|
Post by codystarbuck on May 20, 2023 21:47:19 GMT -5
I had that issue; one of the ones I collected, back in the day. The story is also repeated in the first Avon novel, The Story of the Phantom. The main story adapts the Sunday edition story "The Female Phantom," from 1952. In the original, the Phantom (he is supposed to be the grandfather of the 21st Phantom) goes to rescue a missionary from river pirates. He sneaks aboard their riverboat, but is shot during a fight with the pirates, which Julie witnesses from shore. He is dumped into the crocodile-filled river and Julie dives in and saves him. She brings him back to Skull Cave to recuperate, then makes her own costume to venture out as the Phantom, to rescue the missionary (whom she finds handsome). Julie sneaks aboard and frees the missionary, bu they are spotted. She takes the captain hostage, then gives her pistols to the missionary and swims to shore, for help, rousing the nearest Jungle Patrol garrison. She then disappears and the Jungle Patrol think that the missionary captured the pirates, single-handedly. She then visits the missionary and says she must leave him and she cannot tell him her name. She returns to her brother, who is in much better shape, and cries on his shoulder, because she is in love with the missionary. He concocts a scheme for them to meet, with her in girly frocks and it succeeds and they go off to raise Holy Ghosts That Walk, or something. In the course of things, Diana Palmer, who stays with the Bandar, discovers the costume and tries it on, asking the Phantom how the heck he stands the jungle heat in it. he replies that "You get used to it." Right! The Phantom was ignorant of the female ancestor and locates the story in the chronicles, detailed by his grandfather.
Quite frankly, Julie is more competent and assured, in the original Sunday strips, though the comic book has her carrying out more work, as the Phantom. There is not tracking her to the Skull Cave and no capture, either, in the strips.
In the later years, after the Phantom and Diana Palmer marry, she gives birth to twins, Kit and Heloise, though they are depicted as children, in the strips in the 2000s. The Defenders of the Earth cartoon did a story, where the Phantom (the 22nd) meets up again with his twin brother, who he defeated in a contest to become the Phantom, succeeding their father. The other brother is angry and jealous and turns to villainy, when they are reunited. The 22nd Phantom is depicted with a daughter, Jedda, who takes on the mantle of the Phantom, in the cartoon, briefly, when she believes her father has been killed.
Incidentally, one of the storyboard directors of the series was Pat Boyette, who drew the Phantom's adventures, at Charlton (think he did some Flash Gordon, too).
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on May 20, 2023 22:27:28 GMT -5
I had that issue; one of the ones I collected, back in the day. The story is also repeated in the first Avon novel, The Story of the Phantom. The main story adapts the Sunday edition story "The Female Phantom," from 1952. In the original, the Phantom (he is supposed to be the grandfather of the 21st Phantom) goes to rescue a missionary from river pirates. He sneaks aboard their riverboat, but is shot during a fight with the pirates, which Julie witnesses from shore. He is dumped into the crocodile-filled river and Julie dives in and saves him. She brings him back to Skull Cave to recuperate, then makes her own costume to venture out as the Phantom, to rescue the missionary (whom she finds handsome). Julie sneaks aboard and frees the missionary, bu they are spotted. She takes the captain hostage, then gives her pistols to the missionary and swims to shore, for help, rousing the nearest Jungle Patrol garrison. She then disappears and the Jungle Patrol think that the missionary captured the pirates, single-handedly. She then visits the missionary and says she must leave him and she cannot tell him her name. She returns to her brother, who is in much better shape, and cries on his shoulder, because she is in love with the missionary. He concocts a scheme for them to meet, with her in girly frocks and it succeeds and they go off to raise Holy Ghosts That Walk, or something. In the course of things, Diana Palmer, who stays with the Bandar, discovers the costume and tries it on, asking the Phantom how the heck he stands the jungle heat in it. he replies that "You get used to it." Right! The Phantom was ignorant of the female ancestor and locates the story in the chronicles, detailed by his grandfather. Quite frankly, Julie is more competent and assured, in the original Sunday strips, though the comic book has her carrying out more work, as the Phantom. There is not tracking her to the Skull Cave and no capture, either, in the strips. In the later years, after the Phantom and Diana Palmer marry, she gives birth to twins, Kit and Heloise, though they are depicted as children, in the strips in the 2000s. The Defenders of the Earth cartoon did a story, where the Phantom (the 22nd) meets up again with his twin brother, who he defeated in a contest to become the Phantom, succeeding their father. The other brother is angry and jealous and turns to villainy, when they are reunited. The 22nd Phantom is depicted with a daughter, Jedda, who