King Kong Vs. Godzilla - The Criterion Collection!

When Toho decided to revive Godzilla after his two 1950's outings it was because they'd gotten their hands on the granddaddy of all giant monsters -- King Kong. The tale of how King Kong came to be a Japanese monster is a circuitous one and a story which will make a fan of Willis O'Brien, the man who made Kong movie in the landmark movie so many decades ago, weep. O'Brien is celebrated now, but rarely given his due and even more sadly for fans of fantasy films the resources to make the movies he imagined. King Kong Vs. Frankenstein was one such project and by taking it to RKO (or what was left of RKO) he eventually lost control of the idea and it went overseas and the next thing you know Toho is mixing the Eighth Wonder of the World with the King of the Monsters. Mary Shelley's creation fell by the wayside but Toho made a version of that even some years later. King Kong as seen in this first Kaiju comedy is a far cry from the classic behemoth who threatened NYC so long before. 

But my focus here is Godzilla. who in this movie plays the villain. Despite being the hometown boy, Godzilla was still seen as the baddie and Kong as the hero who sails in to save the day on the slopes of Mount Fuji. But even though Godzilla is the baddie here, he's for the first time really portrayed with significant human characteristics. Buoyed by the success Mothra, Toho and Ishiro Honda skewed the Kaiju world to include comedy and satire. The monsters therefore were not merely representations of nuclear threats or prehistoric menace, but also characters on a stage and possessed of personality. We see Godzilla wave his arms together, applauding his fighting moves as he struggles against Kong. He is not a force, he is not an animal, he is a something else -- a blend of all of that. And the formula would prove a potent and to an important extent a successful one. 

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Utterly Fantastic Four Art!

Once upon a time, time itself was slower. I was still a youngster when Fantastic Four #100 hit the comic book racks, a number which seemed in many ways staggering as the Marvel Age was still ripe. The Fab 4 were always the first and foremost of the Marvel comics, despite the eventual popularity of Spidey and Hulk and others now and again, it was the Fantastic Four who marked the beginning.

They have faded, the four stalwart explorers replaced by oppressed mutants, snarky billionaires, and even a living legend or two over the decades. But the Marvel Age would feel right without them. And after a hiatus, the Fantastic Four returned to the racks. Now I long ago quit buying new stuff from Marvel, so the FF will not be an exception. Most of the names who  produce comics today are largely unknown to me, just kids looking to get on with their careers and godspeed to them, but for this vintage fan it will always be Lee and Kirby or DeFalco and Ryan, or the mighty Byrne who defines the FF. But there is one name who dabbled with the recent revival, one name I knew -- Art Adams.

Art Adams has been deploying gobsmacking artwork for several decades now and he produced for the first and second issues of the revived comic a fold-out interlocking cover which dazzles the eyes and evokes the majesty of the grand Fantastic Four #100 all at the same time.

Apparently this was a work which Adams took on as a fan commission. It's detail and elegance unfolding in detail which simmers slowly as the eyes dance across the composition. We see villains and heroes and more villains, the critters and folks who made the first one hundred issues of the Fantastic Four, so very "fantastic". We see Doctor Doom and the Inhumans and Mole Man of course. We the Watcher, the Silver Surfer, Diablo, Super-Skrull, Red Ghost and the Impossible Man too. But we also get Tomazooma and the Punisher and Torgo amid a horde of Moloids.

There are more and ore to see such as Maximus the Mad, the Mad Thinker, and truly Frightful Four. Even the Miracle Man gets a slot alongside the Puppet Master, Annihilus, Blastaar and Ronan. There are heroes too such as Thor, Hulk, Sub-Mariner, and you friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I didn't get new Fantastic Four, but that doesn't I don't lust for a copy of this truly fantastic image. 

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The Comics From The Lost Lagoon!

The Creature from the Black Lagoon has been adapted to comics twice. The first time was at Dell Comics and featured a dynamic Vic Prezio cover.

Here is a link to the first part of story itself and here is a link to the finale. It's a wee bit different than fans of the movie might remember.

Many years later several of the Universal monsters got their iconic tales translated to comics yet again and the standout was easily the adaptation of Creature from the Black Lagoon by Art Adams. Adams gave us a story in his distinctive style which might've done some surprising things with the cast, but his Gill Man is indisputably one of the best ever.

Here it is in glorious black and white like the original movie itself. Reading this one again recently, I was struck by the rigorous way Adams sticks to the script and at this ability to capture the atmosphere of the movie itself.

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The Man Who Stole Tomorrow!

Published in 1979 The Man Who Stole Tomorrow by David Michelinie was this tenth entry in the "Marvel Novel Series" pits the Assemblers against their arch-nemesis Kang the Conqueror, or you'd think that from the very handsome cover by Dave Cockrum. But the story is a much different affair than you'd expect given the encounters the team had had with the Conqueror in many a previous yarn. Massive spoilers follow.

John Byrne

It begins with a day at the mansion where assembled are Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Vision, The Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and the Beast. They are having just another day save for some remarkably intense interactions between the ill-tempered Pietro and the Vision. The cause of course is Wanda, about whom Pietro feels protective and clearly more than a bit jealous of her husband. Into this world comes a peculiarly dressed old man who clutches a jeweled necklace. He conjurs "Bother Bear", a strange creature which is clearly not a bear but some sort of other kind of powerful creature, one so powerful that it dispatches the Avengers with relative ease. Then Captain America disappears, apparently kidnapped.

