7/5/77. This was the first of Marvel’s “Marvel Movie Special” one-shots to come out that year. Gil Kane provided the cover art and Doug Moench handled the adaptation script, with Larry Hama providing the artwork.

THE DEEP

Marvel Movie Special: The Deep #1 (1977)

The movie: Released 6/17/77. The Deep was an adventure film based on the novel by Peter Benchley. The screenplay was adapted by Benchley and Tracy Keenan Wynn and directed by Peter Yates, with Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset, and Nick Nolte heading the cast. Hoping to cash in on the 1975 success of Jaws, also adapted from a Peter Benchley novel involving the sea and co-starring Robert Shaw, The Deep didn’t have the strength of director Steven Spielberg at the helm, and critics weren’t shy about pointing that

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out. Despite poor reviews, the $9 million budget pulled in a respectable $47.3 million at the box office. Producer Peter Gruber attributed the success to the opening sequence of Jacqueline Bisset swimming in a thin white T-shirt and bikini bottom that caused some parental concerns. The adaptation: Released 8/17/77. One of Marvel’s one-shot comic books under the heading of “Marvel Movie Special,” the book featured a cover by Tom Palmer and John Costanza. Doug Moench handled the adaptation chores and Carmine Infantino and Sonny Trinidad provided the interior art.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND Marvel Comics Super Special #3 (1978) The movie: Released 11/16/77. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg, from a concept he’d held as a dream project since he was just a kid. Building on his success from Jaws and his subsequent freedom to do what he wanted from Columbia Films, Spielberg took an $18 million budget and returned with a box-office smash of over $300 million … producing film history. The adaptation: Released 3/14/78, while the movie was still having success. Bob Larkin provided the cover art, and Walt Simonson and Klaus Janson provided interior art to Archie Goodwin’s script. Marvel also released treasury-size editions with a Marvel logo and a Whitman version. Note: In 1977, Marvel launched Marvel Comics Super Special as a full-color tryout magazine. The first issue was the controversial KISS book, reported to contain the essence of their blood in the ink. Savage Sword of Conan headlined issue #2, followed by Close Encounters in #3 and The Beatles Story in #4. With issue #5, another KISS comic, the series’ title shortened to Marvel Super Special. Age

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THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU

JAWS 2

Marvel Super Special #6 (1978)

The movie: Released 6/16/78. The film continued in the success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, and also continued in its production tribulations. Spielberg refused to do a sequel; director John Hancock was dropped after a month’s worth of shooting, and director Jeannot Szwarc (Supergirl) was brought on board. Film history was once again made, with a $20 million budget turned into a $200+ million film being delivered. Until The Empire Strikes Back was released, Jaws 2 held the record for most successful movie sequel. The adaptation: Released 9/26/78, three months after the movie. Bob Larkin’s painted cover wraps a script by Richard Marschall and artwork by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. Tom Palmer tells BACK ISSUE, “I believe that was the first movie adaptation I worked on, and remember making two Photostats of each page as I finished them and coloring one of them leaving the other as the line plate. Marvel’s early entry into full-color magazines and the simplest way of doing them was shooting color and an overlay print of the black line to reinforce the image. It probably was also the cheapest. The art was straightforward, with a minimum of black areas to allow the color to dominate.”

SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND The movie: Released 7/21/78. Sgt. Pepper’s was partially based on a Broadway play produced by Robert Stigwood, using 29 Beatles songs he had licensed the rights to. Wanting to get more out of his investment, Stigwood brought together and produced the various components to make the film (starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton as its Fab Four), which was critically reviewed as “incomprehensible” in spite of having innovative musical numbers and a sterling performance by Steve Martin (for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”) as a likable psychopath prior to his turn in Little Shop of Horrors. Moviegoers stayed away in droves … with a box-office take of only $20 million from a movie with an unconfirmed budget of as much as $18 million. It was an unmitigated failure. The adaptation: Released 10/10/78. It featured a beautiful painted cover by Tom Palmer, wrapped around a script by David Anthony Kraft, with artwork by George Pérez and Jim Mooney. Even though it was announced in the Bullpen Bulletins of the Marvel comics dated January 1979, the issue never saw print in the US but was released in Europe. A French edition was published in 1979 for an unauthorized Beatles 20th Anniversary book that combined the contents of Marvel Comics Super Special #4 (The Beatles Story) with this adaptation of Sgt. Pepper’s from the aborted Marvel Super Special #7. Tom Palmer, who shared his cover for the adaptation in BACK ISSUE #85, says, “I was not sure if it ever saw print, but I did see a published cover with blurbs recently. I had a batch of slides to work from and shot photos of family and friends for all the characters and was surprised when told the magazine wouldn’t see print since the movie did not do well at the box office. Got paid and my painting back, which I still have.” It’s been noted that Marvel canceled the book not only because of the bad box office, but also because of extreme lateness in getting the book finished and ready for print.

The movie: Released 10/19/79. This disaster movie, loosely based on an MIT student paper “The Project Icarus” concerning an attempt to deflect an asteroid (long before Armageddon or Deep Impact), was directed by Academy Award nominee Ronald Neame (Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Scrooge, The Poseidon Adventure). Despite the stellar talents of Sean Connery and Natalie Wood, they couldn’t save this film from ending up on many “Worst of the Year” lists. Meteor was so bad it was rumored to be the reason American International Pictures (AIP) went belly-up. It wasn’t a total disaster, though … it was nominated for Best Sound at the 1979 Academy Awards. Meteor had a budget of $16 million and a box office take of only $8.4 million in US ticket sales. The adaptation: Released 10/9/79. Cover art by Frank Miller and Peter Ledger (though credited to Earl Norem on the credits page), script by Ralph Macchio, and art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. “I wound up doing more work than I should have done on the pages, transferring them over a light-box to Craft-Tint double-tone boards so I could achieve a halftone on the artwork,” according to Tom Palmer. “Craft-Tint had two hidden patterns, one light, one dark, that were activated by separate solutions you used pen or brush to apply. I still have the Craft-Tint boards and returned all of Gene’s pencils to Marvel.”

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METEOR Marvel Super Special #14 (1979)

Marvel Super Special #7 (1978)

A Bomb and a Meteor (opposite page) Original art page from what might be the rarest George Pérez comic ever, the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band adaptation, published in Europe as Marvel Super Special #7. Signed by its inker, Jim Mooney. Script by David Anthony Kraft. Courtesy of Heritage. (right) From the Heritage archives, a penciled page by Gene Colan from the Meteor adaptation. In this article, finisher Tom Palmer describes his embellishment process of Colan’s art. Sgt. Pepper © 1978 Robert Stigwood Organization (RSO). Meteor © 1979 AIP.

STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE

Marvel Super Special #15 (Dec. 1979)

The movie: Released 12/7/79. This first film in the Star Trek movie franchise started out as a pilot for a new Star Trek TV series dubbed Star Trek: Phase 2. Its script went through many changes, even while the film was shooting. Alan Dean Foster is credited with the original story. The film started with a budget of $18 million, which eventually ballooned to $46 million. Fortunately, the box office pulled in $139 million. The adaptation: Released 12/4/79. Bob Larkin provided its painted cover. The script was by Marv Wolfman and the interior art was Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson. The adaptation was soon serialized in the first three issues of Marvel’s ongoing Star Trek comic book, which began original stories with issue #4.

Marv Wolfman Remembers “Star Trek: The Motionless Picture” Marv Wolfman recalls, “I was and remain a huge Star Trek fan. I love the universe even when I don’t care for the individual series, shows, or episodes. I wanted to do the adaptation, lobbied for it, and got it. “I remember was reading the script for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and finding it pretty dull. I used to call it ‘Star Trek: The Motionless Picture.’ It completely forgot that Star Trek was an action show where there’d be fights, phaser battles, etc., all on a 1960s TV budget. But they did it. This movie seemed to be just talking heads. But still, it was Star Trek. “I also remember that after a San Diego con, artist Dave Cockrum and I went to L.A. to visit the studio for further information. At this point, just a few months before the release, the movie was not only unfinished, but they were still changing things, including the entire ending. We needed to know what the new end was so we could do an accurate adaptation. We met with Gene Roddenberry and talked to him, but Gene had just been bitten by a bee and was allergic to it, so not everything he said tracked. But he set up meetings with us at Doug Trumbull and John Dykstra’s offices. By the way, despite being in pain, [Gene] was incredibly nice to us. These guys were all so busy, and yet they spent the time talking to the comic-book guys. Amazing! “From what I recall, Trumbull had the SFX license, but with everyone so late they called in John Dykstra marv wolfman as well. I believe Trumbull was working on optical effects while Dykstra was working on practical effects (the ships, etc.). It might be reversed, as I say, it was a long time ago and I was pretty excited about meeting these two. Trumbull had worked on 2001 and Dykstra on Star Wars. So this was pretty amazing. Trumbull had the main contract and his offices were amazing and beautiful. He outsourced the other material to Dykstra, who worked in an overcrowded warehouse. It was almost night and day. “Dave and I got to Dykstra’s warehouse and were told to stay away from the lasers that were shooting across the place, feeding images into the computer. Don’t ask me how it worked; I haven’t the foggiest. But we could see the thin lasers and avoided them. I remember asking Trumbull what the new ending of the movie was going to be and he said, just months before release, that it hadn’t been designed yet; the same with V’ger. The best Trumbull could do for us was sketch what he thought it was going to look like so Dave would be able to draw it. He also said he and Dykstra were not able to get together to make sure the practical models would fit into the optical sets. Because they were so busy getting it done, they spoke on the phone but not much in person. They just crossed their fingers hoping it would all come together. It was all pretty cool.” Bronze

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XANADU

Marvel Super Special #17 (Summer 1980)

The movie: Released 8/8/80. It started out as a low-budget rollerdisco movie, but as well-known stars (Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly) signed on, it became much more. Xanadu’s premise of an artist deeply connected to his mural was muddied through multiple script rewrites. The movie received mostly negative reviews and did poorly at the box office by Hollywood standards, so much so that it is rumored to have inspired the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture. The budget was $20 million, but the box office only generated $22.8 million. The soundtrack, on the other hand, was a huge, double-platinum success around the world and gave Olivia Newton-John a #1 hit (“Magic”) in the US; the title track was also #1 in the UK. The adaptation: Released 8/12/80. Marvel utilized a photo from the movie for the cover, the script was by J. M. DeMatteis, and the interior was a group effort with over a dozen people credited with different aspects of the artwork (including layouts by Rich Buckler and Jimmy Janes, and finished pencils by Michael Nasser [Netzer], Brent Anderson, Joe Brozowski, Al Milgrom, and Bill Sienkiewicz). Rich Buckler was one of the layout artists, and comments to BACK ISSUE, “I don’t recall how I got involved in this one … weird comic. It was probably just a quick assignment done as a favor to meet a pressing deadline.” Larry Hama, editor of several of the movie issues of Marvel Super Special, offers, “There was a complex network of owed favors, and everybody participated because you knew someday you’d have to be on the other end. There were some books where everybody gathered in one studio or loft and sort of jammed for days straight. We’d send out for pizzas or sandwiches and work around the clock. It was actually sort of fun, and fostered a weird camaraderie.” 64

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The movie: Released 6/12/81. This was the first movie of the Indiana Jones franchise. Chronologically it follows the events in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Based on a story by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg, the production budget of $18 million generated a box-office total of almost $390 million. The adaptation: Released 6/9/81. Howard Chaykin provided the cover art. Walt Simonson adapted the script and John Buscema provided the artwork. The adaptation was reprinted in the miniseries Raiders of the Lost Ark #1–3 (Sept.–Oct. 1981), and again combined in a single book Marvel Movie Spotlight Featuring Raiders of the Lost Ark #1 (Nov. 1982).

