The Six Million Dollar Charlton Cover Gallery!

The Six Million Dollar Man was a hot property. So how does it come to pass that Charlton and not Marvel nor DC gets the license to produce comics based on the series. Who knows? Maybe it was a simple question of no one else asked. Comics were in a somewhat tough shape at the time. Charlton created a character which was synthesis of the TV Steve Austin and other elements from the original novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin. 

 They also produced two different versions at the same time, one a regular sized color comic and a black and white magazine version. Neal Adams and his boys at Continuity Associates handled the artwork on the B&W books in the beginning with Adams supplying two pretty great covers for the first two issues. The writers for the series were the sturdy Joe Gill, Nick Cuti and Mike Pellowski. Later in the series, Jack Sparling took the reins and even editor George Wildman contributed. 

Charlton's color comic version began featuring the alluring artwork of Joe Staton, but soon the Continuity Associates had a hand with Neal Adams producing one cover. Joe Staton handled the first four issues before being replaced by Demetrio Gomez. Eventually the Pat Boyette and Fred Himes duo took over the work. Jack Sparling added a cover here and there. Joe Gill and Nick Cuti were the writers for the series. 

The Bionic Woman was a second color series and Jack Sparling handled the artwork on all six issues of the series. Jack Sparling was the artist for the entire series. Joe Gill is credited with the first issue and likely wrote the rest as well. 

Charlton's efforts for the Six Million Dollar Man licenses are fairly typical of what the company had mostly done over its long history, produce comics of immediate interest for niche audiences. These were gems in their day and are even more valuable in the modern day. To my knowledge the material has never been reprinted domestically. 

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Valley Of The Dinosaurs!

In a truly strange coincidence Valley of the Dinosaurs from Hanna-Barbera debuted in 1974, the same year that Sid and Marty Kroft brought out the live-action Land of the Lost. Both of these Saturday morning TV shows featured a family who had accidently been transported to a lost territory in which dinosaurs still thrived. In the case of the Land of the Lost the territory was a pocket universe, but in the case of the animated Valley of the Dinosaurs we had a lost valley similar to that in which Turok Son of Stone was lost in for so many years. One of the most striking aspects of the two shows was the introductions which had the families find their ways into their respective lost worlds by means of a rafting trip which takes them over a treacherous waterfall. One can only wonder if one show was copying the other, but given their production and arrival on the small screen at the same I have to say it was a mere coincidence. 

The family in Valley of the Dinosaurs is the Butlers and is made up of Jim the father, Kim the mother, and teenager Katie and more youthful Gregg. There's also in the Hanna-Barbera tradition an annoying family dog named "Digger". The voice of Race Bannon, Mike Road supplies John's voice and future Rorschach Jackie Earle Haley does the same for the mischievous Gregg. The Butlers live and are helped by a Neanderthal family made up of father Gorok, mother Gara, teenage boy  Lok, and a very young girl named Tana. They too have a pet, a baby Stegosaurus named appropriately Glump. 

The two families work and live together in Gorok's family's cave. For the most part in the stories the two dads team up and the moms work together. That leaves Gregg and Tana to pal around often with the pets while Katie and Lok seem usually to find themselves partnered on adventures. The valley is teeming with dinosaurs as advertised and living alongside these often dangerous creatures is a bit part of what the show is about. But there are just as often acts of nature such as storms, floods, and droughts which need both groups to work in harmony. The Butlers are able build many machines that help them in times of crisis and some of these get pretty elaborate and reminded me frankly of the wild creations of the Professor on Gilligan's Island. 

Watching the shows again after so many years I was taken by the quality of the animation. It's not on par with Jonny Quest but it's not far away. There are a lot of characters to account for in these adventures and that probably takes away from potential quality. But I was struck time and again by the incredibly atmospheric backgrounds which add a great deal of tension to the stories. 

The late 60's and early 70's saw what is commonly referred to as a "Dinosaur Renaissance", a time when interest in the giant beasts form Earth's distant past was front and center in much of popular culture as seen by more than a few films attempting to showcase these ancient times. Valley of the Dinosaurs seems like Land of the Lost to have been inspired by this burgeoning interest. 

Below is a cover gallery for eleven issues of a comic book adaptation from Charlton Comics which ran nearly for two years after the show had been cancelled. The artwork in all the issues is by Fred Himes who was an associate of Pat Boyette, who at that same time was working Korg:70,000 B.C. for Charlton. In all likelihood Boyette had a hand in these stories as well. To read many of these issues take look at this link. 

Valley of the Dinosaurs was a terrific cartoon and a pretty good comic book as well. One of the best to come from the Charlton and Hanna-Barbera partnership. 

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Aparo Of The West!

This very dramatic cover for 1969's Texas Rangers in Action #72 is Aparo's only Old West cover that I know of for the Derby publisher. He only contributes the cover art to this comic though. But that doesn't mean that's his only Old West action.


Aside from his brief but memorable run on Lee Falk's Phantom, the character Aparo spent the most time illustrating at Charlton was Wander, the naive but far from witless visitor from outer space, specifically the planet Sirius 5, who finds himself marooned in the Wild West of the classic American frontier. He gets as his guide and helper a Gabby Hayes wannabe named Jeb Dooley and P.T. Barnum type dubbed Phineas T. Bloat.

Cover by Luis Dominguez
Wander debuted in Cheyenne Kid #66 and remained the sturdy back up in that strip for the next several years, with Aparo drawing many early episodes of the Sergius (Denny O'Neil) O'Shaughnessy-written saga before Fred Himes took over the reins of both script and art eventually when Aparo and O'Neil headed for the bright lights of DC Comics and eventually the shadowy alleys of Gotham City a year or so later.


Here is a very Groovy link to Wander's debut.

Cover by Rocke Mastroserio

And here's another to his second appearance in Cheyenne Kid #67 which wraps up his "origin". This was my first sample of the Wander adventures and one of my very first experiences with the muscular and compelling artwork of Jim Aparo.

Wander drawn by Aparo would appear in these issues of Cheyenne Kid.

Cover by Rocke Mastroserio Cheyenne Kid #68
Cover by Pat Boyette
from Cheyenne Kid #69
Cover by Sal Gentile & Jim Aparo
from Cheyenne Kid #79
Cover by Pat Boyette
from Cheyenne Kid #71
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