Dojo Classics - The Blackmark Of Kane!

Gil Kane is one of those artists who left his mark on comics in a most specific way. He developed a style quite unlike anyone else, immediately recognizable and full of a vibrant kinetic energy which rippled across the page and leaped off the page at the reader.

A working artist who served well and reliably on early DC efforts like Rex the Wonder Dog, The Atom and Green Lantern, he tumbled across the field to work for Marvel on Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and the Hulk among many others. He was the go-to cover for Marvel for many years. He worked for Tower Comics on the beloved THUNDER Agents. He was considered for a brief time to be the replacement artist for Barry Windsor Smith when he stepped away from Conan the Barbarian. I would have to imagine that  notion came in no small part because of Blackmark.

Blackmark was the brawny and visceral hero of  a distinctively "primitive world of the future" as presented in a proposed series of paperback comics scheduled to to be published by Bantam Books. Alas despite a scheme for three tomes, only one ever graced the stands and that one apparently failed to find the kinds of sales that Bantam craved or anticipated. Blackmark, not unlike its independent magazine cousin His Name Is...Savage disappeared after only a single issue. And that was it.

The came Roy Thomas, a booster for many artists and a friend and colleague of Gil Kane. The two seemed to find a wonderful balance working together and when Barry Smith wanted off his hit Conan the Barbarian, it was Gil Kane that Thomas considered as his replacement.

Kane did two issues of the regular Conan run and then had to beg off as Smith returned briefly. When Smith left again soon thereafter John Buscema (the original choice) was tapped and comics history was well and truly made.

Kane went on to become a durable part of the Bullpen and worked on a number of comics including the giant-size version of Conan which adapted Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon. When Thomas pushed out The Savage Sword of Conan in 1974 to take full advantage of the craving for more barbarians, he clearly was hungry for content which might fill the pages and Blackmark came to mind. The pages from the Bantam paperback were re-pasted for the new format and in the first four issues of the successful magazine Kane's singular swordsman appeared in the back pages, never rating a cover but getting several mentions.

Later still, the second unpublished Blackmark graphic novel was adapted from the format designed for publication in a Bantam paperback and published in its entirety by Marvel in Marvel Preview. This time Blackmark rated a cover appearance in a painting by an artist named Romas.

And that was it for the benighted saga of Blackmark for many years. Eventually however the folks at Fantagraphics saw fit to finally publish the material all together for the first time in a format which followed the pattern of the original Bantam books but somewhat larger to allow the artwork to be better appreciated. This volume from the early years of this century remains the definitive edition of Gil Kane's great epic, an epic which sadly like so many wonderful concepts of that era remained unfinished, though far from unsatisfying.

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The Blackmark Of Kane!

Gil Kane is one of those artists who left his mark on comics in a most specific way. He developed a style quite unlike anyone else, immediately recognizable and full of a vibrant kinetic energy which rippled across the page and leaped off the page at the reader.

A working artist who served well and reliably on early DC efforts like Rex the Wonder Dog, The Atom and Green Lantern, he tumbled across the field to work for Marvel on Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and the Hulk among many others. He was the go-to cover for Marvel for many years. He worked for Tower Comics on the beloved THUNDER Agents. He was considered for a brief time to be the replacement artist for Barry Windsor Smith when he stepped away from Conan the Barbarian. I would have to imagine that  notion came in no small part because of Blackmark.

Blackmark was the brawny and visceral hero of  a distinctively "primitive world of the future" as presented in a proposed series of paperback comics scheduled to to be published by Bantam Books. Alas despite a scheme for three tomes, only one ever graced the stands and that one apparently failed to find the kinds of sales that Bantam craved or anticipated. Blackmark, not unlike its independent magazine cousin His Name Is...Savage disappeared after only a single issue. And that was it.

The came Roy Thomas, a booster for many artists and a friend and colleague of Gil Kane. The two seemed to find a wonderful balance working together and when Barry Smith wanted off his hit Conan the Barbarian, it was Gil Kane that Thomas considered as his replacement.

Kane did two issues of the regular Conan run and then had to beg off as Smith returned briefly. When Smith left again soon thereafter John Buscema (the original choice) was tapped and comics history was well and truly made.

Kane went on to become a durable part of the Bullpen and worked on a number of comics including the giant-size version of Conan which adapted Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon. When Thomas pushed out The Savage Sword of Conan in 1974 to take full advantage of the craving for more barbarians, he clearly was hungry for content which might fill the pages and Blackmark came to mind. The pages from the Bantam paperback were re-pasted for the new format and in the first four issues of the successful magazine Kane's singular swordsman appeared in the back pages, never rating a cover but getting several mentions.

