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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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

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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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)

Back Issue #89