takes on the mantle of the Phantom, in the cartoon, briefly, when she believes her father has been killed. Incidentally, one of the storyboard directors of the series was Pat Boyette, who drew the Phantom's adventures, at Charlton (think he did some Flash Gordon, too). I do wonder why King's own Phantom series would take more liberties, with "The Girl Phantom" clearly being a much looser adaptation of the strip sequence than what they appear to have allowed Gold Key to do. I see that Bill Harris wrote most or all of Gold Key's series, but was hired away from Western to serve as editor on the King run, writing only a few of the stories. Perhaps Harris wasn't as competent at plotting and thus relied more on producing faithful remakes, but as editor was able to hire experienced writers like Dick Wood and Jerry Siegel who could be trusted to come up with their own plots. There's probably some interesting history behind King's brief comic book line; I assume that during the Batman craze of '66 they wanted to get a bigger piece of the pie and figured their well-established adventure features--Phantom, Jungle Jim, Flash Gordon, and Mandrake--would be competitive.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on May 21, 2023 11:36:20 GMT -5
I suspect it was like when Disney took over their comics, for a brief time, in the 90s, taking the license away from Gladstone; they thought they could make more money on their own and then proceeded to not market them, even in their own theme parks and retail stores. Gladstone had the license back within a year or two (ish). King probably saw the boom, with Marvel and Batman and decided to cut out the middle man, then found that they didn't know the first thing about producing and marketing comic books and decided to let someone else deal with it...someone even cheaper than Weestern....Charlton!
One thing I have noticed, looking at the dailies and Sundays, comparing stories; the strips are really crudely drawn. For an adventure strip, the art is very simplistic, until Sy Barry settles in. It maintains that Golden Age look of things; but a lot of that was the fact that comic books didn't pay very well and artists didn't put a lot of time into detail work, for that kind of money. I suspect the art on the strip paid nowhere near as much as Lee Falk got, for writing and creating it, though King Features owned it, outright. They probably didn't care, as long as it sold. Probably why they didn't mind the Western art from Ligante be so minimal.
The only foreign material I have seen are the Wolf issues, which I believe were Australian, and the Indrajal, from India (written in English). Indriajal has reprints of other stories; but, I was looking at issue #49, which I don't recognize as being either Charlton or Gold Key, as it isn't Ligante, Pat Boyette, Aparo or Don Newton. Might be Australian or Scandinavian material, might be original. A later issue I randomly opened (I have digital files of them) was a reprint of the first Don Newton story, at Charlton (which recounts the current Phantom's origin and the family history). Issue 49, though, has yet another version of Julie's story.
Julie and a native friend notice a criminal Big Boscolo, the Beast, setting up camp, with native bearers, who might be slaves. She decides to do something about it and dons a costume and she and her friend, Maru, mix paint. Julie then rides off and proceeds to paint a large skull, on the side of a cliff, in the night and then calls out to Boscolo, as The Phantom, saying Boscolo has broken the Phantom's Peace and to leave or face the Phantom's wrath. He doesn't buy into it, at first, until his attention is directed to the cliff face, where he sees the skull, that wasn't there before. Then Julie appears before them and Boscolo shoots at her, but nothing happens. The natives say that the Ghost Who Walks cannot be killed. Boscolo runs in terror. The story ends with Julie sitting on the Phantom's throne, laughing , telling Maru she replaced Boscolo's bullets with blanks.
It's only 4 pages long; but, the story is well plotted and the use of terror to drive off the criminal is a bit more in keeping with things. The wrinkle to it is that Boscolo and others call the Phantom "he," while facing Julie, with obvious breasts and feminine hips. If he saw the skull on the cliff, he couldn't miss those! The art has a signature that says "Lig," so it might be Ligante. I don't recognize the source, though. Maybe material produced for foreign publication. There are several stories in the issue, including a retelling of the 21st Phantom coming to live and study in America (the opening stories) and a longer piece, at the back of the book, reprinting a Sy Barry Sunday storyline. I do see that Ligante drew the Sundays, in 1962. Given the length of the piece, an adapted Sunday strip sounds plausible, though I don't see anything like it in my collection, other than the original story, from 1952. Ligante does bring life to the Sundays, when he takes over, as it is more detailed. In fact, the art improves greatly in the 60s, for the dailies, too. After McCoy's death, it seemed like King wanted to update the look of things and went with more detailed, modern artists, mainly from the 1950s and 60s DC crowd, with Carmine Infantino (briefly), Ligante, then Sy Barry.
