The Sound Of Thun'da!

Thun'da King of the Congo #1 has the distinction of apparently being the only full-length comic book illustrated by Frank Frazetta. He is credited with creating Thun'da though the scripts are by Gardner Fox. Frazetta left the comic after a single issue because editorial demanded he move Thun'da from a savage "Lost World" filled with prehistoric beasts to the relatively mundane jungle of the then modern Congo. Instead of a Burroughsian fantasy hero in the mold of David Innes, they wanted yet another Tarzan knock-off. The debut cover is a classic. 

They got what they wanted in subsequent five issues illustrated by reliable comics journeyman Bob Powell. 

Thun'da King of the Congo even went on to become a movie serial starring Buster Crabbe. But there was this one issue by Frazetta. 

The first story by writer Gardner Fox and artist Frazetta is titled "King of the Lost Lands", and it tells of how during WWII Roger Drum an aviator crashes his supply plane inside the mysterious regions of Africa. 

(Thun'da Model Sheet)

He finds a "lost world" filled with beast men and dinosaurs. He battles furiously to survive but eventually goes native and is soon dubbed "Thun'da" by the Valley People and the beautiful Phra. Presumably the name is a result of the boom his gun made as he fired his last bullets to kill a giant snake. This is a rugged story told at a rapid clip and features some fantastic Frazetta imagery. To read "King of the Lost Lands" go here. 

Here are the three remaining Frazetta Thun'da stories with links so you can read the entire thing. 

The second story is titled "The Monsters from the Mists!" and this yarn finds Thun'da fighting monkeymen who have tamed shaggy mammoths. Protecting the lovely Phra Thun'da battles against the apemen, killing thier leader and escaping their lair to lead a counterattack using fire against the enemy by uniting the tribes of the valley. To enjoy "The Monsters from the Mists" check out this link. 

The third story titled "When the Earth Shook" pits Thun'da and Phra alongside a sabretooth tiger named Sabre. Thun'da killed its parent and raises the beast as his companion. An earthquake opens the lost land up and a white hunter and his black bearers find their way into the valley. They take Thun'da captive and threaten him to help them find gold. But he escapes, raises the natives and fights back. The outsiders try to take their gold, but another earthquake buries them and closes off the lost world.  To read "When the Earth Shook" visit this link. 

The fourth and final story "Gods of the Jungle" finds Thun'da operating in the Congo as yet another jungle hero. He battles against natives and white hunters, particularly two Soviet spies who use native superstition to build up a false monster-god. Thun'da reveals the deception and puts down this threat of the agitated and decived natives and the spies are turned over to the authorities. The last scene shows Thun'da, Phra and Sabre heading out into the veldt. To read "Gods of the Jungle" go here. 

(Dave Stevens Bettie Page cover evokes the Frazetta classic.)

(Austrian Reprint 1983)

(Dark Horse Reprint 2010)

(Fantagraphics Books Reprint 1987)

Outstanding stuff. It's a pity Frazetta couldn't do more and it's a pity his vision was snuffed out. I've read some of the Powell Thun'da stories in an AC reprint and they are fine but predictable and bland. Frazetta's Thun'da is dynamic and grim, if not always logical. Like the best of ERB, the Thun'da stories by Frazetta and Fox don't always makes complete sense, but they always carry you away.

In 2012 Dynamite Comics got their mitts on Thun'da and attempted to retell the story. We meet Thun'd all over again, this time he's a conflicted man with an unsavory past and he's plunked down into a world brimming with dinosaurs. The covers are by Jae Lee and they are handsome enough, with issue three having some real power. The series ran for five issues and was collected along with a complete reprint of the Frazetta classic. 

These subsequent Thun'da tales lack the potency of the Frazetta classics, but we already knew that. I imagine there might be Thun'da stories out there I'm ignorant of. Please let me know. 

More Frazetta tomorrow. 

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Den - Children Of Fire!

Richard Corben sure doesn't make it easy. The third installment of Den from Dark Horse is titled Children of Fire and as best I can make out we are following the arrival to Neverwhere (called "Dremurth" in this tale) of the very first Den. His female nemesis in the earlier stories is also there, but this time she is something of a guardian for him because he spends the majority of this story in an emaciated form. There is also an egg, one among many, but the only one to survive which to be kept safe. Our understanding of the action is not helped at all by the fact the newly-arrived aliens speak their own gibberish for a very long time into the story. (Apparently this is a letter-replacement code which I haven't yet deciphered.)

