The Secret Origin Of Skull Island!

Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland have spent two decades now revising and expanding the long back history of Skull Island, that isolated forgotten little island where Carl Denham and company chanced upon the mighty King Kong. In the movie and resulting novelization we only know Skull Island in the modern world, when the natives on the island have become a small-minded society of relatively few individuals seeking to survive in a nightmarish environment for humans unlike any on the planet. 

But the question always lingers for the viewer or reader about how this culture came to be on this impossible island. In the books King Kong Skull Island Exodus and King Kong Skull Island The Wall we find out.

The two paperbacks are reprints of King Kong of Skull Island, a larger hardback book DeVito and company created with crowdfunding sources. This book is now a rarity, but the two paperbacks are readily available even as I scribble these words. But what is the story? Well without spoiling the rather exciting details let me expound a few moments. 

The first volume begins with a trim novel version of the story first told in 2004 in Kong King of Skull Island. That story took the novel presented and wrapped it in some additional material detailing aspects of Skull Island in the times after King Kong had been removed. The core novel like its predecessor introduces us to Carl Denham's son Vincent who in 1957 begins a trek back to Skull Island with Jack Driscoll's assistance to find out just what happened. King Kong has melted into myth and urban and legend and Carl Denham has been missing for over two decades. Vincent needs answers and he finds them thanks to a very old woman called the "Storyteller" who fills him in. 

In the new material here (half the first volume and all of the second) we learn even more about the history of the people of Skull Island who call themselves the Tagatu. We learn that long ago the Tagatu was a mighty culture akin to that in Egypt in potential power, but which was all but wiped out when a mighty volcano demolished their valley. These folks had wise forward-looking leaders who prepared, and a great voyage was undertaken by the survivors to a little place called Skull Island. The Tagatu think they can master this terrifying territory because of their mastery of organic information which gives them protections against most animals and the fact that their culture works in harmony with giant intelligent ape-like creatures called Kongs. With the power of the Kongs they feel confident they can hold their own against any saurian threat. They learn the threat is much more ghastly than they imagined.

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The All-New Wild Adventures Of Kong!

Skull Island is story written by Will Murray and illustrated by Joe DeVito which brings together two of the great icons of pop culture from the 1930's. What we end up with is in fact a "secret origin" for Doc Savage himself.

The story begins at the end. Moments after King Kong plummeted from the top of the Empire State Building to his doom, the aides of Doc Savage are on the spot and soon enough Doc himself arrives to make the dramatic announcement that he is familiar with the "Eighth Wonder of the World" already. In fact he says he owes his life to Kong. This cryptic comment is left unexplained as Doc and his men make arrangements to transport the body of Kong out of Manhattan and return it to Skull Island. It's at this juncture that Doc begins to tell the story to his trusted aides of how he and his father Clark Savage Sr. once traveled to Skull Island in search of his grandfather Stormalong Savage. 

Now Doc's men are more able to believe the outrageous claims made by Doc about ultimately finding Skull Island and the creatures there, because the events chronicled in King Kong happened about the same time that Doc and his men began their careers and they had had a few adventures together already including a visit to "Thunder Island" which was populated by dinosaurs of all sorts. Nonetheless, the story Doc relates is a fantastic tale of his own relative youth, a time when as a man of nearly twenty-one he was contacted by his father and the two take a crew of Mayans and a clipper ship named "The Orion", the very ship Doc was born on, to search for his missing Grandfather, a famous sailor whose ship has recently been sighted adrift.

The story of Doc Savage's early mission which finds him on Skull Island can best be understood if one has already read Joe DeVito's and Brad Strickland's book Kong, King of Skull Island which created a rich back story for the island and for Kong himself. It is this Skull Island and not just the one revealed in the RKO classic which is the setting here for Doc's adventure. At least one character is common to both tales, and the story is told in such a way that nothing previously revealed seems to be unraveled. This intertwining of the sagas of Doc and Kong seems to fit well.

I found Will Murray's story compelling, and it pushes you along to find out what will happen next as a good adventure tale ought. The story is not a short one by any means. I'd reckon it's twice as long as a typical Doc adventure, and it's not the seasoned Doc we are familiar with. We get glimpses and to some extent explanations for some of Doc's more curious aspects. His unusual trilling is explained and in fact becomes a significant plot point as does the fact that the Savage family members have golden eyes. We get to see an early prototype of Doc's all-purpose gun, the Super-Firer. And we get to understand why Doc is hesitant to rely on guns by and large as an adventurer.