Ligante later worked for Hanna-Barbera and was also a courtroom artist for ABC News, where he covered the trials of Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan and Patty Hearst.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on May 21, 2023 14:18:23 GMT -5
If the movie had done better, we could have seen a revival of interest, though I thought it was pretty good. I just felt Treat Williams wasn't that believable as a deadly villain (his higher pitched voice didn't help) and thought that Catherine Zeta Jones' air pirate leader was the more interesting character. Kristy Swanson was also a little bland for Diana Palmer (wrong hair color, too). She wasn't terrible, though and I though Billy Zane did a great job. Also enjoyed Patrick McGoohan as the ghost of Kit's father. I'll take it over some of the MCU films and most of the recent DCU stuff. The serial was great, for its time and keeps your interest fairly well. Tom Tyler looks the part, as he did with Captain Marvel. Agreed. Not perfect, but what movie of this type is? Zane was way better in this than he was in Titanic, funny, lighthearted but appropriately serious when needed. Zeta-Jones was perfect, though underused, and the action sequences in both the jungle and NYC, were great. The rope bridge scene went Temple of Doom one better, borrowing from Wages of Fear and Sorcerer. And any movie with a villainous James Remar deserves mad love. I always think of this with two other well-made films from that time: The Mummy with Brendan Frasier and the first Zorro movie with Banderas. Love them. Oh, and toss The Rocketeer in there, too from a few years earlier. Another forgotten gem. They all captured the best aspects of the Indiana Jones movies that obviously paved the way for them. Now give me a Batman movie set in 1940.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on May 21, 2023 18:21:10 GMT -5
If the movie had done better, we could have seen a revival of interest, though I thought it was pretty good. I just felt Treat Williams wasn't that believable as a deadly villain (his higher pitched voice didn't help) and thought that Catherine Zeta Jones' air pirate leader was the more interesting character. Kristy Swanson was also a little bland for Diana Palmer (wrong hair color, too). She wasn't terrible, though and I though Billy Zane did a great job. Also enjoyed Patrick McGoohan as the ghost of Kit's father. I'll take it over some of the MCU films and most of the recent DCU stuff. The serial was great, for its time and keeps your interest fairly well. Tom Tyler looks the part, as he did with Captain Marvel. Agreed. Not perfect, but what movie of this type is? Zane was way better in this than he was in Titanic, funny, lighthearted but appropriately serious when needed. Zeta-Jones was perfect, though underused, and the action sequences in both the jungle and NYC, were great. The rope bridge scene went Temple of Doom one better, borrowing from Wages of Fear and Sorcerer. And any movie with a villainous James Remar deserves mad love. I always think of this with two other well-made films from that time: The Mummy with Brendan Frasier and the first Zorro movie with Banderas. Love them. Oh, and toss The Rocketeer in there, too from a few years earlier. Another forgotten gem. They all captured the best aspects of the Indiana Jones movies that obviously paved the way for them. Now give me a Batman movie set in 1940. Yeah, loved all of those films for the same kinds of reasons. Just good old fashioned pulp storytelling and moviemaking.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on May 21, 2023 18:27:38 GMT -5
Agreed. Not perfect, but what movie of this type is? Zane was way better in this than he was in Titanic, funny, lighthearted but appropriately serious when needed. Zeta-Jones was perfect, though underused, and the action sequences in both the jungle and NYC, were great. The rope bridge scene went Temple of Doom one better, borrowing from Wages of Fear and Sorcerer. And any movie with a villainous James Remar deserves mad love. I always think of this with two other well-made films from that time: The Mummy with Brendan Frasier and the first Zorro movie with Banderas. Love them. Oh, and toss The Rocketeer in there, too from a few years earlier. Another forgotten gem. They all captured the best aspects of the Indiana Jones movies that obviously paved the way for them. Now give me a Batman movie set in 1940. Yeah, loved all of those films for the same kinds of reasons. Just good old fashioned pulp storytelling and moviemaking. And I meant to include “The Shadow.” That was fun, too.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on May 21, 2023 18:41:51 GMT -5
Yeah, loved all of those films for the same kinds of reasons. Just good old fashioned pulp storytelling and moviemaking. And I meant to include “The Shadow.” That was fun, too. I would mostly agree, on that one. Could have done without Russell Mulcahey's music video cliches, in the climax, though he kept them under control through the bulk of the film and gave us a pretty good romp.. Darkman is another great pulp film, from Sam Raimi (when he couldn't option the Shadow).