Later still, the second unpublished Blackmark graphic novel was adapted from the format designed for publication in a Bantam paperback and published in its entirety by Marvel in Marvel Preview. This time Blackmark rated a cover appearance in a painting by an artist named Romas.

And that was it for the benighted saga of Blackmark for many years. Eventually however the folks at Fantagraphics saw fit to finally publish the material all together for the first time in a format which followed the pattern of the original Bantam books but somewhat larger to allow the artwork to be better appreciated. This volume from the early years of this century remains the definitive edition of Gil Kane's great epic, an epic which sadly like so many wonderful concepts of that era remained unfinished, though far from unsatisfying.

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A Fifty Year Mission!

There are lots of folks noting today's fiftieth anniversary of the singularly significant television series Star Trek. In keeping with this month's theme, I'm featuring the cover for the first adult novel written from the series. (I looked at the first novel, a juvenile titled Mission to Horatius here.) James Blish, an established science fiction writer had been adapting the episodes for some time and was given the green light to pen a novel. Spock Must Die! was the result. While the other volumes by Blish featured some wonderful art, this one showcases a photo of the late Leonard Nimoy as Spock, duplicated as if in a mirror.

Gold Key began doing original stories in the series from the get-go. So early is their original stuff by the Alberto Giolitti studio that a number of details are strikingly wrong, most notably the way the Enterprise rockets around with flaming exhaust erupting from the nacelles. The series though proved to be a sturdy one and lasted long after the series itself disappeared from the small screen, becoming for many the only place where the remarkable five year mission persisted. Eventually re-runs put the show back on the map and eventually as we all know fan support and the success of Star Wars, prompted a major screen debut. The series has been a healthy one since. I looked at what I have in my Star Wars cache of collectibles here.

Below are the early Gold Key covers which like the Bantam cover above relied on photos from the series to make the covers. Eventually artwork by George Wilson and others took over the task. But for a time only photos would do.

I've examined here the delightful "fotonovels" which developed from the series. While there is much Star Trek material out there for the true fan, I'm currently only interested in John Byrne's remarkable revival of that format under the "New Visions" brand from IDW Publishing. He not only revives the fotonovel, but gives us "new" stories set in the classic universe, even one which picks up on the classic "Mirror Mirror" episode, one of my favorites.

While most of the cast and creative team has shuffled off this mortal coil (Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelly, James Doohan, Grace Lee Whitney, Mark Lenard, Ricardo Montalban, Majel Barret, and even the creator Gene Roddenberry), I suspect the original Star Trek brand will last a long time still.

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Bound At The Baskervilles!

Hound of the Baskervilles is my favorite Sherlock Holmes story and I own many copies of it with all manner of covers. But I do not own the Bantam paperback above which is pushing the novel to a completely different audience by taking a book about the great Sherlock Holmes and a giant devilish ghostly hound and featuring neither but rather a scene near the end of the story when a woman is tied up. Yikes! Who the heck bought this thing without knowledge of the classic case and waited breathlessly as the scene did not come up until the very end. They must've been very very disappointed.

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Kull - Exile Of Atlantis!

I've said before that of all of Robert E.Howard's creations, King Kull is perhaps my favorite. Having recently re-read the slim canon of adventures from the pen of REH titled Kull - Exile of Atlantis, I can confirm that opinion. There's something magnificent about Kull, that alas never quite attaches to the personality of the more realistically portrayed Conan. Kull is a cooler head by a mote, and while of barbaric origins seems a bit more comfortable in his royal persona. If I had to separate the two, I'd say that Kull is smart and even reflective, while Conan is savvy with sharp instincts,  Kull is noble while Conan is brave.You might even refer to Kull as a Philosopher-King, but you'd never hang that tag on Conan.

Perhaps the best story Howard ever wrote was "The Shadow Kingdom" which appeared in Weird Tales and debuted Kull, and created (in the minds of many) the genre of sword and sorcery. If so, it's a mighty beginning and remains at least the most atmospheric of Howard's S&S stories. Kull's adventures.  This story along with "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" and "Kings in the Night" are the only three Kull stories published in Howard's lifetime and the unpublished "By this Axe I Rule" became the template for Conan's debut story "The Phoenix and the Sword". The former is a better story I think, though with little or no magic but fuller characterization for the conspirators.

A lot of Kull's canon didn't find an audience until the 60's in the Lancer paperback which appeared after the enormous success of the Conan series. Under an evocative Roy Krenkel cover these yarns have a real potency and are rife with potential.

Years later, I read them in this Bantam collection which largely reprints the earlier Lancer effort. Ballantine's collection from 2006 is handsome and sturdy and offers up more fragments and drafts. The artwork by Justin Sweet is exquisite and runs throughout the book.

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