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY Marvel Super Special #19 (1981)

The movie: Released 6/24/81, this was the 12th film in the James Bond franchise and the fifth film to star Roger Moore as James Bond. It was the first film to be directed by John Glen, who had been the film editor and second director on three previous Bond films. From the science-fiction and tongue-in-cheek style of the previous Bond movie, Moonraker, this film took Bond back to some of his more serious roots. Working with a budget of $28 million, the box office pulled in $195 million in revenue.

Roller Boogie Michael Netzer—then known as Michael Nasser— was among the pencilers on Marvel’s adaptation of the musical fantasy Xanadu. This pair of penciled pages hails from Heritage’s archives. © 1980 Universal Pictures.

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The movie: Released 5/17/80. This was the second of George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy. Beginning with a budget of $18 million, additional loans and investment of his profits from Star Wars helped Lucas cover the film’s actual budget of $33 million. The payoff was a box office of over $530 million dollars. The production was not without its problems. It was the last film author Leigh Brackett worked on before she succumbed to cancer. Disputes with the Writers and Directors Guilds and the Motion Picture Association over the listing of credits led to George Lucas dropping his membership from all three organizations. Complications over the loans from 20th Century Fox to help cover the production-cost increases led to the resignation of Alan Ladd, Jr. from the film company. The loss of Ladd, a longtime friend and ally of Lucas’, was the reason Lucas then took the Indiana Jones series to Paramount. The adaptation: Released 5/20/80. This was the first appearance of the movie adaptation that also ran in the Star Wars comic book in issues #39–41 (Sept.–Nov. 1980). Bob Larkin provided the cover art. The adaptation was handled by the usual Star Wars team of Archie Goodwin on script and Al Williamson on art. The story was also available in treasury-sized and paperback editions.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Marvel Super Special #18 (1981)

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Marvel Super Special #16 (Spring 1980)

DRAGONSLAYER

Marvel Super Special #20 (1981)

The movie: Released 6/26/81. Co-produced by Paramount and Disney films. The adult nature of some of Dragonslayer’s scenes was influential in the creation of Touchstone Pictures as an arm to make and distribute more adultoriented material, which they did three years later with Splash! Dragonslayer utilized the special effects talents of Phil Tippet and Industrial Light and Magic, fresh off of working on The Empire Strikes Back and the first time the company worked outside of Lucasfilm. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Visual Effects (it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Original Music Score (losing to Chariots of Fire). The film was also nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, losing to Raiders of the Lost Ark again. All of that pedigree didn’t influence the general public. The budget of $18 million only managed to bring in $14 million in ticket sales. The adaptation: Released 6/26/81. Earl Norem provided the split-screen cover. Dennis O’Neil supplied the movie adaptation, and Marie Severin handled the art chores, with John Tartaglione inks. Marvel also printed the story in its Marvel Illustrated Books paperback line and again in comic-book size in Dragonslayer #1–2 (Oct.–Nov. 1981).

CONAN THE BARBARIAN Marvel Super Special #21 (Summer 1982)

The movie: Released 3/14/82. Director John Milius brought Robert E. Howard’s barbarian to life in the first Conan movie. Written in part by Roy Thomas, Oliver Stone, and John Milius, and propelling bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger into a successful film career, the film wasn’t everybody’s favorite. Hardcore REH fans took issue with many of the plot points, and the violence in the film became material for critics. The $16 million budget still managed to bring in $130 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 5/11/82, after the movie. The cover utilized the movie poster art by Renato Casaro. Michael Fleisher supplied the script adaptation and John Buscema continued as Marvel’s go-to Conan illustrator. The story was reprinted in Conan the Barbarian Movie Special #1–2 (Oct.–Nov. 1982). John Buscema designed a new splash page for issue #2 and received credit for co-writing the adaptation.

Barbarian at the Box Office Original art (courtesy of Heritage) by Big John Buscema of Michael Fleisher’s adaptation of the movie Conan the Barbarian, from Marvel Super Special #21. © Conan LLC.

TIME BANDITS

Time Bandits #1 (Feb. 1982)

The movie: Released 11/6/81. This was the first of Terry Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination,” the other two being Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Gilliam wrote and directed the film, with a cast that included Sean Connery, Michael Palin, John Cleese, and Shelley Duvall. The $5 million budget was parlayed into $42.4 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 11/17/81. Marvel’s third and last “Marvel Movie Special” one-shot featured a cover by Ed Hannigan. The story adaptation was the work of Steve Parkhouse and the art was the work of David Lloyd and John Stokes. Marvel would use the “Marvel Movie Special” header later on reprints of other movie adaptations but not on squarebound, standalone books.

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The adaptation: Released 6/16/81. Howard Chaykin provided the cover and interior art. Larry Hama wrote the adaptation and Vince Colletta provided the inks. I asked Larry Hama how he came to work on this one: “It was a deadline crunch. [Editor] Denny O’Neil needed to turn it around in, like, three weeks. That’s why he got the fastest people he could find to do it. “I worked from a copy of the script,” Hama continues. “I never saw Howie or Vinnie during the process. I think Howie was on West Coast, and Vinnie was in New Jersey. The jobs were overlapping. Howie started penciling as soon as I wrote the first few pages. It was an assembly line. “Movie adaptations were always a hassle. There had to be studio approvals, sometimes we weren’t allowed to do likenesses of the actual actors, the things were always weeks late before we even started. Basically, nobody wanted to do them. They also didn’t pay very well!” Marvel reprinted the story in comic-book size in James Bond For Your Eyes Only #1–2 (Oct.–Nov. 1981).

The movie: Released 6/18/82. This was the film version of the successful Broadway musical, based on the wellknown comic strip Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray. While Annie didn’t impress the critics, it did manage to get two Academy Award nominations: Best Production Design and Best Song Score. It didn’t win either one, but young Aileen Quinn (Annie) did win Best Young Actress at the Young Actress Awards for her first film performance. The film was directed by John Huston, with an impressive cast of Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, and Tim Curry … but that didn’t help at the box office. The budget of $50 million only brought in a box office of $57 million. The adaptation: Released 5/25/82. The cover utilizes a montage of photos from the film. The interior script was adapted by Tom DeFalco and the art was by Win Mortimer. Marvel reprinted the story in Annie #1–2 (Oct.–Nov. 1982), which utilized the old “Marvel Movie Special” header from 1977, and in a treasury edition in December of 1982.

STAR WARS Marvel Movie Showcase #1–2 (Nov.–Dec. 1982)

This was a two-issue reprint of the first six issues of Marvel’s 1977 Star Wars comic that adapted the first movie.

The movie: Released 6/25/82. This was director Ridley Scott’s cinematic tribute to Philip K. Dick’s 1968 sciencefiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In a 2007 interview in the magazine Wired (Issue 15.10), Scott called it his most “complete and personal film.” While receiving mixed reviews when first released, the popularity and cult following it developed prompted it to be one of the first movies to be released on DVD. That version, one of seven different versions shown to audiences over the subsequent years, is one of the worst copies in terms of picture and sound quality. The digitally remastered 25th anniversary version called “The Final Cut” is the definitive version, having been produced under Ridley’s complete artistic control. The original $28 million budget only drew in $33.8 million in ticket sales, but subsequent showings, rentals, and film sales would increase that substantially. The adaptation: Released 5/25/82. We are treated to another Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson effort. This was also reprinted in the comic books Blade Runner #1–2 (Oct.–Nov. 1982) and as a Marvel Illustrated Books paperback. Al Williamson supplied a new splash page for issue #2. There was also a seven-page preview in the Archie Goodwin-edited Epic Illustrated magazine #13 (Aug. 1982), released on 6/1/82. Marvel also released a comic book-size version of the magazine.

BLADE RUNNER Marvel Super Special #22 (Sept. 1982)

THE DARK CRYSTAL

The movie: Released 12/17/82. The Dark Crystal was Jim Henson’s dark fairy tale, using Muppets and Brian Froud designs. Released during the Christmas season of 1982, the film struggled with mixed reviews, parental concerns about the dark nature of the film, and competition from the popular Tootsie and the still-popular E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. The film managed to bankroll its $15 million budget into a $40.5 million box office to become the 16th highest-grossing film in North America that year. The adaptation: Released 11/11/82. Bret Blevins provided the painted cover art and the interior art from a David Anthony Kraft script. Marvel reprinted the story in Dark Crystal #1–2 (Apr.–May 1983).

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Marvel Super Special #24 (Feb. 1983)

Bret Blevins Remembers The Dark Crystal you can work days without sleep. Which I did! The majority STEPHAN FRIEDT: How did you get the assignment? Was it of the inking was done by Vince Colletta, with assistance on assigned or did you seek it out? backgrounds from Rick Bryant and Richard Howell. I inked BRET BLEVINS: The Dark Crystal was my first scheduled the line art covers and an additional splash page for the professional assignment from Marvel, so it holds a fond second newsprint issue, along with some changes requested and important place in my memory and career. In a roundabout, accidental happenstance, I suppose I did seek by Henson, as the final version of the film differed in a few places from the original comic-book script. The coloring was it out—I was working with editor Al Milgrom on a sample done mainly by Steve Oliff, with many hands pitching in at tryout story (an old unused Shanna the She-Devil script by Steve Gerber), which entailed my drawing a version of the the end, over a few late nights at the Marvel Bullpen! Weezie herself colored some pages, as did my wife Patricia story, sending it to him, and receiving back critiques and Blevins, who later became an assistant editor at Marvel, first suggestions to improve. I would begin again and try to to Carl Potts, then Ann Nocenti on the X-Men books. attain a professional level with each new version. This had been going on for the better part of a year, and each time FRIEDT: Any stories or memories about the job or the people you worked with? I sent a new set of Shanna pages, I would include other BLEVINS: [Marvel editor-in-chief] Jim Shooter had flown sample pages of various other Marvel characters, always Patricia and I to New York for a week to make any corrections/ trying to improve. additions Henson asked for, and to meet everyone at Marvel. I obtained a press book for the upcoming Henson/ Froud Dark Crystal, full of photos from the film, at my local We arrived at the airport in the evening, took a cab into the city, and spent our first night at an hotel near Marvel’s comic shop Page After Page, and in small print at the offices—the next morning we were getting ready back of the book found a list of other promotions to walk down to 387 Park Avenue South for the and merchandise associated with the film, first thrilling time, meet Weezie, and see the including a comic adaptation by Marvel. Marvel offices, when someone knocked on I loved the designs and atmosphere of the the door—the door swung in slightly and we project, and the proposed comic adaptation heard a startled gasp. The door slowly made them Marvel characters as far as I opened and a fearful woman wearing a was concerned, so I did four pages of Dark hotel uniform and gripping a clipboard Crystal comics. I knew nothing about the against her breast peered in, her face story, so I invented various scenes of the goggle-eyed with apprehension. characters and environments, gleaned from She saw us and whispered, “Are you the sparse information in the press book. all right?” I sent them to Milgrom along with the We answered, “Sure—we’re fine.” newest batch of Shanna pages. bret blevins “But the door was open.” A week or so later I received the script Courtesy of BretBlevins.com. “Really? I was sure I’d locked it. Well, no for the adaptation via FedEx—I assumed it harm done, we’re okay.” was a mistake, that the pages I’d sent had accidentally She looked at me with unbelieving, sober serious eyes for associated my name and address with the project somehow, a moment, then said, “Honey, you NEVER leave your doors and the script was intended for a professional artist. I phoned unlocked in New York!” Milgrom, who knew nothing about it, so he said he’d check After a sunny walk through skyscrapers and a delightful with the editor of the book and find out what was up. welcome into Marvel’s offices, we told this story to Weezie About 30 minutes later, Louise (Weezie) Simonson called that morning—we thought it was a mildly amusing incident, and said, “I saw those samples you sent in and I showed them to the Henson people and they love the way you draw but Weezie looked a bit taken aback and concerned, then said, “I don’t think you guys are ready to stay in the city by the characters so you’re drawing the book and you have to yourself.” She phoned her husband Walter and said, “I have start right away because it’s already weeks late!” She said it two little lost puppies here that can’t be trusted alone in the just like that—one fast, unbroken sentence in her charming, city, so I’m bringing them home for the week.” She had our cute, musical voice. I was thrilled! I was on my way at last! luggage brought over from the hotel, and that evening we FRIEDT: Did you work just from David Anthony Kraft’s script moved in with her and Walter for the rest or our stay— or did you have materials from the studio to use? and immediately she and Walter became two of our most BLEVINS: I had David Anthony Kraft’s full script and plenty cherished, lifelong friends! And, of course, later, Weezie and of color photos, stills, and production art provided by I did a lot of work together that remains the highlight of my Henson to work from—which I found out later was unusual experience in comic books. with these movie adaptations. On this one I had more than It was also great fun to visit the Henson studio in enough reference. FRIEDT: I see there were multiple inkers and colorists, including Manhattan—The Muppet Show was still running, and there were the familiar characters everywhere, wrapped in plastic you... Any reason for the multiple hands involved? BLEVINS: It was because of the cramped deadline. If I recall, to keep them clean. That gave the place an eerie, morguelike feeling. They were shooting promo ads for The Dark the book’s interior and three covers [One for the magazine Crystal, so we saw several of those puppets, too, nicely and two for the miniseries reprint.—Stephan] amounted to posed and lit. There were small-scale sculptures of some of around 50 pages, due in five weeks from the day I received the other creatures there as well. the script. That was a vast undertaking for someone with no The entire adventure made for a fabulous first trip to experience producing a steady flow of work—I was only 21, New York, by any measure! a mere kid! I had a lot of enthusiasm, though, and at that age