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on Jun 10, 2023 7:04:22 GMT -5
JUNGLE ACTION #2, December 1954. Jungle fatigue is setting in, so I’m giving myself a reliable serving of more of Marvel’s mid-50’s offerings, since they are reliably competent at the least, digestible in small doses thanks to the shortness of the stories, and frequently a lot more fun than the standard jungle fare of the 50’s. This issue features: Lo-Zar, Lord of the Jungle in “Red Poison” with art from Joe Maneely Jungle Boy in “The Mystery of Kula Mountain!”, penciled and inked by John Romita “Jungle Magic”, a two-page text story Man-Oo the Mighty in “Cry in the Night!”, illustrated by George Tuska Leopard Girl in “The Flames of Terror!”, drawn by Al Hartley Don Rico is, according to the GCD, the scripter of all the comics stories; the author of “Jungle Magic” is unknown. Most of us here are probably more familiar with Marvel’s revival of the “Jungle Action” trademark as a reprint title in the early 70’s, before it became home to new stories starring the Black Panther. I’ve already sampled its early reprint period, where we previously met Lo-Zar, with a red hair dye job and the less risible new name of “Tharn”. “Red Poison” opens with a preview of Lo-Zar battling a crocodile as a villainous intruder poisons the local rivers, but the story begins as an African native summons Lo-Zar to bemoan the death of his cattle, after drinking from the river. Lo-Zar’s about to test the waters with a sip, himself, when he sees a hawk drink and immediately die, giving him good reason to alert the locals, warning them not to drink from the poisoned waters. Mr. Egres is the white hunter behind the poisonings, but Lo-Zar doesn’t know that, and warns the man not to drink or bathe, but Egres boasts that he carries his own, safe water. Suddenly the natives arrive to alert Lo-Zar to the crocodiles, who have gone mad and are attacking the village. Time for some croc-fighting…meanwhile, Egres continues to pour poison into the waters, and his thought balloon reveals he is acting under the command of the Kremlin. Egres fails to notice a newspaper that drops from his gear into the river… With the aid of the natives, Lo-Zar defeats the crocs, and discovers the paper, a clipping about a Commie spit named “Serge” who has a reputation for international sabotage. When a burning leaf falls on the paper, it chars the photo of Serge, revealing him to be—surprise, surprise—“Egres”. Get it? “Serge” spelled backwards… At this point, it’s pretty easy for Lo-Zar to put two and two together, and he heads after the poisoner, defeating him despite Egres having the advantage of a pistol. In their tussle, Egres takes a plunge into the river, where the maddened crocodiles deliver justice. A native finds an antidote for the poison in Egres’s camp, and Lo-Zar has him pour it into the river, restoring the peace of the jungle. Nice art from Maneely, reminiscent of EC’s Will Elder and John Severin, but it can’t save a dud of a story. Egres’s goals aren’t very convincing: he wants to drive men and animals away so that they—the Communists, presumably—can take over. Rico further muddies the story by Lo-Zar’s supposition that the Russians have turned against their reliable tool, Egres. The key moment in the story, when the burned paper mimics a beard on the photo, revealing Egres’s true identity, doesn’t ring true to anyone who’s ever seen newsprint burn. Jungle Boy starts out promising, as JB spots curious tracks, then sees a winged demon carrying off a victim. JB hurries off to tell his dad; evidently, JB is the son of “white hunter” (obviously!) Jack Spears. Jungle Boy’s no Tarzan-talking, ape-raised orphan, he’s the conventionally-intelligible son of a hunter who likes to adventure wearing only a pair of shorts and a stone hammer and call himself “Jungle Boy” (even his dad calls him that!). Dad and his hunters receive JB’s report and go off in search of the monster, warning JB to stay safe back at camp. But JB doubts the men’s ability to trail something that flies, so he decides he will let the monster take him, and conveniently, the creature arrives and does just that, flying JB to the craggy top of Kula Mountain, an impossibly high peak that has never been reached by humans. Not so fast, there, Jungle Boy! When the creature deposits him atop the peak, he finds a savage, club-wielding cave man watching over a pit filled with natives! Before you know it, JB is matching his small stone hammer against the brute’s bigger bludgeon: JB’s superior agility resolves the conflict in his favor, as he dodges before a single blow is dealt. The cave man plunges helplessly off the cliff. But the coast is not yet clear! Threatened