Before the Dawn...there was the Battle!

Looking over the trailers for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes...

...I was struck by how similar a lot of the concepts were to the classic series' final entry...

...so we're re-presenting the never-reprinted color comics adaptation of Battle of the Planet of the Apes at our brother RetroBlog, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video!

Reading Room: SPACE ADVENTURES "Horrible Enemy"

I was going to run the cover-featured Steve Ditko story about the "Menace of Magneto"...

...but then I saw the tale plugged by the vignette at the bottom of the cover!

This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Space Adventures V2N5 (1969) looks like manga, but it's not!

It's "manhwa"...Korean comics!

The art for this cliched Joe Gill-scripted story is by noted Korean artist Sanho Kim, in his second story for Charlton.

Sanho Kim (or Kim San-ho) was already an acclaimed writer/artist in South Korea before coming to the US in 1964.

Illustrating a wide variety of genres including romance, horror, war, and martial arts, Sanho worked primarily for Charlton, with occasional work for Warren (where he also wrote the tales he illustrated), Marvel, and Skywald, totaling several hundred stories.

Sanho returned to South Korea in 1996 and continues to write and illustrate at the age of 75.

He received the Order of Cultural Merit (much like the Kennedy Center Honors in America) in 2008.

You can read a gothic romance tale he illustrated in the 1970s for Charlton HERE.

The ORIGINAL Planet of the Apes Tale...MONKEY PLANET by Pierre Boule

You've seen the seven films and both tv series...

...but did you ever read the book that started it all?

Here's the only graphic novel adaptation of the original story...

Part 1

Part 2

Conclusion

Read it before you see the movie this weekend!

Reading Room: AMAZING ADVENTURES "A-Day"

Are you scared because you think the world is on the brink of war?

Ha!

Back in the 1950s, we lived with the concept on a daily basis...and even told comic book tales about it!

This never-reprinted tale from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #1 (1950) offered some interesting, and (to some) subversive messages.

Illustrated by long-time pro Ogden Whitney, it shows how, unfortunately, human nature can destroy a potential Utopia...while ignoring how current technology wasn't (and still isn't) up to keeping "cheap" atomic power reasonably safe.

Something to ponder, even six decades later...

Reading Room: "Weekend on the Moon"

It's vacation time in the US, and if you really want to get away from it all...

..."space is the place" as this never-reprinted piece from Ziff-Davis' Lars of Mars #11 (1951), demonstrates.

And, it's illustrated by young up-and-comer Gene Colan, who also rendered the never-reprinted adventures of Ken Brady: Space Pilot in both issues of Lars of Mars.

You can read those tales HERE and HERE!

The writer is unknown, but believed to be the book's editor, Jerry (Superman) Siegel.