Learning of his father's death due to a rare disease, adventurer/scientist Doc Savage returns to his headquarters in New York City, where he is greeted by his five associates, each an expert in a different science or discipline.
Suspecting foul play, they are about to read the elder Savage's personal papers to ascertain clues, when an assassination attempt is made on Doc.
The group (except for lawyer Ham, sent on another assignment) now goes in pursuit of the gunman...
...and it's going to be tasty, indeed!
Perhaps the onlyRed Sonja-related comic to never be reprinted after its' initial publication, the adaptation of the 1985 movie was presented in two formats...
a magazine-sized Marvel Super Special, and a two-issue comic book-format mini-series.
As usual, we'll be presenting elements from both versions in our usual serialized format starting on Thanksgiving Day and running daily through Sunday through two RetroBlogs:Secret Sanctum of Captain Video and Heroines! Don't Miss Them! Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics! Visit Amazon and Order...
There have been numerous comic adaptations of Charles Dickens' Christmas ghost story...
...but this never-reprinted one from (believe it or not) Marvel Comics, has the distinction of being illustrated by more artists than any other version!
Credited
to "Diverse Hands", the art styles I recognize include Bob Hall, Frank
Giacoia, Frank Springer, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin, Carmine Infantino,
Steve Leialoha, John Romita Sr, Al Milgrom,
Mike Esposito, and probably anybody who wandered into the Bullpen while
this book was in production!
Trivia:
This was the final title in the Marvel Classics Comics line which had started out as color reprints of the early '70s b/w Pendulum Press"comic adaptations of classic stories" series. After a dozen issues, Marvel began doing their own adaptations, continuing for another two dozen issues.
Scripter
Doug Moench was no newcomer to adapting prose to comics having worked
on comics versions of literary properties including Doc Savage, The Shadow, James Bond, and Fu Manchu!
Colorist Francoise Mouly later became the art editor of The New Yorker, co-creator of the legendary comic anthology Raw, and is currently the publisher/editorial director of Toon Books, an imprint of Candlewick Press. She is the creative partner (and spouse) of Art Spiegelman.
He's the Jolly Old Elf in a red suit!
They are BIG Green Men from Mars with an even BIGGER robot!
Before Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, they were the ingredients for the weirdest Christmas movie ever!
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was filmed in 1964 in that bastion of the cinema, Long Island (in an unused aircraft hangar).
Starring
a host of tv and b-movie actors including handsome-but-stiff Leonard
Hicks as the Martian Leader (and kids' father) Kimar, 60s
villain/voiceover artist Vincent Beck (who did lots of work for Irwin
Allen's sci-fi shows) as the film's mustache-twirling villain, Voldar,
and John Call as a pretty damn convincing Santa Claus, the flick is
touted as the debut of future talentless chantuse Pia Zadora as Martian
Kid Girmar. Thankfully, she has rather limited screen time.
As an example of low-budget filmmaking, it's actually pretty effective.
Every penny (what few of them they had) is up on the screen.
They make good use of stock footage (from Dr. Strangelove, no less).
And
the use of then-popular Wham-O Air Blaster toy guns as the Martian
weapons was either a stroke of marketing genius or clever use of limited
funds. Either way, sales of the guns shot thru the roof after the film
hit the kiddie matinee circuit!
If you're between 3-9 years old, the flick's a lot of fun.
If you're between 10 and whatever the local drinking age is, it'll drive you nuts, especially the theme song!
If
you're over the local drinking age, do so before watching! It's
available on a host of public domain dvds as well as one of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 snarkfests.
And you just knew we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ were going to include Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in ourCool Christmas collection on stuff including kid and adult sweatshirts and hoodies, mugs and coasters, tree ornaments, and greeting cards!
BTW:
The image above is from the comic book tie-in, which you can read in three parts...
There was also a single of the
theme, a spoken-word LP album of the movie's dialogue, and a
novelization!
Now I can't get that damn theme our of my head..."Hoo-ray for Santy Claus..." AARRRGGGHHH!
An early Christmas gift from us to you:
The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of the film (don't tell Dr Forrester)...
...Steven Spielberg announced he wanted to adapt DC's Blackhawk...into a feature film!
Problem was that DC wasn't currently publishing a Blackhawk comic!
In fact, the series had been cancelled (for the second time) in 1977!
DC not only revived the series in 1982...
...re-setting it back in the 1940s, but they also commissioned a prose novel based on the comic!
Bookstore managers didn't put the novel with other comics adaptations!
(Both DC and Marvel were doing prose series in the late 1970s-early 1980s)
Instead, the book was racked with the military/war fiction titles, where it sat...and sat...and sat...making it a pricy HTF collectible today!
The comic, despite not being promoted by DC, actually sold well enough to stave off cancellation until 273 in 1984, by which time, Spielberg was already working on other projects!
It was the last time the original group appeared intact in comics.
Since Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1984, there have been various revamps and reboots of the Blackhawk concept, none of which would, I think, appeal to Spielberg.
In 1992, Topps Comics adapted the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula...
...illustrated by the movie's production illustrator and noted comic artist Mike (Hellboy) Mignola!
Both the movie and the adaptation, perhaps the most faithful version of a movie ever, were hits!
With vampires in general a hot commodity in movies, tv, novels, and comics, Topps quickly followed-up with several projects including...
...Dracula: Vlad the Impaler...
...The Frankenstein-Dracula War
(Note: Topps had also adapted the movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)...
and Dracula vs Zorro...
Topps had acquired the rights to Zorro and apparently thought a good way to re-introduce the character to the comics audience would be to tie-in with the trendy lord of vampires.
After all, the graphic novel Red Rain, featuring The Batman and Dracula had sold amazingly-well, and Batman was a similar "dark heroic" character to Zorro, so writer Don McGregor and artist Tom Yeates came up with a story that could fit into both characters' continuity with a minimum of fuss.
Both Dracula (in flashback), and his victim, Carmelita, would turn up in the Zorro series (which ran 12 issues) once more.
(We'll present that story next week.)
Carmelita would become a regular in the Zorro spin-off series Lady Rawhide.
...our "brother" RetroBlog, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video is re-presenting the long out-of-print (since 1982) and hard-to-find comic adaptation by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson!