by both a leopard and a boar, JB ducks into a crevasse for some “Let’s you and him fight!” He escapes while the animals engage with each other and finds himself at gunpoint: an “ex-circus man...animal trainer” is there, and he explains his scheme to wipe out the native population by injecting his wild animals with a serum that will make them go berserk. Once the natives are cleared out, he can collect more animals, chemically induce them to madness, and use those as weapons against American soldiers in support of the Communist cause. Oh, and the bat monster and cave man were “circus freaks”: A daft plan… JB cripples his enemy under an easily-rolled boulder, the bat monster arrives and picks up the man, since it’s trained to carry fallen enemies to the “valley of skeletons”. JB escorts the natives down the mountain, and after Dad scoffs at his unlikely story, JB rationalizes that the bat will no longer be a problem, since there’s no one on the mountain to give it orders any more. Wow, between this and the Lo-Zar story, it’s clear they were struggling to somehow tag the Communists as being behind as many acts of jungle villainy as they could. Both plans were pretty crazy ones involving depopulating a region for reasons of dubious benefit to the Communist cause. Jungle Boy doesn’t really do anything other than roll a big rock over his enemy’s leg, but he’s treated as a big hero. The story requires a lot of post analysis to make even the slightest sense of, but the best I can figure is that the bat was bringing natives to the mountain-top pit, where they would be stranded, allowing the unnamed villain to later take control of the region, but I guess the bat had to be ordered to perform each individual abduction. But the bat didn’t need orders to dispose of the fallen by taking them to the valley of skeletons. And I assume the giant long-tailed bat was just a freakishly large trained animal, not a mutated human or unknown species. But the way Romita draws it suggests he didn’t have any good reference material on bats… “Jungle Magic” is a strange little text piece that sees a white hunter and his native guide captured by an unfriendly tribe and challenged to prove the magic of the white people and their black friends is more powerful than that of the isolationist N’Gembi tribe. The N’Gembi witch doctor performs an easily-detected trick where he appears to revive three dead frogs via their substitution with live ones hidden in the false bottom of a basket. The white hunter’s native aid makes the more impressive show by using his bwana’s watch battery to cause one of the dead frogs to twitch its legs, demonstrating him to be a true “master of life and death.” Not a bad example of the mandatory short text story. Next up is Man-Oo the Mighty. Man-Oo is probably not the only “regular” gorilla to headline his own comics feature, but I don’t remember seeing any others. It wasn’t that uncommon for animals to star in their own adventure comics in the 50’s: Trigger and Rex the Wonder Dog also saw issues of their own comics hit the stands the same month as JUNGLE ACTION #2. Without dialog and thought balloons, “Cry In the Night!” feels like reading a very heavily illustrated text story, with captions above every panel. George Tuska draws pretty good simians, but the pages as a whole don’t make for an especially attractive composition: it all just looks like random pictures of apes scattered on the page. The story has Man-Oo rescuing a baby gorilla from hyenas, but in so doing, gives the baby’s parents the mistaken impression that he was responsible for the young one’s cries of distress. He resolves the misunderstanding without harming anyone, then returns home, where the captions explain that the whole situation had been intentionally coordinate by Man-Oo’s rival Kago: Man-Oo’s too smart for the wicked Kago, and surprises his enemy by approaching in an unexpected direction, leaving Kago trapped in his own snare: I'm not going to complain about an ongoing backup starring a jungle gorilla! Finally, we have Leopard Girl, who sports what looks to be the least comfortable garb I’ve seen any jungle adventurer wear: a full-body leopard-spotted suit with her face poking through the mouth of a leopard head, and with only her hands likewise exposed. At least she has the benefit of footgear, although it appears no more substantial than ballerina slippers. The story sees an old man named Hans Kreitzer retiring to the jungle to “think, study, and write” away from the bustle of civilization, with the assistance of his newly-hired typist, Gwen. On thing he intends to study is the legend of the “Leopard Girl”. After explaining his intentions, we see his real plan is not quite that mundane: he is “bringing together certain nuclear reactions” to “rejuvenate the spirit of the Flame Witch”! When his experiments immediate flame out of control, Gwen ducks off, doffs her glasses, and returns to save Kreitzer in her secret identity of, you guessed it, Leopard Girl! (OK, this calls for a quick look back at issue 1, where we learn that the lovely Gwen is working for a white couple who have for some unexplained reason set up a domicile in the jungle, hiring Gwen as their cook/secretary. Gwen spreads the myth of the Leopard Girl, supposedly orphaned—of course!