Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WORLDS UNKNOWN "Black Destroyer!" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Art by Gil Kane & Frank Giacoia

While exploring an alien world, the crew of the Space Beagle encounter Coeurl, who looks like a Terrestrial panther or lion...with the addition of tentacles!

But this is not a friendly housecat!

It's a primitive, but sentient, being who can not only reason, but deceive...

Trivia: The announced adaptation of Day of the Triffids ended up as the cover-featured tale in the premiere issue of Worlds Unknown's b/w magazine successor, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction...

...under a misleading, but undeniably-kool cover by Kelly Freas!
In fact, an adaptation of Theodore Sturgeon's KillDozer ran in the next issue of Worlds Unknown...

Meanwhile, back with Black Destroyer...

Roy Thomas was concerned that the finale as shown in the adaptation wasn't clear enough, so he included an explanation on the letters page...

Bonus #1: You can read the complete original short story HERE.
Feel free to compare and contrast!
Bonus #2: here are the illustrations from the original pulp magazine, so you can see how closely Dan Adkins and Jim Mooney kept to the pulp magazine "feel" of the tale!

"Black Destroyer" was later incorporated with later short stories about the exploratory vessel Space Beagle into the novel Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is a tribute to Charles Darwin's scientific exploratory ship, "The Beagle".

BTW, Van Vogt sued 20th Century Fox over the 1979 movie Alien, claiming that it ripped off elements of "Black Destroyer" and "Discord in Scarlet", both of which were adapted into Voyage of the Space Beagle.

Fox settled out of court.

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Voyage of the Space Beagle

(which includes "Black Destroyer")

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Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WORLDS UNKNOWN "Black Destroyer!" Part 1

A 1930s pulp story adapted into comic form in the 1970s...

...and a clear inspiration for aspects of movie and tv science fiction ranging from Forbidden Planet and Alien to Star Trek and Space: 1999 (among others)!

Will Coeurl deceive the crew and return with them to Earth?

Or will he simply kill the humans and commandeer the ship?

Find out in the conclusion next Wednesday, plus read some kool background info about the comic adaptation!

This tale from issue 5 (1974) of Marvel's short-lived science fiction anthology Worlds Unknown was adapted by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Dan Adkins & Jim Mooney.

It's based on "Black Destroyer", A E Van Vogt's first published story, which appeared as the cover story (a rare honor for a writer's premiere tale) in Astounding Science Fiction (July 1939).
It was later expanded in Vogt's novel Voyage of the Space Beagle, which continued the voyages of the starship and crew!

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Voyage of the Space Beagle
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Reading Room I'LL BE DAMNED "Nest Egg"

Here's a sci-fi strip meant for Major Publications' Web of Horror #4...

...but, since that magazine ended with #3, it found a home in Mark Feldman's I'll be Damned #2, a year later!

Note the word balloon coming out of the big black hole in the title lettering where a photostat of "Webster" (the monstrous spider host of Web of Horror) would have been pasted-up.

Instead it's a word balloon coming out of a literal black hole!

Written by Alan Simons, penciled by Steve Hickman, inked by Robert L Kline (1-3) & Dan Adkins (4-6), this never-reprinted tale is an example of the high-quality material in fanzines of the late 1960s-early 1970s, much of which (sadly) has never been seen since the mags were limited to mail order and comics convention sales!

(There were no comics shops, and no such thing as the internet at that time...hard to conceive, I know!)

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Sense of Wonder

My Life in Comic Fandom

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder BRAK THE BARBARIAN "Spell of the Dragon!"

In the Bronze Age, Marvel adapted every barbarian/sword and sorcery character they could get...

...often giving the original writers (if they were alive) the chance to script the series themselves!

Author John Jakes commented...

I long ago admitted in print that I created Brak because there were simply no more Conan stories from Robert E. Howard, whose work I admired.

In my adolescent years I wrote – on notebook paper – further adventures of Batman and Superman because I enjoyed them but there weren’t enough of them in comic books to satisfy me. Somehow the other sword and sorcery strong men – Lin Carter’s, Michael Moorcock’s et al. – while deserving of praise in their own right, didn’t do it for me. I needed more Howard.
I invented Brak.

There were only three Brak comic tales, this one plotted and laid out by Dan Adkins and scripted by Jakes himself along with penciling by Val Mayerik and inking by Joe Sinnott.
(It seems to be an original tale, not an adaptation.)
Then a two-part adaptation of the (chronologically) first Brak tale, "The Unspeakable Shrine" by Jakes, Doug Moench, and Steve Gan.
Then...nothing!
No more new comics tales!
No reprints!
Next week, we're presenting an illustrated text feature from Savage Tales featuring background info about the character and author, John Jakes!
After that, the complete, unseen for decades two-part comic story!
Don't miss them!

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The (Complete) Adventures of Brak the Barbarian

Volume One & Volume Two

(includes a never-before-published conclusion to the series!)