Tarzan of the Apes is mentioned a few times during the story and in fact Murray even adopts ERB's technique of switching narrators between chapters for certain sections. (More on the Ape Man in a few paragraphs.) This is certainly a Doc who is very comfortable in the trees of the jungle, something we've seen many times in his classic adventures. Interestingly Sherlock Holmes comes up a lot too, and in one place Doc and his Dad have a very entertaining exchange of quotes from Doyle's great detective.

I won't say too much more to avoid spoiling some really sweet moments and some true surprises, but I will suggest that if anyone wanted to read a Doc Savage novel in which he unleashes hell on his enemies this is the one. This is a blood and thunder Doc who is in a life and death struggle and who fresh from the rigors of World War I seems unafraid of bloodshed. There's a lot of mayhem in this book.

This is a story any Doc fan will love. Murray put his name on this one as opposed to the classic "Kenneth Robeson" nom deplume because it travels behind the scenes more and certainly there are details some Doc fans might take issue with. But for this reader, I found this peek into the vivid history of Doc "Don't-Call-Me-Clark" Savage fascinating, and I suspect most others will too.

I give this one the highest recommendation. And now the sequel. 

In King Kong Vs. Tarzan by Will Murray from Altus Books we get a reprise of sorts of the events of the classic 1933 movie King Kong. What we have here is a story which answers the long-standing question which many who see the movie will think of later as they reflect on it, how the heck did they get that big ape to New York City anyway. The movie effectively short circuits all those complications by jetting forward in time to after the transport to the moment when King Kong will make his debut before the American public. This novel answers that question and some of it is just as tedious as you might expect.

Just like the Doc Savage story which preceded it, the story operates in the same fictional universe fleshed out by Joe DeVito in his prequel to the original King Kong story Kong: King of Skull Island where we get a back story of sorts for Kong and the natives who live alongside him and the dinosaurs across the great wall. We see as the ancient woman dubbed the "Storyteller" who tends to Kong's legend and reality and who accompanies the The Wanderer and crew as they try to take the great beast across the vast oceans. She comes up with some herbs which sedate the great ape, and we learn more than we need about the care and feeding of a monster primate. We follow the ship as they try to navigate the oceans, taking care to avoid storms and the authorities who might object to transporting such a monster to foreign lands.

The Wanderer eventually finds a safe harbor off the coast of Africa and of course Kong escapes into the jungle. Enter Tarzan of the Apes, a mythic figure that some have heard of and as we learn Denham has encountered. We see Kong as the thirty-foot monster tramples across the wilderness terrorizing the prey he encounters. We eventually meet Tarzan (it takes a really long time) who takes steps to see to it that the "King" of Skull Island is neutralized as a threat. The best way to approach this novel is to see it as two pulps put together. The first deals at length with the transport of Kong and the second Kong's misadventures in Africa. Both are obviously linked and part of the same overarching narrative, but each part has a definite focus.

This is Will Murray's second King Kong novel in recent years. The first Doc Savage: Skull Island pitted Kong against a young Clark Savage Jr. and predated the events of the classic film and the novel in which Kong meets up with the Ape-man. And to be frank this is the best writing from Murray I've seen in a while. This novel for such a pulp adventure, but it has enough going on eventually to justify that length. I was eager to see how they solved all the issues, even though we all know how the status quo must be reestablished before the novel's end. That would seem to be an insurmountable problem, but it proves not to be in this instance. Here is a link to an interview with Murray about the project.

Both of these books are recommended for a King Kong fan. 

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Kong Goes Boom!

Kong of Skull Island is a series of comics from Boom Studios. They are reasonably well crafted and certainly a big improvement over a similar series of stories from Markosia Comics. They purport to tell the "secret origin" of King Kong or more properly his ancestors. In the opening of this tale, we encounter two tribes which live apart but appear to have once been the same people. One group has been ascendant for some generations at the cost of the other. Both sides of this equation train for battle and sport giant apes called "Kong". These beasts were bred using techniques which are pretty advanced and specific to these tribes who eventually call themselves the Tagu-Atu.