—and raised by leopards in the jungle. Um, that doesn’t answer all my questions, but we’ll just take it that Gwen works in various domestic and clerical capacities for other whites in the jungle, but is secretly the mysterious Leopard Girl.) Back to our story, Kreitzer is ticked that the Flame Witch didn’t show, and Leopard Girl leaves him safe in a cave, from the runaway fire, but warning him that he won’t be safe from the Flame Witch. Yeah, the Flame Witch is apparently a real entity, who will “try to get to Mr. Krietzer for bringing her back!” What kind of gratitude is that? The Flame Witch is responsible for that raging fire, and Leopard Girl escapes from the witch’s fiery trap with the help of a condor: “First time a condor ever came in handy!” (What’s with the anti-condor sentiment?) Leopard Girl must ultimately come to the rescue of the old man, using a hidden spring inside the cave to douse the witch, sending her back to wherever she came from. Hans Kreitzer has been uneasy under the protection of a lion and its cubs, thanks to Leopard Girl, who resumes her identity as Gwen, returning to receive Kreitzer’s orders to destroy his equipment; he’s learned not to, in Gwen’s words, “trifle with jungle things!” This doesn’t strike me as a very well thought-out premise for a series: is Gwen going to find a new and unlikely job working for foreigners every issue? This calls for a glance through the few remaining issues of Leopard Girl’s career (JUNGLE ACTION was cancelled with issue 6). In JA #3, Gwen is still working as Kreitzer’s secretary, sharing a house with him and “Peter”, another white guy who’s been around since issue 1. But as of issue 4, Al Hartley left the strip, and Leopard Girl appears to have operated in costume full time from then on, dropping the Gwen identity. Kreitzer was gone, Peter was now good friends with Leopard Girl, and the feature was much more conventional jungle fare. I have to wonder if Al Hartley was plotting, since these changes coincided with his departure. I do give this story some extra credit for including some straight-up fantasy/supernatural elements in the form of the Fire Witch. Most of these Atlas jungle comics seemed to have shied away from “real” magical menaces. While far from the best of the Atlas jungle comics I’ve sampled, JUNGLE ACTION delivers enough variety, clarity, and fun to rank as a Jungle Gem, although a semiprecious one at best.
|
|
|
Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 10, 2023 13:15:26 GMT -5
(...) Man, that is an excellent cover by, I'm assuming, Maneely - esp. love the image of Leopard Girl throwing the knife.
Otherwise, yeah, the Zar family really wasn't creative with the names; Ka and Lo already had it bad, but the twins, Mi-Zar and Ne-Zar, had it even worse, to say nothing of the baby of family, poor little Pu-Zar...
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Jun 10, 2023 13:37:09 GMT -5
Not to mention cousins Quay-Zar, Lay-Zar, Tay-Zar and Zar-Nicholas II
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on Jun 10, 2023 17:01:08 GMT -5
(...) Man, that is an excellent cover by, I'm assuming, Maneely - esp. love the image of Leopard Girl throwing the knife. Right you are, there's half of Maneely's signature at the right edge of Leopard Girl's boat! He was really good at doing these multi-panel covers that Atlas favored back then.
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Jun 10, 2023 22:26:24 GMT -5
Man, that is an excellent cover by, I'm assuming, Maneely - esp. love the image of Leopard Girl throwing the knife. Otherwise, yeah, the Zar family really wasn't creative with the names; Ka and Lo already had it bad, but the twins, Mi-Zar and Ne-Zar, had it even worse, to say nothing of the baby of family, poor little Pu-Zar...
Lo-Zar sounds almost like a joke name meant to make the reader think "Loser".
Leopard-Girl's knife-throwing is an impressive 3-D effect - I wonder if this was one of the first times it was done, the combination of an object coming outwards towards the viewer at an angle and also breaking the panel-border? That's what intensifies the impression, I think.