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ROCK & RULE

David Michelinie and Bret Blevins Remember Krull

Marvel Super Special #25 (1983)

The movie: Limited release. Rock & Rule (or Ring of Power outside of North America) is an animated musical from the award-winning Canadian animation company Nelvana. Mixing rock music with science fiction, it was finished during the merger of United Artists and MGM, and the merged company decided not to give it a general release. In fact, Rock & Rule was only released in Boston, Massachusetts, for a limited time. Rock & Rule managed to be screened at a German Film Festival, but until Canadian Broadcasting obtained the TV rights and MGM released it on VHS (1984) and laser disc (1986), very few had seen it. It became a very popular convention bootleg. Later showings on cable TV brought in a cult following. It finally received a DVD edition in 2005. The production budget of $8 million was not even scratched by the $30,000 box-office take. The adaptation: Released 4/26/83. The Marvel version is the only issue of Marvel Super Special other than “Blade Runner” that is not magazine size (both are comic-book size). The cover and interior art is all taken from stills from the film. The adaptation is credited to Bill Mantlo. Mike Higgins noted in an interview in Comics Interview #39 (Oct. 1986) that the book sold well in spite of the film’s limited release.

OCTOPUSSY

Marvel Super Special #26 (1983)

The movie: Released 6/10/83. The 13th James Bond film and the sixth for Roger Moore. Though the title and characters are from Ian Fleming, the plot of the movie is original. This was a great year for James Bond fans: Octopussy and Sean Connery’s Never Say Never Again were released the same year. Octopussy’s budget of $27.5 million pulled in $183.7 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 5/3/83. Marvel Super Special returned to magazine size with this issue. The cover featured a montage of the film poster and photos from the movie. The interior was adapted by Steve Moore, with art by Paul Neary.

STEPHAN FRIEDT: How did the Krull adaptation come about? DAVID MICHELINIE: I don’t remember exactly why or how I was offered the Krull adaptation, but I do remember why I accepted: It was something new. I had never adapted a story from another medium into comics form, so it was a fresh challenge, which by nature made it attractive and interesting. BRET BLEVINS: I was offered the book by the editor, Denny O’Neil—I suspect that because david michelinie I’d drawn The Dark Crystal and another toy property called Crystar I was thought of at that time as a “licensed property” artist. That was a fun project, though—fantasy again, which I love. FRIEDT: What do you remember about this one? MICHELINIE: Although we all worked on the same stories, I didn’t actually work with the artists on those projects. I wrote a comicbook script from the screenplay that was approved by the editor and someone at the studio, and then sent to the artist to be drawn. So I really wasn’t in touch with the artists. I thought the Krull screenplay by Stanford Sherman was terrific. I could see it as a wonderfully exciting action-adventure with epic set pieces and endearing characters. Unfortunately, the movie I saw on the screen wasn’t as good as the one I saw in my head. Not sure why Krull was a disappointment for me when I finally saw it. Possibly it had something to do with pacing, or casting, or the not-so-special special effects. (Although I thought the crystal spider was pretty friggin’ awesome!) Maybe I would have liked it better if I’d seen it cold, without reading the superior screenplay first. BLEVINS: All the movie adaptations were full scripts, because everything had to be approved by the studio before any art was done. I didn’t have much visual reference on that one—a very small packet of somewhat indistinct black-and-white photocopies of the principal actors and stills from the film. But I’d seen a rough cut of the movie, which was obviously a great help. I was flown out to Hollywood for that one. That unfinished version contained no music or sound-effects editing yet, and I remember how humorous many of the scenes played, with a cacophony of clanging swords and armor drowning out the dialogue—Monty Python kept intruding into my thoughts! I was also given a tour of the lot and saw the street sets for Blade Runner, which had recently completed filming. It was daytime, so it wasn’t quite as dramatic—but exciting, nonetheless! I also met Sydney Pollack, who was walking through the studio carrying cans of film!

RETURN OF THE JEDI Marvel Super Special #27 (1983)

The movie: Released 5/25/83. The third of the original Star Wars movies. As usual, the budget of as much as $42.7 million brought far more in at the box office—over $475 million. The adaptation: Released 5/31/83, six days after the movie. The magazine featured a cover by Bill Sienkiewicz wrapped around the usual Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson package. The story was also reprinted in a paperback version in full color the same month the movie was released. Marvel also spread out the story over four issues of the miniseries Return of the Jedi #1–4 (Oct. 1983–Jan. 1984), all with Bill Sienkiewicz covers.

The movie: Released 7/29/83. Krull was one of the most expensive movies of its time, due to 23 different sets built on ten different lots at Pinewood Studios, as well as multiple locations around the world. Its reported budget of $47–50 million generated a dismal $16.5 million at the box office. While several reviews credited it for being an intelligent film, audiences didn’t respond. It has since become a popular cult movie.

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KRULL Marvel Super Special #28 (1983)

TARZAN OF THE APES

Marvel Super Special #29 was not a movie adaptation, but did coincide with the release of the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (both were released in March of 1984 and based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ book Tarzan of the Apes) and re-established Marvel’s license to the ERB character. Marvel reprinted the story in comic-book form in Tarzan of the Apes #1–2 (July–Aug. 1984).

Marvel Super Special #29 (1984)

THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN Marvel Super Special #32 (1984)

The movie: Released 7/13/84. This was the third Muppets feature film and the first for Frank Oz to direct on his own. This film also introduced the Muppet Babies, who went on to have their own successful animated TV series. A production budget of $8 million brought in a box office of $25.5 million. The adaptation: Released 7/3/84. Warren Kremer provided the cover art and Dean Yeagle provided the interior art from a Stan Kay adaptation of a Tom Patchett/Jay Tarses/Frank Oz movie script. The story was reprinted under the Star Comics imprint in Muppets Take Manhattan #1–3 (Nov. 1984–Jan. 1985).

The adaptation: Released 7/19/83. The cover was adapted from the movie poster. David Michelinie provided the adaptation and Bret Blevins provided the art, with Vince Colletta inks. Marvel reprinted the story in a two-issue miniseries in Krull #1–2 (Oct.–Dec. 1983).

Marvel Super Special #30 (1984)

The movie: Released 5/23/84. The second of the Indiana Jones series started with an estimated budget of $28 million and translated that into close to $180 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 6/5/84. Jackson “Butch” Guice provided the cover and interior art from a David Michelinie adaptation. Marvel reprinted the story in the comic-book miniseries Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom #1–3 (Sept.–Nov. 1984).

The movie: Released 8/15/84. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! is a film that crosses a number of genres and has become a major cult favorite. A never-produced sequel and a never-attempted TV series remain on many fans’ dream wish list. The movie had a oftdelayed release schedule, although it was promoted mainly through comic conventions. That helped establish its love among comic fans and contributed to its cult status, but did nothing for the box office. Even generally positive reviews didn’t help the fact that it was released in competition to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Ghostbusters.

David Michelinie and Butch Guice Remember Temple of Doom STEPHAN FRIEDT: What do you recall about this assignment? DAVID MICHELINIE: Not sure why I was offered the Indiana Jones adaptations; probably because I’d been involved in writing Lucas properties for the regular Marvel monthlies, like Star Wars and The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones [Marvel’s continuation of the movie series—ed.]. So I’d already had experience dealing with Lucasfilm and their characters. Writing the Indiana Jones adaptations was big-time cool, like a kid getting to see his birthday presents a week before his birthday. I was a huge fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and to read the next two adventures before most of the rest of the world was an admittedly selfish but nonetheless thrilling pleasure. It was also fun to read scenes and bits of dialogue that were altered or deleted before the finished movie was released. I remember one scene in Temple where Willie Scott was supposed to encounter a boa constrictor while bathing in a campside river. I was told the actress wouldn’t do the scene because she was terrified of snakes. (And I thought it was Indy with the snake phobia!) BUTCH GUICE: I don’t recall who offered me the assignment for Temple of Doom. My memory says Tom DeFalco, but not 100% positive on the subject. I did have to sign a NDA—Non-Disclosure Agreement— (with the usual threats of death and dismemberment should anything leak in advance) and received a butch guice substantial package of 30 to 60 Xerox photos of the movie production on which to base the visual look. I was told Lucasfilm had been unhappy with the lack of true likenesses in the earlier Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation by Marvel (again, if memory serves correctly, having been drawn by the team of John Buscema and Klaus Janson), and I was instructed to pay particular attention capturing likenesses—specifically Harrison Ford’s likeness. I dove headlong into the pencils, which were all accepted without change, but during the inking process by Brian Akin and Ian Garvey it was felt the likenesses had become lost, so Bob Camp was brought in to redraw most of the major Indiana Jones faces at the last minute. I think Bob did a fantastic job of matching things back up, and in many ways, improve upon my own original attempt in the pencils. I also painted a cover for the Super Special, but again, at last minute and for reasons never fully explained to me, it was decided to go with a traditional line-drawing cover instead, which required me to hastily redraw the painted cover in the Marvel Bullpen one afternoon. My only other memory was the entire job was under a fairly tight deadline. I seem to recall it required me to pencil a minimum of two pages a day/every day, until completion. It was hard but fun work as I was a big fan of the original Raiders of the Lost Ark movie and was honored to be involved with the character in some small way.

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Marvel Super Special #33 (1984)

A production budget of $17 million translated into a dismal $6.3 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 7/31/84. Mark Texeira provided the covers and interior art from an adaptation by Bill Mantlo. Marvel reprinted the story in the comic-book miniseries Buckaroo Banzai #1–2 (Dec. 1984–Feb. 1985).