The story we follow (and truth told it's difficult to keep up with) concerns a young and beautiful trainer of a Kong who is secretly married to a prince of the other tribe. When a volcano erupts there is immediate need to find a safe land and the ascendant tribe feels it necessary to use the ships which the weaker tribe has built.

It's a complicated affair but while romance and political intrigue rumbles along, the two tribes (or more properly the survivors of the two tribes) seek shelter on another island known as "Skull Island" for the particular rock formation which dominates its landscape. They find on this island a great deal of danger in the form of dinosaurs of all sorts, some quite intelligent.

The Kongs are crucial to keep the people safe as they simultaneously build a fortification and fight against the marauding dinosaurs. All the while the a murder puts all the attempts to create one people at risk and personal agendas get in the way of the greater good.

All this rigamarole is probably what I'm supposed to care about, but despite the clear craftsmanship by artist Carols Magnos I have such a difficult time telling the people apart that half the time I'm confused who is in any given scene. I hate to say it this way, but they all look alike and the use of a pretty restrained color pallet doesn't help things at all. Even the Kongs look alike and only when a name is used can I tell one from another and even not then really.

It's weird to compliment the appearance of this series and the same time complain about the storytelling but that's where I'm at. This was supposed to be a six-issue limited series but was changed to an ongoing and ended with twelve issues. 

The artwork is lush and in places quite stunning, doing a decent job of moving between human scale and monster scale. But as I've said, once again the character designs are so muddled that keeping track of individuals is downright difficult to do. 

I do like where this story ends up and it does a dandy job of getting the pieces into position as it is based on Joe DeVito's more recent origin of King Kong. 

These are not bad comics by any means but a little confusing and that's a shame. But they have no apologies to issue regarding the covers for all twelve issues which are uniformly outstanding. 

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Kong The King Of Skull Island!

Joe DeVito's and Brad Strickland's sequel/prequel to the classic 1933 smash monster flick King Kong is always diverting and sometimes compelling reading. The artwork by Joe Devito is fantastic, lush and at times bristling with energy and drama. The story of Kong - King of Skull Island concerns Vincent Denham, the son of the great showman who tragically brought King Kong to New York. The year of the story is 1957, though the tales which weave together to form this narrative fall across many more years than that.


We are presented with essentially two narratives which become three and interlace through the saga. Vincent is a paleontologist who finds a map to Skull Island and gets Jack Driscoll, who operates a small fleet of ships, to take him to Skull Island to perhaps find his father Carl Denham who disappeared decades earlier while transporting the body of King Kong back home. The two quickly get separated at the island and we follow Driscoll as he makes several discoveries about the nature of the island, the natives who live there, and the ultimate secret of the Kongs. Simultaneously Vincent is told a grand epic saga by an old woman named properly enough "Storyteller" and she reveals how Kong came to be the last of his kind and why it is exactly the natives sacrifice to him in such a seemingly savage manner. We also learn why Kong reacts to Ann Darrow in the way he does. There are lots of secrets and even a few pirates before it's all said and done.

Lots of grand elements, but somehow this tale never fuses completely for me as I read it. I suspect the creators were trying to accomplish just a smidge too much making the whole affair topple a bit as it unfolded. I craved to see more of Driscoll's exploration and some of the ancient saga related by the Storyteller seemed to go on at greater length than completely necessary. The writers try to turn a twist on the nature of the dinosaurs who populate the island, but I'm not quite sure this works as it was supposed to.

And finally, there is a treatment of the original characters which alas seems too sympathetic and not especially true to their personalities. Driscoll seems fine, but Carl Denham who we see briefly doesn't ring true. Certainly, the King Kong disaster would change someone, but the story didn't really deliver on that front for me.

I've read the Markosia Comics adaptations of this story, but to be brutally honest, those were so poorly crafted that the story was downright difficult to decipher. Reading the novel again and then jumping right onto the comic adaptation made it easier the second time around, but still not ideal. I want to be charitable to the creators of these comics, but it's difficult and the work seems to get less polished and more confused as the series rumbles along, perhaps owing to deadline issue.  Below are the covers for this run, which I cannot really recommend. 

The comic series was collected. As for the original Devito and Strickland novel itself, all King Kong fans should seek this out. It's an imperfect sequel to what might well be the perfect monster-adventure film, but it's still entertaining.

There's a second comic book series derived from the DeVito revisionist work, but more on that later today. 