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on Jun 11, 2023 6:24:22 GMT -5
MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL #29 (1984) and #34 (1984). I’m sampling two issues of MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL because both of these were also published as individual standalone “microseries” of two issues each: issue 29 was reprinted as TARZAN OF THE APES #1-2 (July and August 1984) and issue 34 reprinted as SHEENA #1-2 (December 1984 and January 1985). This was the usual practice for most issues of this series, which specialized in adaptations of current movies in all but 11 of its 41 issues. MSS was magazine sized and full color. These two issues were the only ones that could be categorized as jungle comics. The Tarzan issue, written by Sharman DiVono and Mark Evanier and drawn by Dan Spiegle, was published to capitalize on the release of the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, which was a highly anticipated film, the first “serious” attempt at a Tarzan film in decades. Greystoke was the film debut of actress Andie MacDowell as Jane Porter, and the American film debut of Christopher Lambert, best known as the star of cult favorite, Highlander. Both this comic and the film told the origin of Tarzan, so there are similarities, at least so far as the film followed Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, to which the comics adaptation was faithful. Although Greystoke was not the blockbuster Warner Brothers hoped for, the potential lured Columbia into having its own jungle adventure film ready to follow, with Sheena starring Tanya Roberts adapting comics’ greatest jungle queen. Sheena was an even bigger dud than Greystoke—I took my four-year-old niece to see it and she was begging to leave the film early, and I wish I had given in to her request. Fortunately for me, she forgot this utterly forgettable film experience. Sheena was adapted by scripter Cary Burkett and artist Gray Morrow. With two of my favorite artists on board, I’m already declaring these two Jungle Gems. Veteran artist Dan Spiegle was at the height of his skills in the mid-80’s, delivering luxuriously rich settings, and characters that demonstrated personality and expression far beyond the capability of the typical superhero comics artist to render. Gray Morrow has never been topped as the best “good girl artist” in comics; I like my illustrated females to look like the real thing, not the distorted parodies of the human form that artists of more recent decades tend to produce. Morrow’s ladies look like the best looking women you could actually see out in the real world. And like Spiegle, Morrow could render convincing, detailed sets and believable flora and fauna. His work on this comic is admittedly sketchier than his best efforts, but that’s plenty good enough in service to adapting a tedious and unengaging film. The Tarzan adaptation is very faithful to the novel, at least to the small portion that it adapts, the first 11 chapters (out of 28). It covers Tarzan’s origin, from his birth in the jungle to the stranded John, Lord Greystoke, and his wife the Lady Alice, his upbringing by the Great Apes, his first contact with humanity, to his killing of the vicious ape Kerchak and his coming into the kingship of the Apes. I believe this story was prepared for the European market, and Marvel took the opportunity to license it for publication in the US, hence there is no "editor" listed, only a "production coordinator", "traffic manager", "executive editor", and "editor in chief". Apparently Marvel was not renewing its license to produce new ongoing Tarzan comics from ERB, just to package this story for release to the US market. Dan Spiegle was not an artist who took a lot of shortcuts. His sets were authentically rendered: His wildlife was authentic to nature, his jungles were rendered lushly and evocatively: His page compositions had a terrific sense of depth: The Sheena issue adapts the movie script, and I’m not going to suffer through synopsizing that! The film’s scripter, David Newman (who had written for the Superman film franchise) was apparently under no compulsion to be faithful in anything but the very loosest of adaptations of the comic book character. They wanted the name, the look, and the very generic premise: a gorgeous blonde female Tarzan. The Sheena issue is padded with text articles promoting the film with its female focus and ambitions toward Raiders of the Lost Ark-type tone, augmented with behind-the-scene photos and film shots. So I think I’ll just be satisfied with sampling some imagery from Gray Morrow’s pages... Sheena swings from jungle vines: Sheena has the power to mentally command jungle animals: Sheena rides zebras: Why you can’t ride zebras: Finally, a look at the smaller-format reprints Marvel put on the stands: Again, Jungle Gems primarily for the artwork, but the Tarzan adaptation is as faithful and detailed as you're ever going to get in comics format.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Jun 11, 2023 12:29:37 GMT -5