THE LAST STARFIGHTER Marvel Super Special #31 (1984)

The movie: Released 7/13/84. Its production budget of $15 million generated a box office of $28.7 million. The Last Starfighter has the distinction of being one of two films (the other being Disney’s Tron) to be the first to save enormous amounts of time and cost on special effects through the extensive use of CGI (Computer Generated Images). This was the last film for actor Robert Preston. The adaptation: Released 7/13/84. A Jackson “Butch” Guice cover on a Bill Mantlo adaptation with Bret Blevins art. Marvel reprinted the story in The Last Starfighter #1–3 (Oct.–Dec. 1984).

Butch Guice and Bret Blevins Remember The Last Starfighter

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SHEENA Marvel Super Special #34 (1984)

The movie: Released 8/17/84. This was a modern-day attempt at a movie adaptation of the Golden Age comic-book heroine Sheena of the Jungle. The script was written by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., whose previous work was his collaboration on the King Kong remake starring Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges. [Editor’s note: Semple is probably best known for being the original writer of TV’s Batman, starring Adam West.] The film took almost a decade to come to light from producer Paul Aratow’s first idea for the film, and Raquel Welch was replaced by Tanya Roberts as the lead as it bounced between studios. Altogether not what fans were looking for, and the critics raked it over the coals. The film managed to gather five different Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture, Worst Actress (Tanya Roberts), Worst Director, Worst Issue

STEPHAN FRIEDT: What do you remember about the Last Starfighter adaptation? BUTCH GUICE: I honestly have very little memory of the job. I’m positive I was supplied with some sort of general reference for the cover, but I don’t remember how much—probably only three or four examples of character or prop reference. It was simply an assignment which somehow came my way. BRET BLEVINS: I was not that keen on drawing more movie adaptations at that point, really—I think I had begun working on The Bozz Chronicles around that time, or was preparing to, which was much more enticing. But I had also moved from Nevada to the East Coast by then, and was renting a house in Branchville, Connecticut, saving to move in a bit closer to the commuter train station (and Walt Reed’s Illustration House!) in Westport/Norwalk—so I’m sure money was the main reason. But I enjoyed it, for the most part. I worked from Bill Mantlo’s script and again, there wasn’t much visual reference, really—as I mentioned, I guess The Dark Crystal was an exception in that regard. I’ve still never seen the Last Starfighter film, actually! I remember there was a headache about halfway through the story, when someone at the studio pointed out that I had been drawing the hero’s spaceship upside-down! The reference they’d sent initially (photocopies again) had been mislabeled by someone! That required a lot of corrections—remember, there was no Photoshop or other digital art programs in those days—everything had to be redrawn on paper, inked, cut out, and pasted down by hand, using rubber cement. There was also trouble with the inker, who was not fast enough, which meant that several times over the course of the project I had to unexpectedly ink some of it myself under great pressure. I would stop by his place on my way into the city to pick up inked pages to deliver along with more penciled pages, and find he hadn’t completed the work. They were due, so I would ink as much as possible there before leaving to catch my train— I also remember inking pieces of that job during the journey into New York! I had the ink bottle, held in place with crumpled napkins, wedged into the bottom of a paper coffee cup, and squeezed into the space between the seat and inner wall of the train to keep it from spilling due to the jostling. I learned to ink while in motion, and clean up any mistakes once I reached the Marvel Bullpen. Those were the days!

Screenplay, and Worst Musical Score. In spite of that, it still makes the cult following lists regularly. A production budget of $25 million managed to generate a slim $5 million in box-office sales. The adaptation: Released 8/14/84. Gray Morrow provided the artwork for the cover and interior from an adaptation by Cary Burkett. Marvel reprinted the story in the comic-book miniseries Sheena #1–2 (Dec. 1984–Feb. 1985).

Larry Hama Remembers Conan the Destroyer Larry Hama tells BACK ISSUE, “I was editor of the [Robert E.] Howard property materials: Savage Sword, Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, etc. So I got the movie adaptations as well. None of us ever got to see the actual movies. We had to work from the script and whatever stills and other promo material they sent us. “On Destroyer, we didn’t get much reference at all. But Big John larry hama [Buscema] didn’t need much. All he needed was to know what the © Alex Lozupone / Wikimedia Commons. costume looked like and a general idea of the actor’s face. In fact, the less reference he had, the more Buscema liked it. He didn’t feel constrained. I told him, if they didn’t supply us with the reference, we had the leeway to just make it up.”

CONAN THE DESTROYER

Marvel Super Special #35 (Dec. 1984)

DUNE

Marvel Super Special #36 (1984)

The movie: Released 12/14/84. Frank Herbert’s successful novel appeared in 1965 and attempts to make it a film began as early as 1971. It wasn’t until 1984 when Dino De Laurentiis hired director David Lynch that it came to the screen. Unfortunately, most critics hated it, and the media negativity the film generated and his dissatisfaction with the end result forced Lynch to divorce himself from the film to the point of several copies of the film having “Alan Smithee” listed as director, a pseudonym used by the Directors Guild when directors refuse to take the credit. The production budget was reported to be as much as $45 million and the box office brought in $30 million, so while it was reported as a “bomb,” there had been far worse. The adaptation: Released 12/4/84. Bill Sienkiewicz provided the painted covers and the interior art for the magazine plus the reprint Dune #1–3 (Apr.–June 1985), from an adaptation by Ralph Macchio.

2010 Marvel Super Special #37 (1984)

The movie: Released 12/7/84. 2010 was a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, both as a book by Arthur C. Clarke and on film. With the blessing of both Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick, Peter Hyams directed the sequel. Though the release put it up against Beverly Hills Cop, Starman, and Dune, the budget of $28 million brought in $40.4 at the box office. The adaptation: Released 12/18/84. J. M. DeMatteis provided the adaptation, Tom Palmer painted the cover, and Joe Barney and Larry Hama provided the interior art layouts (“That was totally a help-out job,” Hama tells BACK ISSUE), with Tom Palmer finishing and inking. Marvel reprinted the story in 2010 #1–2 (Apr.–May 1985).

Dune What Comes Naturally Detail from an original art page from the Dune adaptation, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, from Marvel Super Special #36. Sienkiewicz fans, join us next issue for an in-depth look at Bill S’s and Frank Miller’s Elektra: Assassin! © 1984 Dino De Laurentiis Co.

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The movie: Released 6/29/84. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mako Iwamatsu again play Conan and Akiro the Wizard in this sequel to 1982’s Conan the Barbarian. With Conan director John Milius unavailable, producers Dino De Laurentiis and his daughter Raphaella chose Richard Fleischer (director of De Laurentiis films Barabbas, 1961, and Mandingo, 1975) to helm the movie as director and requested a less violent movie than the original. The $18 million budget brought in $100 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 9/4/84. As it did with its previous Conan movie adaptation, the magazine used the Conan the Destroyer movie poster by Renato Casaro as the cover. John Buscema provided the art to an adaption by Michael Fleisher from a movie story by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, under the watch of editor Larry Hama. Marvel reprinted the story in Conan the Destroyer #1–2 (Jan.–Mar. 1985).

The Year We Make Contact A 2010 adaptation sample, from Marvel Super Special #37. Adaptation by DeMatteis, art by Barney, Hama, and Palmer. © MGM.

Tom Palmer Remembers 2010 Tom Palmer tells BACK ISSUE, “I was up for movie adaptations and was asked to do one on the upcoming sequel to 2001 and jumped for it. Really liked the original, and after reading Arthur C. Clark’s novel I wanted to do this adaptation. “Larry Hama and Joe Barney did layouts, but I did the finished art and coloring. I had some reference stills from key scenes in the tom palmer movie but a lot of the artwork Marvel.wikia.com. was adapted from what was supplied. “I did three color paintings for the adaptation, one large main illustration for the magazine cover, and two slightly smaller paintings on the comic-book covers for the two-issue adaptation.”

The adaptation: Released 6/25/85. Mary Wilshire and Louise Simonson did the adaptation, and Mary handled the art chores with an assist from Vince Colletta. Larry Hama was the editor and shares his recollections in the sidebar. Mary Wilshire went on to illustrate the regular Red Sonja series. Marvel reprinted the adaptation in Red Sonja #1–2 (Nov.–Dec. 1985).

LABYRINTH

SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE

Marvel Super Special #39 (1985)

The movie: Released 11/27/85. A Superman: The Movie–like treatment of the origin of Santa Claus, directed by Jeannot Szwarc. The adaptation: Released 11/26/85. Painted cover by Tom Palmer, script by Sid Jacobson, and art by Frank Springer. This subject was covered at length in BACK ISSUE #85, the “Christmas in the Bronze Age” issue.

Larry Hama Remembers Red Sonja

RED SONJA

Marvel Super Special #38 (1985)

The movie: Released 7/3/85. The Dino De Laurentiis film of the character created by Roy Thomas and Barry Smith, based on a character in a Robert E. Howard short story, with statuesque Brigitte Nielsen in the title role. Trashed by critics, even with Arnold Schwarzenegger co-starring as Conan stand-in Kalidor, the $17.9 million budget scraped in a mere $6.9 million at the box office. 72

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The movie: Released 6/27/86. You would think that a film directed by Muppet founder Jim Henson, executiveproduced by George Lucas, based on designs by Brian Froud, and featuring rock star David Bowie and a young Jennifer Connelly would be a hit. It wasn’t. The $25 million budget brought in a mere $12.7 million at the box office. It did grow into a cult fan favorite since then. The adaptation: Released 7/1/86. The magazine borrowed the cover art from the movie poster by Ted Conconia. The adaptation was written by Sid Jacobson, and the artwork was by John Buscema (layouts) and Romeo Tanghal (finishes). Marvel reprinted the story in the comic-book miniseries Labyrinth #1–3 (Nov. 1986–Jan. 1987).

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STEPHAN FRIEDT: Mary Wilshire did the cover and co-scripted the adaptation with Louise Simonson, and just did art breakdowns, with Vinnie Colletta finishing it up. Why the unusual mix? I’m assuming you knew Mary from her underground days … her style and history were the reason you asked her to work on Red Sonja, the series? LARRY HAMA: Mary [drew] great girls, so it seemed like a good fit. Vinnie was always good at the girl art as well. Back in the ’60s, he inked tons of romance material drawn by Jack Kirby. Kirby tended to draw very hard-looking women, and Vinnie softened them up and put in a bit more care in the hair, and eyelashes, etc. I think what had happened was that Mary had been doing regular stuff for Crazy Magazine and other humor books, and that market sort of dried up. So she needed more regular work, and it seemed easier to train her to do barbarians than to train some superhero guy to them and try to get good girl art out of them. Issue

Marvel Super Special #40 (Oct. 1986)

HOWARD THE DUCK

Marvel’s Unpublished Adaptation of Creepshow 2

Marvel Super Special #41 (Nov. 1986)

The movie: Released 8/1/86. The very first Marvel character feature film since the Captain America movie serials of the 1940s. The film was produced by George Lucas and Gloria Katz, and written by Katz and the director, Willard Huyck. Originally intended to be an animated film, the live-action result has often been called the worst movie ever made, although Howard fans still voice a fondness for it. Critics hated it, but the $37 million budget actually pulled in $38 million at the box office. The adaptation: Released 8/12/86. The cover and interior art by Kyle Baker from a Danny Fingeroth script adaptation. Marvel reprinted the story in Howard the Duck #1–3 (Dec. 1986–Feb. 1987).