Jack Kirby and Dan Adkins

It turns out the old man is the Shaman of the Eskimo tribe who first fished out Steve Rogers many years before and who has searched for his lost "god" since the Sub-Mariner appeared and cast the icon into the sea. We know that it was Cap and he thawed to become an important member of the Avengers and symbol to the world, but the Shaman named Aningan Kenojuak still imagines his "god" the loss there of was the cause of the woes his village suffered since. He's been on quest to regain his station and had recently come into some power and specific intel which enabled him to do just that.

(This Spidey Super Stories cover has nothing to do with the novel. But the idea that a megalomaniac hearkening for another time might take control of the White House seems especially poignant these days.)

The Avengers pursue  two avenues of investigation, one a mention of a creature with winged feet which leads them to Prince Namor of Atlantis and the other a few key words which suggest that the Arctic will be a place they need to go. Thor and the Vision find Namor and he joins them as the whole team confronts Kenojuak who has again frozen Cap in a block of something other than ice. It turns out his necklace is actually bizarre technology and he himself has been used as a dupe in a gambit against the Avengers themselves by the one he calls the "Blue Totem".

"The Blue Totem" of course is Kang the Conqueror and the Avengers use Thor's hammer's powers to journey to the future of 3900 A.D. to find him. The find a world depopulated as the mass of humanity has spread across the solar system, and the Earth itself converted into a defacto amusement park. Underneath a glowing sign is Kang who behaves quite unusually, even for him. The Avengers penetrate his fortress and confront the Conqueror who eventually reveals his plan to overwhelm particular time periods with a myriad of intruders from across the ages, both human and animal to the point that to regain some measure of order those time periods capitulate to his control.

The Avengers confront him and it is the devious nature of the Beast who is able to take control of Kang's machinery and who ends up sending the Conqueror into seventeen different time periods at once, which results in his splitting apart before their eyes. Then they return home.

Art Adams

This story starts out as a real hummer then sort of fizzles. The idea of following up on the events of The Avengers #4 and the tribe which lost its "god" is fascinating. And the first half of the novel follows this tale pretty well, then when we switch gears and it becomes a time travel story looking at a possible future with Kang it loses its way. One problem is the future presented seems unlike any we've encountered with Kang before but beyond that Kang himself seems very different. His supreme egotistical banter seems to have been replaced by a satirical smirk, a tone not fit for one who holds himself in such high regard.  There is also a feeling of the Avengers just wrapping it up as they fumble around until the end of the page count. If somehow the first half of the story had been allowed to keep playing a key in the latter part then I think we might have a novel here with more unity and more impact on the memories of Marvel fans.

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Brothers In Arms!

Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman

The Avengers #3, the comic I personally consider the single best book Marvel Comics ever published. I've argued before that this single comic, had for a mere twelve cents so many decades ago, has more plot than perhaps a full year of Marvel comics in these modern days. The comic gets overshadowed because of the significance of the next issue, the one which showcased the return of Captain America, but I've always considered this one the better story and perhaps just maybe the best story.

When I ran across this peculiar Argentinian comic book cover (a reprint of The Avengers #3 I presume) featuring Marvel's Hulk and Sub-Mariner I was at first struck by the peculiar poses the two powerful characters strike. They are, I suppose, in each other's powerful grip struggling mightily to overcome one another -- the stress and strain evident int he quaking each figure displays. But I swear it looks like they might be dancing, or perhaps that the Hulk is helping Namor up after  he's tumbled down having had perhaps too much Atlantean Ale.

Here's a recreation of sorts by longtime pro Bob Layton, a faux cover for the issue produced by accounts from a Jack Kirby sketch. It's plenty good, but lacks the awesome drama of the original cover above.

The comic has been reprinted many times, notably in the third issue of Avengers Classic, this time with a cover by Art Adams.

I first saw the story from the third issue of The Avengers in Marvel Super-Heroes #21, paired with an issue of the X-Men. This one showcasing a rockem' sockem' cover by Bullpen legends Marie Severin and John Romita. Sweet!

Here's another look at the Kirby original with a south-of-the-border flair.

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Gill Men!

Here are some very different versions of Universal's number one aquatic creeper, the infamous Gill Man from his trio of 50's horror flicks.  Vincent Di Fate's rendition above is haunting, his Gill Man less human and more ferocious.

Bill Everett's lush lines make this my favorite of these five images. The water here has the viscous oily quality which makes almost a thing alive like the voluptuous dame and the growling monster.

Dave Cockrum's version is traditional and imbued with the dainty charm which Cockrum was able to invest all his drawing.

Art Adams offers up a somewhat different rendition here, a Gill Man of Might, with some mighty thick muscles. Not so much a swimmer as a lifter.

And here is the classic Basil Gogos portrait of Universal's last classic monster. The colors in a Gogos piece are beyond vivid, they are lurid and seem somehow unseemly. It's a perfect choice for this subject matter, giving the monster a noxious feeling of menace.

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Lady Liberators!

This classic Avengers cover by John Buscema and Tom Palmer is fantastic! It's dramatic and dynamic and tells a story in a heartbeat. You had to have this comic, to find out who the Valkyrie was and how these dames beat Earth's Mightiest Heroes.


And it seems that the layout was so powerful that Art Adams wisely borrowed it for the return of the Lady Liberators in Hulk just last year. I can't help but notice that the potential cast for an all-woman Marvel team is much richer than when Roy Thomas did it so many decades ago. He basically used every woman in the MU aside from Sue Storm and Jean Grey to fill out the ranks of the original "Liberators".

Great stuff! I need to hunt down a copy of this perhaps, if it ain't too expensive.


Oh and here's a special behind-the-scenes treat. Here is Marie Severin's original layout for the John Buscema cover. You can see that Big John went a different way with the image, but Marie's still bristles with energy. Adams seems really to have a bit of both of the designs echoed in his Hulk cover.

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