I have to say, the only thing I ever liked Tanya Roberts in was That 70s Show. She' was not good in Charlie's Angels (which was well worn out before she was cast), she is terrible in View to a Kill (and Moore looked ancient) and she is the worst thing in Bodyslam, with Dirk Benedict and that was a film filled with pro wrestler who had mostly never acted before (other than Roddy Piper, in The One and Only, and that was just a wrestling scene). Piper looked like Olivier by comparison and the Tonga Kid came off better. Greystoke was a mostly decent film, though, if memory serves, wasn't Andie McDowell dubbed by Glenn Close? Christophe Lambert may be best known for Highlander, but Greystoke was always the one that stood out, for me. First time I ever saw him in anything and he was quite good, with the minimal dialogue and physical performance. Of course, they could cheat with the language by having Arnot teach him French. I remember either Russell Mulcahey or the producer of Highlander mention that when they met Lambert, he spoke very little English. Nothing to do with jungle movies or comics; but, Lambert stars in an interesting French film, Subway, directed by Luc Besson (before La Femme Nikita and all that). Lambert is a safecracker, who hits a safe in the home of either a crime lord or a big industrialist, and also takes some photos of a woman. he hides out in the stations and shops in the Paris Metro system, where there is a whole community living down there. meanwhile, the police are hunting a purse snatcher, wo uses roller skates to get around quickly, played by Jean-Hughes Anglaide (the love interest in Nikita). Isabelle Adjani is the woman in the photos, who has a history with Lambert and goes looking for him, to get the photos back. Lambert ends up putting together a band and a singer, which includes Jean Reno, as the drummer, and composer Eric Serra, as the bass player (which bass was his main instrument). Not the most coherent story but a great visual piece, which kind of informed how he filmed La Femme Nikita. Kind of a Neo-New Wave thing, which Leonard Maltin trashed, in his film guides and I don't think Roger Ebert was any kinder to it. Anyway, it is a chance to see Lambert act, in his native language. Loved Morrow's work on Sheena, even as the story is pretty weak. Always loved Morrow's stuff, after seeing bits and pieces, in 1970s comics. I have a Black Terror piece he did for a portfolio (it is one of the reproductions, not the original art), which also included the Lone Ranger and some others. Plus, he always looked like a classic artist, with the ever-present pipe.
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on Jun 29, 2023 13:13:49 GMT -5
ALL GREAT JUNGLE ADVENTURES was a one-shot release, 132 pages for 25 cents, published by Fox in 1949. Fox published several of these extra-long giant comics by removing the covers from four unsold, leftover, regular-length comics and reassembling them under one new cover. Fox published several such collections of their romance comics and superhero comics, but this appears to be the only giant jungle comic Fox attempted to recycle. It's a sub-par cover, even by Fox's inconsistent standards. The blonde's face, on close inspection, looks very wrong. Rulah and the purple gorilla might be dancing, instead of fighting. There's no attempt to convey a jungle atmosphere, just a cavern entrance and what seems to be a rocky cliff with a mountain range in the background. The format might have seemed like quite a bargain, but as I mentioned in prior post, Fox had a policy of printing the first story page of its comics on the inside front cover, colored in tones of a single print color (cyan or magenta), plus black, of course. Consequently, four of the stories in each giant--stories which would have been the lead story in their respective original releases—would start on the second page, lacking splash or title page! The copy that you can read at comicbookplus.com evidently includes ALL TOP COMICS #16 and JO-JO COMICS #18, but if I’m interpreting the GCD entry correctly, collections of other Fox jungle comics were also issued between these same covers. From a stack of cover-stripped unsold jungle comics, they would grab four and rebind them under this cover, so there’s really no telling what combinations might have been released. Since the component comics are considered elsewhere in this thread (or are not relevant to the topic of jungle comics), I’ll refrain from digging into the stories on this one. The inside front cover is a one-pager in black and magenta called “Man Eater”, about the Bengal tiger. The stories feature Rulah, Jo-Jo Congo King, Phantom Lady, “Tropical Topics”, and a “True Crime” story narrated by Phantom Lady. For those who were willing to get more pages per penny at the cost of a few opening pages, these were all pretty "great" jungle adventures, though! I had been avoiding going back to the Fox jungle books, having been burned by DOROTHY LAMOUR JUNGLE PRINCESS, SABU THE ELEPHANT BOY, and FRANK BUCK, but it turns out that the other features in Fox's jungle comics--Rulah, Jo-Jo, and Tegra--were all pretty awesome! I'll be digging deeper into those comics (as well as their very curious off-shoots) soon. Trust me, these are some pretty wild comics!
|
|