In 1987, Marvel Comics attempted an adaptation of the second Stephen King film anthology and tribute to EC horror comics, Creepshow 2. Earlier, in 1982, New American Library had published a 68-page graphic novel adaptation of King’s first anthology, Creepshow, with Bernie Wrightson adaptating King’s stories. Yet Marvel’s effort to adapt the sequel was not completed or published. David Michelinie offers BACK ISSUE’s some background. “In the mid-’80s, George Romero’s production company got the rights to make a sequel to Creepshow, not surprisingly to be called Creepshow 2,” Michelinie says. “They contacted Marvel about doing a comic-book adaptation, and I lobbied for the job since I was/am a huge Stephen King fan. I got the assignment, and a copy of the screenplay, and went to work. It was a fun gig, and even though only one of the three segments was actually based on a King short story, it was a genuine thrill to be involved with a Stephen King project. “Unfortunately, though Romero’s people had bought the movie rights, someone’s lawyer pointed out that the deal didn’t include other adaptation rights. Marvel was asked to cease and desist, and they complied. The framing sequence had already been drawn by Hillary Barta, while the stories “Ol’ Chief Woodenhead” and “The Raft” had been completed by John Ridgeway and Kelley Jones, respectively. There was some talk of finishing the work and including it as a mini-comic with the home video release, but when the movie tanked at the box office that plan was scrubbed.” Surprisingly, the Creepshow 2 movie actually made a profit when it brought in $14 million in ticket sales from a budget of $3.5 million.

TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE

Transformers the Movie #1–3 (Dec. 1986–Feb. 1987)

HOUSE II: THE SECOND STORY

House II: The Second Story #1 (1987)

The movie: Released 8/28/87. A sequel of sorts to 1986’s popular horror movie House, this one took a more humorous angle to the haunted house from the first movie. Made with a reported budget of only $3 million, it featured several unknown or primarily TV actors such as Royal Dano, John Ratzenberger, and comedian/political humorist Bill Maher. It managed to pull a respectable $7.8 million from the box office. The adaptation: Released 7/1/87, before the film’s release. Marvel released a one-shot comic-book adaptation cover-dated October 1987. Hilary Barta provided the cover illustration. The screenplay was adapted by Ralph Macchio, with layouts by Alan Kupperberg and finishes by Kupperberg, Hilary Barta, Danny Bulanadi, Jose Marzan, and Pat Redding.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade #1 (1989)

The movie: Released 5/24/89. Steven Spielberg’s third entry in the Indiana Jones franchise followed Indy on his quest for the Holy Grail. A budget of $48 million brought in $474 million at the box office. It didn’t hurt that they brought in Sean Connery to portray Indy’s father. The adaptation: Released 5/24/89. Produced three years after Marvel Super Special had stopped as a series, Marvel moved its movie adaptation to standalone magazines. This one again used the talents of Bret Blevins on cover and interior art, from an adaptation by David Michelinie. Marvel also offered this as a four-issue comic-book miniseries in 1989 with no monthly designations on any of the issues. Marvel continued adapting movies on into the 1990s, with mixed success. Perhaps we’ll visit those adaptations at another time… Contributors: Hilary Barta, Bret Blevins, Rich Buckler, Butch Guice, Larry Hama, David Michelinie, Tom Palmer, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, and Marv Wolfman. Thanks to International Movie Database and Mike’s Amazing World of Comics for release dates, and Grand Comics Database for some credits and covers. STEPHAN FRIEDT has been around comics for a long, long time. A former columnist for The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom, he has contributed to Alter Ego and the Grand Comics Database and is the senior database administrator for www.comicspriceguide.com. And he still finds time to hold real jobs and be at the beck and call of a wife and two daughters in his secret identity as a resident of the Pacific Northwest.

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The movie: Released 8/8/86. The animated feature film adapted from the cartoon series. It turned out to be the last film ever for Orson Welles and Scatman Crothers, who voiced Unicron and Jazz, respectively. The adaptation: The cover date of issue #1 was December 1986. Ralph Macchio provided the adaptation, Don Perlin provided art breakdowns.

for you. Spiotto has creds in the film (The Polar Express) and gaming (The Sims) industries, and his cutesy, accessible style make his book a lot of fun. www.titanbooks.com Imagine plopping onto a sofa, flanked by Angela Cartwright and Bill Mumy, as they share with you their private scrapbooks and stories behind one of the coolest TV series of all time, Lost in Space. The chances of that happening for most of us are zilch, but TV Classics Press has offered the next best thing: Angela and Bill’s new book, Lost (and Found) in Space, a 200-page scrapbook of rare, behind-the-scenes photographs and ephemera provided by the actress and actor who played Penny and Will Robinson on the enduring Irwin Allen-created sci-fi show. Even more fascinating are the personal memories shared by Angela and Bill— if you think you know a lot about Lost in Space, you’ll make new discoveries in Lost (and Found) in Space. I love this book! Visit LostandFoundinSpace.com or TVClassicsPress.com for ordering info.

Send your comments to: Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE • Concord, NC 28025

Find BACK ISSUE on

MORE KALUTA COMING! If this issue’s cover and lead article have you salivating for more info about and art from the magnificent Michael Wm. Kaluta, you’re in luck! One of our sister TwoMorrows magazines, Jon B. Cooke’s Comic Book Creator, is cover-featuring an extensive look at Kaluta in its August issue, #13. CBC #13 also features a careerspanning interview with the remarkable Ramona Fradon. Order it today from TwoMorrows.com!

ANDY MANGELS, SUPER GUY

While comic-book adaptations of Aliens aren’t included in this issue’s contents (we’ll eventually get around to that franchise, plus Predator), allow me this chance to plug a delightful new release from Titan Books: Alien Next Door by Joey Spiotto, an 80-page, full-color hardcover retailing for $14.95 US. It’s a collection of silent cartoons placing one of Hollywood’s most gruesome monsters in domestic settings. If you take Aliens reeeeeal seriously, this might rub you the wrong way, but if you don’t mind mixing gutbusters with chestbursters, then this book is

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WHO ARE THE ALIENS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?

Andy Mangels’ article on the Supergirl movie [BI #84] was very enlightening. Some real nice reporting. The whole issue was a great read. This is the definitive look at Supergirl. I came away understanding why the character hasn’t been able to work. She was created in another era and kept alive for copyright reasons. That doesn’t mean there weren’t some really good stories. I loved Sterling Gates’ take on her. But there’s also been some confusing stories with pretty mediocre art, especially during the Bronze Age. Seems like her death in Crisis was one of her finest moments, showing how great the character could be. – Robert Nunez Virtually a whole issue devoted to Supergirl—I could hardly believe it! First off, Andy Mangels did his usual incredible job of taking us behind the scenes of the Supergirl movie. He truly is one of the many unsung heroes of BACK ISSUE. I remember when the movie was released, with none of the grandeur or excitement that Superman or Superman II had created (or even III, for that matter). I own a copy of the Limited Edition Supergirl DVD but even I can freely admit the movie is a total turkey. Helen Slater, however, WAS Supergirl, and it’s nice to see that she’s been able to have a long career, despite the movie being a bomb. The look back at the disappointingly limited Supergirl merchandise was also much appreciated. Those Mego dolls, um, I mean, “'action figures,” were the best! Too bad I only had Superman, Robin, and Shazam—I always wanted Supergirl and the rest, but the $4.00 price tag for each one was a bit much for my family. Who knew if we had invested the money and kept them in their box I could have sold them now for a few hundred bucks apiece! Thanks also to Jack C. Harris, Cary Bates, Elliot S. Maggin, Martin Pasko, and Paul Kupperberg and others for their willingness to discuss their involvement with the pre–Crisis Maid of Might. Ironically, the thing that seemed to differentiate Supergirl from her cousin Superman, her apparent lack of direction, was actually one of the things I appreciated most about the character. Unlike Superman, who had the same job, the same villains, the same supporting cast, and never changed, ever, Kara moved to different cities, had different jobs, and even had different costumes. And then, to add insult to injury, when she finally did gain some consistency with her move to Chicago and behind-the-scenes stories with writer Paul Kupperberg and Carmine Infantino, her magazine was canceled! I was right around 14 or 15 when Crisis on Infinite Earths came out, and I remember all the press

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LOST (AND FOUND) IN SPACE

Photo credit: Stanislav Traykov, Wikimedia.

surrounding Supergirl’s death and being shocked and disappointed that her days were numbered. Even though I could appreciate the reasoning behind her death, to truly make Superman the lone survivor of Krypton, it still sucked. What made it even worse, though, was how, almost immediately after Crisis ended, she was never mentioned again. It was obvious that the writers and editors at DC didn’t know how to deal with the aftermath of the Crisis, so instead of seeing some powerful storylines of Superman and others dealing with their losses, they just went on just like nothing had happened. I actually found books like Infinity, Inc. and All-Star Squadron healing in a way, because both the stories and letters columns dealt with the Crisis and the many deaths. I mean, who would expect that Supergirl would be mourned in a book like Infinity, Inc., which had focused on Earth-Two, for Heaven’s sake?!? But there was no closure to be found in Superman, Action Comics, or Legion of Super-Heroes, because she “never existed.” Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. On a side note, I just wanted to add a very minor correction to Frank Martini’s excellent article—he said Crisis #7 was the only doublesized issue of the maxiseries, but #1 had extra pages and #12 was also double-sized, as well. And it might be of interest to some that in 1999, Marv Wolfman wrote an issue of Legends of the DC Universe that took place between Crisis #4 and 5 in which Supergirl appeared, which was a huge surprise considering that DC seemed committed to keeping her from ever being mentioned again, and it’s worth checking out. There's also a book by DC called Solo that featured Supergirl and tied up that cliffhanger with Dick Malverne from her canceled book in an incredibly touching way. Ah, and then, that great Alan Brennert interview by Rob Kelly. The Brave and the Bold #182 and 197, Secret Origins #50, and Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 are four of my favorite comic books ever, so it was nice to learn more about the writer of those great tales. I had never heard of Batman: Holy Terror, but I’ll be adding it to my collection soon, along with the other books that he’s written. So many great stories! And then, I keep reading and find the interview with the Wonder Woman contest winner I had asked about previously. Sounds like Mr. Watkins greatly enjoyed his trip to NYC and it was great to finally, some 30+ years later, find out just what the winning storyline was! This was a very creative idea for an interview and I thank Shaun Clancy for writing it. If you couldn’t tell yet, BACK ISSUE #84 was one of my favorite issues yet. Thanks again! – Dan Brozak

THE INSPIRATION FOR CRISIS #7’s COVER Both the writer of the legendary “Death of Supergirl” comic and a BACK ISSUE reader wrote us with a correction to an assertion made in BI #84’s article about the landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths #7: I state up front I might be wrong about the cover for CoiE #7, but my memory is I suggested Superman holding Supergirl’s body, but in my mind it wasn’t based on any of the covers you showed. Instead it comes from the Batman issue “Robin Dies At Dawn,” which I read as a kid and highly affected me. I think I probably gave George the rough idea but he, being younger than me, probably gravitated to Kirby’s Thor cover. Of course, all those and more were inspired by The Pietà. At any rate, great issue, as always. – Marv Wolfman Just a point of disagreement and possible correction in BACK ISSUE #84. On pages 48–49 there are several renditions of the now-familiar cover pose displayed with side copy stating, “It Always Goes Back to Kirby,” implying Jack Kirby’s cover on Thor #127 was the comic-book inspiration for the iconic pose for all those that followed. As you point out, Thor #127 was cover-dated April 1966; however, I direct you to Batman issue #156, by Sheldon Moldoff, cover date June 1963, which clearly predates Kirby’s Thor cover by three years. Don’t get me wrong: I am a big fan of Jack Kirby; however, in this instance it would seem Kirby was the borrower, not the originator. Keep up the marvelous work on BI. – Stephen Smith

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Thank you, Marv and Stephen, for bringing this to my attention. Marv’s email arrived the day after BI #84 shipped and elicited from me a “D’oh!” that would make Homer Simpson’s hair (what little of it exists) curl. While I was too young to have read “Robin Dies At Dawn” in its original form in Batman #156, as an eight-yearold I was shaken to the core when reading its reprinting in 1966’s Batman #185, an 80-Page Giant starring Robin, the Boy Wonder. Also, as the co-author of TwoMorrows’ book The Batcave Companion, I’m intimate with Batman covers of the Silver Age. I should have remembered the gripping Batman #156 cover (penciled by Sheldon Moldoff and inked by Charles Paris) when editing Franck Martini’s otherwise spot-on article about Crisis #7. Instead of my “It Always Goes Back to Kirby” caption accompanying the sextet of Crisis #7–like dead-hero covers, I should have instead written, “It All Started with Shelly…” Above you can compare Michelangelo’s Pietà with Moldoff’s “Robin Dies At Dawn” and Pérez’s “Death of Supergirl.” All three are works of art. And a question for you Golden Age buffs: Was there a similar cover predating 1963’s Batman #156?