An essay which appears in the volume suggests that Corben is switching up the presentations of gender which to no small degree have defined Den. The woman is now the powerful and strong one, while the man is largely helpless through the narrative. Frankly I was bewildered for much of the first reading. 

My favorite character is Zomuk who serves Lord Zeg, an old sorcerer. It is on the island where they reside that the aliens first arrive. Zomuk is a dolt with great power and an overriding compulsion to eat things, things which are often people. We also have a couple of greedy stupid pirates thrown into the mix. 

I cannot really say I enjoyed Children of Fire, bit I can say without doubt that I am intrigued by it, and I want to know more. I finished it and immediately wanted to read it again. That's not bad at all. 

The three covers above were also included in the package, and I can only assume they reprint the original three-part saga as part of the longer 1988 series. 

Aside from some informative essays by Jose Villarrubia and the fascinating letters pages for the original comics with a , we are treated to Den's first appearance. This an attempt to represent the story from Grim Wit #2 as it was done originally and not seen as part of the longer Den saga which we saw in volume one. Thoroughly enjoyed it and the fanciful cover above which has no direct connection to the story.  

Next week I take a look at Corben's final project, a piece called Murky World. 

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Modern Prometheus In Pen And Ink!

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most influential novels in history. It's impact on culture is enormous generating plays and adaptations almost from the very beginning in the 19th Century. In more modern times adapting the story to film has been almost a requisite. There are countless film adaptations of the story from Edison's early attempt in the teens to the iconic Universal version in 1931 which along with its sequels and imitators catapulted the story into myth. I've read the novel a half dozen times at least and taught it in school many times as well. It's a lush story of one man's startling obsession to conquer death by bringing the reassembled remains of many dead back to some sort of shambolic existence. It is the story of a man's obsession to conquer nature and the cancel even the thought of God from the equation of man's time on this planet and beyond. The novel is a cornerstone of both science fiction and horror and more besides. And it was the lifelong love of another artist, a chap named Berni Wrightson. 

As an artist who was often called on to illustrate horror tales, Wrightson did many takes on the Frankenstein myth such as "The Patchwork Man" in Swamp Thing and "The Muck Monster" for Eerie Magazine.  But it's here, illustrating the original Shelley narrative that we see how much he is ideal for the work. It was a true of passion, something he worked on between paying jobs for Marvel and DC and others. It took seven years to create the artwork which would serve to draw the reader into the world of Frankenstein more completely. As can be seen readily Berni lavished time and effort into each of the carefully rendered pages, each capturing a single moment from the novel. Reading the novel again for the first time in several years I was struck by the venal nature of Frankenstein, his absolute self-absorption is stunning but alas exceedingly modern. If anything Wrightson elevates him to a more heroic status with his idealized presentations. 

The art was first published alongside the text by Marvel in one of their oversized graphic novels. I missed out back then and had long wanted to behold this material, to hold it in my hand. Dark Horse at long last gave me that chance when they published the book again. 

The art itself is magnificent and as it turns out stunningly expensive. The original of the image above (seen in its entirety below) sold recently for a cool million dollars. 

Below are just a few of the magnificent images which Wrightson produced for his favorite work of literature. He comes close to making it mine too. 

Tomorrow something completely different. 

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Man With The Screaming Bruce!

I'll say it up front -- the comic book is better than the movie. I'm a big Bruce Campbell fan (as this week's posts demonstrate) but as much as I want to like his independent project movie The Man with the Screaming Brain, I have to confess it fails in a number of respects. It's not the acting, which is top drawer or the very worst next to it. It's not the story, which is winner, filled with twists and turns and even a bit more. There are even scenes I like a whole bunch such as the delirious race across the town by the titluar "man with the screaming brain" and the raft of Soviet statuary which in some reflects the thematic points. But what the movie lacks, and it took the comic to show me, is atmosphere. Simply put this is a classic Frankenstein-inspired story which needed the dark of night to sell its wares and all of the story as seen on small screen is in bright unrelenting and unrepentant sunlight. 

