Back Issue #89 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

BRONZE AGE ADAPTATIONS July 20

9 8 . o N 8.95 $

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

™

82658 00054 7

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 Kaluta (Unpublished cover produced for DC Comics’ The Shadow.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

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

www.twomorrows.com

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

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

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

TM & © DC Comics.

BACK

ISSUE

•

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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.

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

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).

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.

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

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

D o n Va u g h a n

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, 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

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

(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.

•

BACK

ISSUE

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. •

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

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.

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

Bronze

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

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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.

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

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

Issue

Jonathan Rikard Brown

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 52

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

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 Issue

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

•

BACK ISSUE • 55

dan spiegle

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

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

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.

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.

Bronze

Age

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.

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

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.

•

BACK

ISSUE

•

Bronze

Age

Adaptations

Issue

A Bomb and a Meteor (opposite page) Original art page from what might be the rarest George Pérez comic everr, the Sgt. Pepper’ epper’’s Lonely Hearts Club Band adaptation, published in Europe as Marvel Super Special #7. Signed by its inkerr, 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 IP P.

ST TAR 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 stor y. 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 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 ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, individual series, shows, IF or YOU episodes. I wanted to do the adaptation, lobbied for it, and got it. CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER “I remember was reading the script for Star Trek: TheTHIS Motion Picture and finding it pretty dull. I used to call ISSUE Picture.’ IN PRINTIt OR DIGITAL FORMAT! it ‘Star Trek: The Motionless 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 affter 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 wayy, despite being in pain, [Gene] was incredibly nice to us. These guys were all so busyy, 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. Trrumbull 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 acro oss the place, feeding images into the ISSUE #89 computer. Don’t ask m“Bronze e howAgeitAdaptations!” woBACK rked; The Ih aShadow, ven’tKorak: the Son fogofgTarzan, iest. BatBut we could see the thin lasers and avoided them. I remember asking Trumbull what the new ending otlestar f theGalactica, movieThewBlack as gHole, oing2001: to AbSpace e anOdyssey, d he sWorlds aid, just months before release, that it hadn’t been designed yet; the same with V V’’ger. adaptations. The best Trrumbull coulUnknown, d do foand r uMarvel’s s was1980s skemovie tch w hat he Plus: thoPAUL ughKUPt it was going to look like so Dave would be able to draw it. He also said he and PERBERG surveys prose adaptations of comics! With work by JACK Dykstra were not able to getDENNY togeO’NEIL, ther tFRANK o maROBBINS, ke sure MICHAEL the praW.ctKALUTA, ical models would fit into the optical sets. Because they were so busy getting it done, KIRBY, FRANK THORNE, and sporting an alternate they spoke on the phone but notMICHAEL much USLAN, in person. They just Kacrossed their fingers hoping it would all come togetherr. It was all pretty cool.”” luta cover produced for DC’s Shadow series!

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

Bronze

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_54&products_id=1236

Age

Adaptations

Issue

•

BACK

ISSUE

•