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A TEARY-EYED RECEPTION Bob Greenberger’s hearsay rendition of how DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz met actress Helen Slater after seeing a screening of Supergirl didn’t happen exactly as Julie told Bob it had (“Supergirl in Bronze,” BI #84). In the early ’80s, I had returned to staff at DC as an editor. DC scheduled me to see a screening of Supergirl; I was pleased to find Supergirl writer Paul Kupperberg and The Schwartz himself would also attend. In the compact but elegant screening room in the Warner Communication complex in New York’s Rockefeller Center we secured seats very near the front and noted we were alone, save for two women sitting on the outer aisle, much farther back. After the lights came on, we recognized at least one of the women—it was Helen Slater, with a companion. Ever the center of his own—and, he assumed, everyone else’s—universe, Julie rose and announced: “I’m gonna meet her!” Paul and I immediately talked him out of this, pointing out that Miss Slater was crying and seemed to be in the grip of strong emotions, though not distraught. Paul and I figured she was overcome by seeing herself on the big screen, and why not? Supergirl was her first starring role in her first movie and only her second acting job. Who wouldn’t have been brought to tears? Julie may have later decided that Miss Slater was in tears because she was “clearly aware she was featured in a bomb,” but that’s not what he thought that day. – Mike W. Barr

DUCK FOR COVER! Hey, I’m very happy you're doing a issue spotlighting the Bronze Age adventures of Supergirl. That said, the cover for this issue is pretty bad. I don’t have a problem with the homage concept, but using a bunch of modern indy artists doesn’t exactly hearken back the days of the Bronze Age. I realize that most of the artists associated with Supergirl from that era have passed, but surely you could have found someone whose style was not so abrasive. The cover may be enough for me to just get the digital version instead of the print version. You guys usually feature great covers, but this is a huge miss! – Kirk Cekada Kirk, from time to time I like to shake things up with a different type of cover than you might expect. I took chances with Kyle Baker’s quirky Storm cover for BI #8 and Brian Koschack’s Star Wars Clone Wars cover for BI #55, both of which, like our Supergirl cartoonists jam cover for BI #84, didn’t feature Bronze Age artists. Those were the three covers throughout our 13-year history that garnered some negative feedback. Once in a while I’ll continue to do something different with our covers, but rest assured that the norm will continue to be era-specific artists— such as last issue’s Gray Morrow Punisher, this issue’s Michael Wm. Kaluta’s Shadow, and next issue’s Bill Sienkiewicz Elektra. A lot of folks loved the Supergirl jam cover, however, including the next two readers…

WHAT TO WEAR? So, do we have a say in helping Supergirl pick a costume from the cover of BI #84? If so, I’m partial to Kristen McCabe’s sassy little number. – Gene Popa, via Facebook

A LITTLE LOVE FOR SUPERGIRL And the hits just keep on coming. Thanks for the Supergirl issue, a nice tribute to a character whose potential never seemed to be realized. The “Supergirl in Bronze” article and other accompanying pieces showed that no one seemed to know what to do with the Maid of Might. As the old phrase goes, they threw everything they could against the wall to see what would stick. Dick Giordano’s dismissive assessment that she was “Superman with boobs” suggests that he thought the character was lame and unfixable. But the idea of a female Superman overflows with possibilities in the hands of a good writer. When DC finally figured this out, they started reworking her in every way possible, but by then the poor girl had achieved a stigma of being a second-string character. It’s a real shame, because, handled correctly, Supergirl could very well have been at the same level or better than Wonder Woman in terms of female superhero icons. Anyway, the look back at her career was great. 76

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I was surprised to read about the origin of Kara’s name. For some reason, I had gotten it into my head that the name “Kara” originated with Supergirl, in the same manner that the name Wendy was invented for Peter Pan. Years later, when I was babysitting a little girl named Kara, I told her that her name came from a comic-book character. While the real origin of the name is more satisfying, it now makes me want to go find this girl (now a grownup woman) and apologize for misinforming her. On a related subject, I was always interested in the civilian names of superheroes. Some names become outdated or obsolete (Ezra, Absalom), while others are cyclical, returning to prominence after many years (Sarah and Emma being good examples). And some names are classic, enduring as common names over decades (as in Michael). It’s difficult to tell which trendy names of today will still be used 20 years from now. My point is, when you have characters whose origins began in the 1940s, a problem arises in trying to keep them current. Does anyone name their children Clark or Bruce anymore? In my entire life I’ve met one man named Bruce and none named Clark. I imagine it makes it difficult to update a hero to fit into a new, edgy mold when he's named after your grandpa. I wonder if, when writers retool old heroes, if they have ever thought of renaming their alter egos? I don’t mean renaming them with whatever the flavor-of-the-month name happens to be floating around (please, no Kanye Kent), but finding a name that may not sound like something from the Depression era might help. Way cool look at Crisis #7 cover and its various homages. The George Pérez photo re-enactment was laugh-out-loud funny. And speaking of covers, Karl Heitmueller, Jr. and company scored a bull’s-eye with this issue’s cover, as well as his Supergirl strip. While I enjoyed the Alan Brennert interview as a whole, one thing that got my attention was the phrase in the first paragraph. Rob Kelly referred to Brave and the Bold as a “blind buy,” referring to a comic so consistently good you always bought it without knowing the contents. Finally, someone came up with a proper phrase for those comics! When I saw Superman or Action on the spinner racks, I usually just picked them off the rack without even looking at the cover. Blind buys … thanks for adding that to my comics lexicon, Mr. Kelly. The art on page 68 made me laugh. I remember the John Byrne scene well, but I hadn’t noticed the Easter egg in the dialogue until now. Superman is paraphrasing his words from the cover of Action #252: “Great guns! A girl -- flying! It -- uh -- must be an illusion!” The Orlando Watkins interview was fun, and I'd like to see an interview with the Superman contest winners. I don't know how you’d pull it off, but that might be an interesting theme: the fan base of comics before there was the widespread fandom of today. I still remember names from the letters columns like Irene Vartanoff, Guy Williams III, and Martin Pasko. And the highlight of my week was getting the Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom newspaper in my mailbox and seeing letters and ads from people who loved comics as much as I did. It might be fun to reconnect with those people as well as contest winners to see where they're at now. It looks like the next few issues are going to be even better! Keep them coming! – Michal Jacot Michal, our centennial issue, BACK ISSUE #100, will be themed “Bronze Age Fandom” and will include articles not unlike what you suggest. It’s still in the conceptual stages and won’t be seen until September 2017, but we’re going to make it something special.

GOLDEN AGE IN THE BRONZE AGE I just picked up a half dozen back issues of BACK ISSUE (no pun intended) last week—amongst them was your “Weird Issue,” #78. The reason I am writing you today—and I hope it’s not too late— was an item entitled “Wishlist” in your LOC page. You had proposed a “Golden and Silver Age Heroes in the Bronze Age” retrospective, and I heartily cast my vote with this idea. All in Color for a Dime is the first book I checked out of the library upon receiving my library card in the early ’70s, and I have been intrigued with the Golden Age ever since. The annual JLA/JSA team-ups and subsequent All-Star Comics revival at DC and the release of The Invaders over at Marvel fanned that interest even more. My ideas for this proposed issue: Issue

1) Since you’ve done many JLA/JSA team-up features, a feature focusing on the Golden Age team revivals in the ’70s—Seven Soldiers of Victory, Freedom Fighters, and Shazam’s Squadron of Justice. 2) A sidebar on the Freedom Fighters series: why Plastic Man was left out, the Crusaders, Firebrand’s later revival. Status of the Fawcett heroes, sidebar on Minute Man, who later appeared in Shazam! 3) A feature on Marvel’s WWII home-front defenders, the Liberty Legion. and their various appearances. 4) The obligatory Brave and the Bold article featuring Batman teaming with Golden Age or Earth-Two heroes like Wildcat, Plastic Man, Dr. Fate, and even the Golden Age Batman himself. 5) Marvel appropriating Golden Age characters’ names for new characters: Daredevil, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Vision, Angel, Captain Marvel, and Black Cat. (I’m guessing Ka-Zar was a revival?) 6) A look back at the original characters and contrast with the new ones; how Marvel even took character names from other companies! 7) The Red Circle Mighty Crusaders revival and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revivals in the early ’80s. 8) Marvel and DC series featuring Pulp Heroes: The Shadow, the Avenger, John Carter–Warlord of Mars, and Doc Savage—maybe a sidebar on the 1975 Doc Savage movie. 9) A story behind the story of the Bronze Age origin of the Justice League from JLA #144, featuring a plethora of guest stars from the dawn of the Silver Age—which had to be an inspiration for New Frontier. 10) For a Fawcett story, besides Shazam’s Squadron, a look at the Shazam! TV series and comic book tie-in. Maybe a sidebar on “Captain Thunder” who famously guest starred in an issue of Superman. 11) Of course, even though you’ve done many stories on them in your publications, anything more on the All-Star Comics ’70s revival, Invaders, All-Star Squadron, and maybe even the Golden Age miniseries would always be welcome. Hope you give my thoughts some consideration. Keep up the great work! – Bert Turelli Bert, I’m happy that you’ve discovered BACK ISSUE and hope that you become a regular reader. Those are great ideas—so great that we’ve already done many of them in issues published before you became a BI reader, specifically: 1) and 2) Freedom Fighters (and the Marvel analogs, the Crusaders) were featured in BACK ISSUE #41. The Seven Soliders of Victory backup series was covered in #64. And recently, BI #82’s JLA/JSA crossovers article looked at the FF, SSoV, and Shazam Squadron appearances in Justice League. 3) Liberty Legion got a very brief mention in the Marvel Premiere article in BI #71 but deserves a closer look. 4) I’m a diehard Brave and Bold fan and have explored that series, and those team-ups, in several different issues including #69, which looked at the Batman/Golden Age Batman team-up in B&B #200. We’ve also done articles on Wildcat (#40), Dr. Fate (#26, 64), and Plastic Man (#77). 7) T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Mighty Crusaders? Coming in BI #94 (“Indie Superheroes”). 8) If you’re reading this issue, you’ve got your article about The Shadow! For the Avenger, see BI #47’s Justice, Inc. article. John Carter was in #55, and Doc Savage got the BI treatment in issue #10 (themed “Pulp Fiction”). 9) BI #58 was a “Justice League in the Bronze Age” issue, with a lot of ink dedicated to Stellar Steve Englehart, who wrote that JLA origin. 10) BI #30 cover-featured TV Captain Marvel Jackson Bostwick in a gorgeous painted portrait by Alex Ross, plus interviews with Bronze