I know that Bruce and company had to make the movie on a shoestring and had to go to Bulgaria to make that happen. So I'm not a hater of the efforts it took to put this story on the screen at long last. Apparently Campbell and his partner David Goodman had been trying to make this movie for nearly twenty years before they were able at long last get it done for the Sci-Fi Channel back in the early part of this century. This is a story which grew out of the same heady brew that birthed Evil Dead II and Re-Animator, both movies with bigger budgets and scuds of atmosphere. If the movie had been made for about the same money as those, it might well have shined (or better "gloomed") in its own singular hideous way. 

But alas bereft of enough cash, the outing falls short despite the strong acting efforts of Campbell and company. The special effects are simply not special enough to convince even for a moment and the robot they ended up with looks more like a leftover from a Devo video. The sets were scattered and reminded of the loathsome efforts of a Jerry Warren flick. (It hurts me to say that given how much I admire Bruce and what he tries to deliver.) 

I suspect that Campbell and Goodman just had to offload this project from their psyches and move on, and are happy enough with that. But even in the introduction to the comic book adaptation by artists Rick Remender and Hilary Barta working from the shooting script, Goodman admits and says Bruce agrees that the comics gets it righter. I wish it weren't so, but then at least the movie triggered a really entertaining comic book. Get it! Get the movie too, because even less than stellar Bruce is pretty diverting.

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Up From The Apes And Right Back Down Again!

Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book is actually quite an important tome in the now rather long history of comics. It's the first original collection of comic material in book form, a not insignificant accomplishment in a field overripe with such volumes today. The book came about when MAD's publisher pulled reprints of the popular magazine from Ballantine which had done the first five volumes and switched over to Signet. Ballantine was casting about for replacements and Kurtzman, freshly broken from MAD saw an opportunity. Sadly the book didn't sell as it should have done to result in sequels, but as a singular vision of what a truly evocative artist can achieve.

There are a mere four stories in the volume. A spoof of the TV western Gunsmoke, a lampoon of the detective show Peter Gunn, a potent indictment of the violent South, and a searing presentation of what the morality of ad executives is really like which introduces the Kurtzman character Goodman Beaver. I don't find the book funny in a way which made me laugh, but the satire was stinging and the gags were resonant with the source material. 

Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book ultimately was not a financial success, but it was a nifty window into the mind of one of the purest cartoonist the field has produced. Like Action Comics #1 and Fantastic Four #1, this "comic book" was influential and important despite inherent flaws in its construction.

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Not The Trump You're Thinking Of!

Most magazines that flame out after only two issues would likely not be all that memorable or significant. That's not the case with Harvey Kurtzman's Trump, a magazine he produced briefly for Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. After his split from William Gaines Jr. and MAD magazine, Kurtzman was casting about for his next gig and already had a scheme worked up with Hefner to produce a satire magazine. To that end he brought with him several of the original MAD talents and for two dazzling installments they made a go of it.

But for complicated reasons, some having to do with the compulsive personalities of both Kurtzman and Hefner and some having to do with the simple rigors of publishing finance, the book only lasted for two issues. Kurtzman and his gang went on to other gigs, and of course Hefner's success is well documented. But Trump was a failure, at least financially.

The intention with Trump was to repeat the wild satirical energy of MAD but in a slick magazine format. The features in the debut are a weird blend of what one might've discovered in a typical issue of MAD along with somewhat more visually exotic devices using photographs. There's a wacky fold-out in this first issue, which spoofs the infamous fold-outs of the sister magazine Playboy. Oddly Alfred E. Neuman makes a cameo in this feature. The little figure who adorns the cover is called "The Knave" and many suggest this spare cover style, an apparent attempt to separate the magazine from its inspiration MAD is one reason the magazine failed to find an audience. That would be true if if in fact the magazine had not sold well, but it did.

The second issue has a cover which is even less visually robust than the first one, almost a negative companion. It was not the plan for there to be only two issues, there was a third in production when the cancellation of the mag came abruptly and from Hefner himself to a gobsmacked Kurtzman. Stories vary, some suggest it was merely financial hijinks which doomed Trump, but Hefner himself later indicated he was unhappy with the magazine. Whatever the case, he was not especially unhappy with Kurtzman, as he hired him along with Will Elder to draw Little Annie Fannie for a few decades, some years after Trump folded.

Having looked at the first two issues of this magazine, thanks to the great Dark Horse reprint tome which is filled with explanatory notes by Denis Kitchen, I can see what Kurtzman wanted to create. He'd keep trying, but the magazine of his dreams wouldn't come along for a few more decades and it would be by other folks inspired by MAD no doubt, but younger men and they'd call it The National Lampoon.

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