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The Myth Of Kong!

King Kong is a myth. Imagined by Merian C. Cooper and fashioned with the help of a writers such as Edgar Wallace, Ruth Rose, James Creelman, and Delos Lovelace. But King Kong was also created by Willis O'Brien, a master of stop-motion filmmaking who took a model and turned it into a legend with the help of talented folks like Marcel Delgado. I daresay it's impossible to say that King Kong is the creation of any one person, but the result of the merging of the imaginations and talents of many persons. He is a whole greater the sum of his parts. 

Over the decades countless others have added to the myth with new versions of the mighty beast from Ishiro Honda, John Guillerman, Peter Jackson, and others. He's been rendered as a Saturday morning cartoon, and later cartoons as well, and weirdly even for an animated musical. There have been countless comic books from many publishers. And the story has been analyzed by film critics and literary critics and academics. So, I put forth that no two people on the planet understand King Kong in quite the same way. 

I first encountered the mighty ape of Skull Island in the Gold Key comic book adaptation. Then I saw the Saturday morning cartoon show. Then found the novel and only later was I able to finally see the movie on television. 

And then I was watching an edited version which had been cut for reasons of violence and racial tolerance. It was only years later that I saw the full film after it was reconstituted. And by that time, we had remakes and sequels to remakes and parodies in places like MAD magazine, Not Brand Echh, and elsewhere. The King Kong of my imagination as has much "Ping Pong" and "King Konk" in its fabric as anything from the films. 

So, when someone like Joe DeVito comes along and wants to tinker with the King Kong mythology, I'm all ears. I'll be delving into the various books which have developed what I've dubbed the "Devitoverse". In these various tomes the story of Kong is expanded, and details are added which are intended to expand the world of Kong and of Skull Island and explain some aspects of the original story which are glossed over by the original creators. In their retelling of the original story, we get added scenes aboard the ship which expand the characters and new characters are brought into the yarn which answer the questions about how the Denham expedition was able to manage and transport Kong. 

Above are the books by DeVito and Will Murray which tell the untold saga of Kong. In one we return to Skull Island in 1957 and learn what became of Kong and of Carl Denham and others in the original cast. In the two books by Murray, we see how King Kong came to be in Africa and met a certain Lord of the Jungle as he was being transported to New York City to begin with and how Doc Savage already was familiar with the great beast after his fall from the Empire State Building and what he did then. 

This is one retelling of the Kong myth. There are countless more, but idulge with me this week as we visit the "DeVitoverse" and learn the origins of King Kong. 

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Februarius!

This month will spend a lot of time visiting some of the most fascinating territories in popular literature. We will be spending quite a bit of time on Skull Island, the remote and time-lost land where the "Eighth Wonder of the World" the mighty King Kong ruled with savage violence. In addition to other aspects, I'll focus on the additions made to the sprawling Kong saga by Joe DeVito and his co-writer Brad Strickland. These two operating from the base of the Lovelace novelization which rights are owned by Merrian Cooper's estate rewrote the original story and then proceeded to give us both a sequel and a prequel. That's been adapted and revised more than a few times over the last twenty years. I want to dig into these as well as other aspects of the first great giant monster. You only think you know what Skull Island was all about until you enter the "DeVitoverse". 

Then we switch from Skull Island to the Skull Cave as it's into the Deep Woods of Lee Falk's Ghost Who Walks. Expect the Phantom to stay with us both in comic book and novel formats. This month will see a peek at the comic when King Features took it over as well as when Charlton Comics picked up the venerable property.  

My strange and wonderful trip through the strange and wonderful land of OZ continues as well. I'm long overdue to read these charming classics from the beginning of the previous century. Dorothy Gale returns to OZ and meets the newly crowned Ozma of OZ. 

The Dojo will continue to tour the fascinating boroughs of Astro City, the remarkable comics world in which we meet new superheroes as well as those folks around them as understood by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross. The MetroBook reprints are great ways to revisit these lush and highly personal stories. 

Then it's on to Metropolis U.S.A., that greatest imaginary American city in comics protected by the "Man of Steel". There's some action planned for later in the month for the "Son of Krypton". I've a hoard of Superman collections around here and it is high time I dug into some of them. 

All that and lots of other oddball places and Bronson Canyon as well. February is a short month, but a busy one all the same. You might think you cannot come back and see but you must. 

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