Bostwick and the other TV Cap, John Davey. Issue #30 also featured a short look at DC’s Shazam! (although we’re revisiting the subject, in depth, later this year with BI #93’s “Shazam in the Bronze Age” article), as well as a “Greatest Stories Never Told” look at the aborted sequel to that Captain Thunder Superman story. And TV’s Billy Batson, Michael Gray, was interviewed in BI #30. 11) Invaders were covered in #37, but we haven’t yet gotten around to those other series—so keep reading! Hopefully my response didn’t dampen your enthusiasm. I encourage reader recommendations but have to be careful that we don’t retread past subject matter. And that’s on the mind of the next letter writer…

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT? I’ve been reading this magazine since the first issue, and it’s been my favorite publication about comics for a long time. Therefore, it bugs me a bit to see a certain problem come up more and more often these days. The strong focus on Bronze Age superhero comics you’ve had for a while is causing a situation where articles come dangerously close to repeating themselves, especially in the last two or three years. It’s rather awkward to read articles that focus on issues leading up to an already-covered story, then hurriedly jump over that story and continue—and those type of articles have got to be awkward to write, as well. I would suggest broadening the focus to cover much more non-superhero topics than we’ve seen before, especially with books that have received little or no coverage in previous fan publications. Here’s a list of things I’d particularly like to see (and there are some superhero things included): 1) The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu B&W magazine. Very little of this has been reprinted by Marvel, and I'd like to know how much it impacted Marvel Universe continuity back then, especially the Iron Fist stories (none of which showed up in the Iron Fist Essential volume). 2) The post–1975 Jim Shooter, pre–Giffen Legion of Super-Heroes. I know the majority of LSH fans would rather forget this period, but I’d like to see it covered. I’d especially like to know how Steve Ditko got involved with it. 3) The post–Barry Smith Conan. Very little has been written about this. 4) DC’s Kamandi. I realize Jack Kirby fans tend to disdain this title (I’ve never quite understood why; I don’t think it’s any sillier or dialogued more strangely than any other Kirby DC books), but it lasted longer than anything else Kirby did for DC, so obviously some people were satisfied with it. 5) The Sesame Street comic strip. Yes, there actually was one— and you’ll never guess who the initial characters in it were. It’s the most bizarrely handled TV/comics combo I’ve ever seen. 6) The CARtoons B&W magazine from Millar Publications. This book and some related titles from the same publisher lasted from the late 1950s until at least the late 1980s, but for some strange reason its history is so obscure that even Overstreet has never listed it in the Comic Book Price Guide. 7) The World’s Greatest Superheroes comic strip produced by DC. Outside of one late-1970s paperback book from Tempo, I don’t think anyone has ever reprinted this; not even IDW. The creators on this strip changed so fast you could literally fall asleep trying to keep track of them. 8) More horror-oriented undergrounds like Insect Fear, Skull, and Slow Death. If the lack of superheroes is a problem, you could always go for Wonder Warthog or Trashman. 9) Gold Key’s Starstream. This was a four-issue series of thick books adapting SF prose stories, all of them non-reprint. Some of these stories put to shame most of the horror/mystery stories by Marvel and DC; the adaptation of Robert Bloch’s “And the Blood Ran Green” is exceptional. The first comics adaptation of the “Crystal Singer” stories also appeared here. 10) Marvel’s Crazy B&W magazine under Steve Gerber’s editorship. 11) Marvel’s Weirdworld stories, and how the sales failure of the color specials basically doomed any possibility of prestige non-licensed material appearing in future Marvel Super Specials. Those are just suggestions off the top of my head. Hope some of them actually get written up! – Mark Drummond Age

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Thanks for being a BI reader since issue #1! I appreciate the thought you put into your letter. Yes, it can be a challenge trying to avoid material we’ve already covered, or sidestepping a previously covered story arc when surveying its host title, especially now that we’re in our 13th year in print. Most general-audience magazines tend to repeat subject matter every few years (heck, Men’s Health runs a “Get Perfect Abs” article every couple of issues!), but a specialized publication like ours can’t do that. Conversely, it’s all unchartered territory for the newer readers we’ve picked up more recently, but we have to walk a tightrope between informing new readers and not repeating ourselves for older ones. The broad “So-and-so in the Bronze Age” surveys are the ones which most frequently run into that problem you site. There are a handful of them forthcoming, but we've also planned for the next two years some themes and coverage of material that has been overlooked. And your suggestions are all excellent! A Sesame Street comic strip? I'll have to look into that—you’ve piqued my curiosity. Deadly Hands of Kung Fu got a little coverage last issue, and eventually there’s going to be a kung fu issue that goes into great detail with its explorations of DHOKF, Master of Kung Fu, and Iron Fist. The Steve Gerber tribute issue (#31) included his Crazy. But the rest of your ideas are fair game. Kamandi is my favorite of Kirby’s Bronze Age DC books, and we did a short article about the Last Boy on Earth way back in #14. I’ve steered clear of returning to the character since our publisher also publishes The Jack Kirby Collector, but maybe a longer, in-depth look at Kamandi is warranted. What do the rest of you think? You might not be surprised to discover that the BI issues we've done without superhero covers or coverage have been “greeted” by lower orders than the superhero-centric ones … but not by that much, since our readership largely stays consistent. But we will continue to feature non-mainstream material as much as possible—and since we’ve already covered much of the major storylines of the ’70s and ’80s, the less-traditional material might be seen more frequently.

THE ANIMATED SUPERGIRL

Just writing to tell you how much I enjoyed your “Supergirl in the Bronze Age” BACK ISSUE. I admit that I was a bit put off by the cover price but I took a chance and I’m glad I did. The issue brought back quite a few fond Supergirl memories. I learned a few things about the Maid of Might that I hadn’t known and a few things that I had always wanted to know. For example, it was fun to finally learn where Paul Kupperberg was planning to go once he reintroduced Dick Malverne into the book. (Would still like to know if he had planned to get Linda back together with Phil Decker and what Phil was hiding from Linda in the first place.) I was disappointed to learn that Cary Bates no longer remembers what he had in mind for Wanda 5. Glad to know that I am not the only one who hated the headband and, after seeing 78

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Helen Slater in that outfit, agree that it was wise of the movie’s producers to go in a different direction. I half agree with Karl Heitmueller, Jr. about Supergirl 52’s costume. I like most of it, but not the bottom part. It looks like a diaper. And boy, do I agree with him that Superman should put his red shorts back on. Finally, I have issue #314 of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but not issue #315. If someone could fill me in the rest of the story (and the White Witch origin), I would be very grateful. But let me turn to the main reason I am writing to you, which is to fill in what I thought was a major omission in your magazine, namely the Kara In-Ze incarnation of Supergirl, first seen in Superman: The Animated Series and then in Justice League Unlimited. Your magazine detailed the post–Crisis comic version of Supergirl created by John Byrne. Frankly, I think Byrne really wanted to thumb his nose at fans of the pre–Crisis Superman. He brought back characters such as Superboy and mermaid Lori Lemaris only to immediately dispose of them (although the latter did return). He held Supergirl fans in suspense for months only to have a “bazinga” moment when she revealed herself to be Lana Lang. (Is there anyone else out there who thinks Byrne had a Lana Lang fetish?). To say bringing back Kara Zor-El would have cheapened her Crisis death is ridiculous. Was bringing back Superman cheapening his final Silver Age story where he is revealed to have given up his Superman identity and settled down with Lois Lane? This was to be a whole new Superman and Kara Zor-El could have fit right in. But as the comic-book Supergirl went from Lana to Matrix to Linda to Earth Angel etc., the creators of Superman: The Animated Series had a better idea. Although they wanted to use Kara Zor-El, DC was insistent that Superman remain Krypton’s last survivor. (Although they were apparently okay with the series using Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone, so go figure.) Thus, Argo City became the planet Argo, Krypton’s sister planet, and Kara Zor-El became Kara In-Ze (In-Ze was the maiden name of Kara Zor-El’s mother, Allura). The planet was thrown out of orbit by Krypton’s explosion and froze as a result. Life on the planet was slowly destroyed. In a desperate (and ironic) attempt to save her family, Kara’s mother, a physician, put her family into medi-chambers, which induced a cold sleep stasis effect. Over time, all but Kara’s chamber malfunctioned, and years later she was rescued by Superman, who picked up the family’s automated distress signal while exploring what was left of the sector. Superman brought Kara to Earth, where she lived with the Kents in Smallville. (Give John Byrne credit for keeping Jonathan and Martha Kent alive.) She was eager to join her “cousin” in the family business, but he felt she needed to adjust to Earth and learn more about her powers. Undeterred, Kara travels to Metropolis, where she teams up with Jimmy Olsen, who was tracking down a newly resurrected Intergang. They catch up with the new Intergang and Kara reveals herself as Supergirl for the first time, only to find out that this Intergang is a front for Granny Goodness and her Female Furies. Superman comes to the rescue, but is instead taken by the Furies to Apokolips, and it is up to Supergirl to rescue him. Kara In-Ze would appear in a few more Superman episodes (and one Batman episode, where she and Batgirl battled Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Livewire), but really came into her own in the Justice League Unlimited series. As in “Little Girl Lost,” she is portrayed as talented and eager to prove herself, but impulsive, headstrong, and in need of training. She finds a mentor in Green Lantern John Stewart and a kindred spirit in Green Arrow. The series tracks her growth both as a superheroine and a young woman, and concludes with her deciding to live in the 30th Century with Brainiac 5 and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

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In addition to her TV appearances, Kara In-Ze made a few comic-book appearances, most notably Superman Adventures #21 (retiled Supergirl Adventures for the occasion), which expanded on her origin and pitted her against three Phantom Zone criminals, two from Krypton, and General Zod, who in this incarnation was, like Supergirl, from the planet Argo. One difference in the comics is that Kara, being Argonian, is immune to kryptonite. This is not the case in the television series. Kara In-Ze made two other significant comic appearances. In one, she battles a female Brainiac who had taken the appearance of her late mother. The other is Justice League Unlimited #7, where she blows off chores and homework to join the League in battling Darkseid. This story by Adam Beechen perfectly captures both the superheroine and the teenager. Was Kara In-Ze responsible for the return of Kara Zor-El? It sure looks that way. It is telling that the Matrix/Earth Angel Supergirl adopted Kara’s red, white, and blue costume and that Kara Zor-El did return to the DC Universe following In-Ze’s appearances. The first post–Crisis Kara Zor El and the Supergirl 52 incarnation had were also put in suspended animation, and the former wore a midriff-baring costume. (The midriff look was probably inspired by then-teen idol Britney Spears and was also the look used by Disney heroine Kim Possible.) The Smallville incarnation of Supergirl also spent time in suspended animation, and like In-Ze she also goes to live with the Legion of Super-Heroes. In my opinion, Kara In-Ze is by far the best post–Crisis incarnation of Supergirl to date. She proved that Supergirl did not have to die to be done right. While she shared many heroic qualities with Superman, there was no question that she was very different from her “cousin.” Her stories on television and in the comics perfectly captured both the teenager and the superheroine and her stories stand with the best of any Supergirl, even the original. Sadly, now that Kara Zor-El is once again a welcome part of the DC Universe, it is unlikely that we will ever see Kara In-Ze again. I guess we can all take comfort in the fact that she and Brainiac 5 are living happily ever after in the future. – Charles Gross Charles, I’m glad you gave BACK ISSUE a try. Re the cover price: Most contemporary comics are $3.99 and take only a few minutes to read, but BI is $8.95 and is packed with hours of reading. I hope you'll continue to read the magazine. And thanks for the comments about the animated Supergirl. Our coverage obviously skewed toward DC’s traditional continuity. However, looking ahead, in 2017 we're going to explore some of DC’s animated series and spin-off comics, mostly in conjunction with a 25th anniversary special edition for Batman: The Animated Series, so we may take a harder look at this Supergirl then.

