Beneath The Planet of the Apes - Marvel vs Gold Key

Facebook handily reminded me earlier this month that we should be celebrating the 54th anniversary of when Beneath the Planet of the Apes hit US cinemas in 1970. I had to wait until 1975 to see Beneath at the cinema in the UK.  It had been classifed as “AA” upon it’s original release and so I was unable to see the film as I was under fourteen years of age. Our local cinemas in the Portsmouth area subsequently showed double-bills of “Planet of the Apes” and “Escape…”, and “Conquest..” paired with “Battle…”, but “Beneath…” did not make the rounds until 1975, when it showed up paired with “Battle…” at a small cinema in Havant, Hampshire.

By this time, “Beneath…” had acquired quite an allure for me.  I had read the Bantam paperback novelisation, and was yet to read the Marvel adaptation in the pages of the UK Marvel Planet of the Apes weekly comic. I had even bought the Super-8 mm cine film 10-minute condensed version of the film in black & White, even though we didn’t have a Super-8 movie projector!

My unwatched Beneath The Planet of the Apes 8mm film on my bedspread in 1977

And so finally getting to see the film was a great event, and I was not disappointed. Looking at the film now, the narrative suffers from not having Taylor as the protagonist throughout (Charlton Heston said he  would only appear if he disappeared at the start of the film, and was killed off at the end), but despite the story structural issues and the reduced budget, it is still a great science fiction film. Also I’m a sucker for anything with disused railway stations as well, so the underground Grand Central Station was also a big plus for me.

When I finally got to read the Marvel adaption of the film in the Marvel Black & White magazine, scripted by Doug Moench and drawn by Alfredo Alcala, I was very impressed. The artwork was a definite step up from the Marvel adaptation of the first film, drawn by George Tuska. I was not aware at that time that Gold Key had already issued a one-off adaptation of Beneath back in Sept 1970, with a December 1970 cover date.

I dutifully also collected the colour version of the story as reprinted in Marvel’s Adventures on the Planet of the Apes issues #7-#11, with new colouring by George Roussos. It is interesting to compare the Gold Key and Marvel versions.   Of course, Marvel had 100 pages to play with, while Gold Key had 30, but some direct comparisons can be made.

© APJAC and Gold Key

© APJAC and Marvel

Overall, the Marvel version has more power and better pacing. Alfredo Alcala’s artwork is stunning in places. The Gold key version (by Artists Alberto Giolitti and Sergio Costais) is generally very pedestrian, but not without its merits.  Compare the splash pages of each comic and you’ll see what I mean.

The Gold Key splash

The Marvel splash page

I think the Gold Key version is basically a written story illustrated by pictures, whereas the Marvel version is a visual narrative supported by dialogue.  Which I suppose is the contrast between the Marvel Method and the more traditional form of comic scripting used at DC and other mainstream comic publishers in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Gold Key version illustrates specific scenes taken from film stills, whereas the Marvel version does not emulate the camera angles of the film scenes, opting for a more fluid narrative. 

However, it must be said that the Gold Key version has a far better colourist - more accurate to the film, and more evocative. Compare the sequence early in the story when Taylor & Nova encounter storms and lightening ; the Gold Key version is miles more effective.

© APJAC and Gold Key

© APJAC and Marvel

The Gold Key version adheres more closely to the film in terms of costumes.  Taylor has a loin-cloth in the Gold Key version ; he wears a Tarzan fur in the Marvel version! 

Also, the Apes as drawn in the Gold Key version closely resemble their film counterparts, whereas in the Marvel version, the apes look far more simian.

Scene as shown in Gold Key

Same scene from Marvel

And the pacing on the ending in the Marvel version is far better, building the tension to the final atomic explosion.  The Gold Key shows the bomb going off an an accident ; the Marvel take shows the detonation of the Doomsday Bomb as a deliberate act by Taylor.

The Gold Key versions ends with Taylor triggering the dommsday bomb by accident

The Marvel version ends in a sombre, deliberate manner

Go out and find a copy of each comic and do the comparisons yourself. It's not often in comics that one gets the chance to compare two different versions of the same story.

By the way, I see that the recent Beware the Planet of the Apes comic from Marvel integrates individual panels from the George Tuska adpation as part of a flashback sequence.