WHO’S WHO, SAY WHAT? I recently purchased several back issues of BACK ISSUE magazine and enjoyed them all. I had a couple of follow-up questions about your article in issue #32 (2009) Elektra TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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about your personal experience working on the loose-leaf version of Who’s Who in the DC Universe. I read this article with even more interest than some others in that issue because I still own that entire set and continue to flip through those binders every few years. My lingering questions after reading your very enjoyable article about it in issue #32 are: 1) I wonder how, if at all, you worked with Mayfair Games while they were preparing a companion set of loose-leaf pages for their “DC Heroes” role-playing game (which I also have in my set of binders)? 2) My lingering memory is that this loose-leaf set placed a very distinct emphasis on the Legion of Super-Heroes. If you think that perception is accurate as well, I wonder whether that may’ve been because of the sheer number of Legion-related characters, or whether that might’ve been because, as I believe I read online somewhere once, some of the people at DC involved in the preparation of this series were “huge fans of the Legion of Super-Heroes”? 3) The series seemed to end abruptly, and before it was complete. (An impression that remains with me today is that there was an entry for Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt’s supporting cast, but not for him, as one example.) Did DC stop publishing the series due to declining sales? Or was it deemed substantially complete at some point? I’ve enjoyed all of the issues of BACK ISSUE I’ve bought so far and am repeatedly amazed that you continue to come up with imaginative topics that intrigue me. Most recently I particularly enjoyed issue #75, especially the articles on Concrete and on Pacific Comics. – Dan Dillon Dan, I’m glad you’ve discovered BACK ISSUE and hope you keep reading the magazine! 1) I didn’t work with Mayfair Games. And not that you asked, but concurrently published with DC’s loose-leaf Who’s Who was Marvel’s loose-leaf version of its Handbook. The inspiration for the loose-leaf Who’s Who was actually trading cards, since card collecting was having a resurgence in popularity, and the loose-leaf format afforded the collector more flexibility in how pages could be archived—plus, like trading cards, they had an image on the front and text on the back. 2) Well, I was also Legion editor at the time, so there might’ve been a subconscious bias! But LSH had recently been revamped and its characters moved five years forward in continuity. This was confusing to some, intriguing to others, and Who’s Who was a good place to fill in some gaps. Also, the sheer volume of characters in the Legion universe offered no end of entries for Who’s Who. 3) We were always scheduled to run 16 issues. There were also updates/follow-ups in the loose-leaf format, including an Impact! Comics Who’s Who. I wish there had been more issues, because there were some characters that didn’t get the Who’s Who treatment. Glad you liked BI #75; it was an important issue. And I loved its Paul Chadwick Concrete cover! Next issue: Eighties Ladies! FRANK MILLER and BILL SIENKIEWICZ’s Elektra Assassin, Dazzler, the name-changing Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), Lady Quark, a DAN MISHKIN Wonder Woman interview, a WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS and ADAM KUBERT Pro2Pro interview about Jezebel Jade, and BRUCE JONES, APRIL CAMPBELL, and BRENT ANDERSON remember Somerset Holmes. Plus: MARTHA THOMASES looks back at Marvel’s Dakota North! Featuring a previously unpublished 2003 Elektra Assassin cover by Sienkiewicz. Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in thirty! Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor-in-chief

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THE MLJ COMPANION documents the complete history of Archie Comics’ super-hero characters known as the “Mighty Crusaders”—THE SHIELD, BLACK HOOD, STEEL STERLING, HANGMAN, MR. JUSTICE, THE FLY, and many others. It features in-depth examinations of each era of the characters’ extensive history: THE GOLDEN AGE (beginning with the Shield, the first patriotic super-hero, who pre-dated Captain America by a full year), THE SILVER AGE (spotlighting those offbeat, campy Mighty Comics issues, and The Fly and Jaguar), THE BRONZE AGE (with the Red Circle line, and the !mpact imprint published by DC Comics), up to THE MODERN AGE, with its Dark Circle imprint (featuring such fan-favorites series as “The Fox” by MARK WAID and DEAN HASPIEL). Plus: Learn what “MLJ” stands for! Uncover such rarities as the Mighty Crusaders board game, and the Shadow’s short-lived career as a spandex-clad superhero! Discover the ill-fated Spectrum line of comics, that was abruptly halted due to its violent content! See where the super-heroes crossed over into Archie, Betty, and Veronica’s world! And read interviews with IRV NOVICK, DICK AYERS, RICH BUCKLER, BILL DuBAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, JIM VALENTINO, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, KELLEY JONES, MICHAEL USLAN, and others who chronicled the Mighty Crusaders’ exploits from the 1940s to today! By RIK OFFENBERGER and PAUL CASTIGLIA, with a cover by IRV NOVICK and JOE RUBINSTEIN.

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COMIC BOOK FEVER

GEORGE KHOURY (author of The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore and Kimota: The Miracleman Companion) presents a “love letter” to his personal golden age of comics, 1976-1986, covering all the things that made those comics great—the top artists, the coolest stories, and even the best ads! It covers the phenoms that delighted Baby Boomers, Generation X, and beyond: UNCANNY X-MEN, NEW TEEN TITANS, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, LOVE AND ROCKETS, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, SUPERMAN VS. SPIDER-MAN, ARCHIE COMICS, HARVEY COMICS, KISS, STAR WARS, ROM, HOSTESS CAKE ADS, GRIT(!), and other milestones! So take a trip back in time to re-experience those epic stories, and feel the heat of COMIC BOOK FEVER once again! With cover art and introduction by ALEX ROSS.

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DRAW! #32

Golden Age great IRWIN HASEN spotlight, adapted from DAN MAKARA’s film documentary on Hasen, the 1940s artist of the Justice Society, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Wildcat, Holyoke’s Cat-Man, and numerous other classic heroes—and, for 30 years, the artist of the famous DONDI newspaper strip! Bonus art by his buddies JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, CARMINE INFANTINO, and SHELLY MAYER!

From Detroit to Deathlok, we cover the career of artist RICH BUCKLER: Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Black Panther, Ka-Zar, Dracula, Morbius, a zillion Marvel covers— Batman, Hawkman, and other DC stars— Creepy and Eerie horror—and that’s just in the first half of the 1970s! Plus Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, and comics expert HAMES WARE on fabulous Golden Age artist RAFAEL ASTARITA!

DAVID SIEGEL talks to RICHARD ARNDT about how, from 1991-2005, he brought the greatest artists of the Golden Age to the San Diego Comic-Con! With art and artifacts by FRADON, GIELLA, MOLDOFF, LAMPERT, CUIDERA, FLESSEL, NORRIS, SULLIVAN, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, GROTHKOPF, and others! Plus how writer JOHN BROOME got to the Con, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, FCA, and more!

DON GLUT discusses his early years as comic book writer for Marvel, Warren, and Gold Key, with art by SANTOS, MAROTO, CHAN, NEBRES, KUPPERBERG, TUSKA, TRIMPE, SAL BUSCEMA, and others! Also, SAL AMENDOLA and ROY THOMAS on the 1970s professional Academy of Comic Book Arts, founded by STAN LEE and CARMINE INFANTINO! Plus Mr. Monster, FCA, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Super-star DC penciler HOWARD PORTER demos his creative process, and JAMAL IGLE discusses everything from storyboarding to penciling as he gives a breakdown of his working methods. Plus there’s Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviewing art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY showing the Ord-Way of doing comics, and Comic Art Bootcamp lessons with BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

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BACK ISSUE #90

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BRICKJOURNAL #39

“Eighties Ladies!” MILLER & SIENKIEWICZ’s Elektra: Assassin, Dazzler, Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), Lady Quark, DAN MISHKIN’s Wonder Woman, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS and ADAM KUBERT’s Jezebel Jade, Somerset Holmes, and a look back at Marvel’s Dakota North! Featuring the work of BRUCE JONES, JOHN ROMITA JR., ROGER STERN, and many more, plus a previously unpublished cover by SIENKIEWICZ.

“All-Jerks Issue!” Guy Gardner, Namor in the Bronze Age, J. Jonah Jameson, Flash Thompson, DC’s Biggest Blowhards, the Heckler, Obnoxio the Clown, and Archie’s “pal” Reggie Mantle! Featuring the work of (non-jerks) RICH BUCKLER, KURT BUSIEK, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE ENGLEHART, KEITH GIFFEN, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and many more. Cover-featuring KEVIN MAGUIRE’s iconic Batman/Guy Gardner “One Punch”!

“Bronze Age Halloween!” The Swamp Thing revival of 1982, Swamp Thing in Hollywood, Phantom Stranger team-ups, KUPPERBERG & MIGNOLA’s Phantom Stranger miniseries, DC’s The Witching Hour, the Living Mummy, and an index of Marvel’s 1970s’ horror anthologies! Featuring the work of RICH BUCKLER, ANDY MANGELS, VAL MAYERIK, MARTIN PASKO, MICHAEL USLAN, THOMAS YEATES, and more. YEATES cover.

“All-Captains Issue!” Bronze Age histories of Shazam! (Captain Marvel) and Captain MarVell, Captain Carrot, Captain Storm and the Losers, Captain Universe, and Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers. Featuring C. C. BECK, PAT BRODERICK, JACK KIRBY, ELLIOT S. MAGGIN, BILL MANTLO, DON NEWTON, BOB OKSNER, SCOTT SHAW!, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover painting by DAVE COCKRUM!

LEGO DINOSAURS! Builder WILLIAM PUGH discusses building prehistoric creatures, a LEGO Jurassic World by DIEGO MAXIMINO PRIETO ALVAREZ, and dino bones by MATT SAILORS! Plus: Minifigure Customization by JARED K. BURKS, stepby-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, DIY Fan Art by BrickNerd TOMMY WILLIAMSON, MINDSTORMS robotics lessons, and more!

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TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. COMIC BOOK CREATOR #13 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #14

KIRBY COLLECTOR #67

KIRBY COLLECTOR #68

MICHAEL W. KALUTA feature interview covering his early fans days THE SHADOW, STARSTRUCK, the STUDIO, and Vertigo cover work! Plus RAMONA FRADON talks about her 65+ years in the comic book business on AQUAMAN, METAMORPHO, SUPER-FRIENDS, and SPONGEBOB! Also JAY LYNCH reveals the WACKY PACK MEN who created the Topps trading cards that influenced an entire generation!

Comprehensive KELLEY JONES interview, from early years as Marvel inker to presentday greatness at DC depicting BATMAN, DEADMAN, and SWAMP THING (chockful of rarely-seen artwork)! Plus WILL MURRAY examines the nefarious legacy of Batman co-creator BOB KANE in an investigation into tragic ghosts and rapacious greed. We also look at RAINA TELGEMEIER and her magnificent army of devotees, and more!

UP-CLOSE & PERSONAL! Kirby interviews you weren’t aware of, photos and recollections from fans who saw him in person, personal anecdotes from Jack’s fellow pros, LEE and KIRBY cameos in comics, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and more! Don’t let the photo cover fool you; this issue is chockfull of rare Kirby pencil art, from Roz Kirby’s private sketchbook, and Jack’s most personal comics stories!

KEY KIRBY CHARACTERS! We go decadeby-decade to examine pivotal characters Jack created throughout his career (including some that might surprise you)! Plus there’s a look at what would’ve happened if Kirby had never left Marvel Comics for DC, how Jack’s work has been repackaged over the decades, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and galleries of unseen Kirby pencil art!

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