Man-Bat Madness - Neal Adams as Colourist

© DC Comics. Splash Page to 'Tec #416. 

Neal Adams is justly celebrated as pre-eminent comics penciller and inker of his generation, but his talent as a colourist is often overlooked. The power of a colourist to set and change the mood of a comic story is not generally recognised ; there are some great talents today (Jacob Philips’ exemplary work on That Texas Blood comes immediately to mind, as does Greg Smallwood’s current work on The Human Target mini-series) whose colouring skills raise the quality of the underlying pencils to new heights.

But back in the Bronze Age, the colourist was often not credited. And that was the case with Detective Comics #416, Man-Bat Madness, written and drawn by Frank Robbins, and coloured by Neal Adams. 

Adams and Robbins had jointly created Man-Bat with editor Julie Schwartz , and until this point Adams had pencilled each story in Detective Comics featuring Batman’s misunderstood foe. When Frank Robbins wanted to pencil his new Man-Bat story, Adams volunteered to color the issue.

The was to be the last time that Neal Adams worked on Detective Comics in any capacity until 2014,  and for my money, is the best, most evocative coloring job on a Batman story in the Bronze Age. As far as I’m aware, it is the only time Adams is credited as coloring another artist’s work in the Bronze Age.  I absolutely love the color scheme - greens and yellows and grays with splashes of red - which really add to the eerie vibe of the story.

© DC Comics.

I remember being shocked and dismayed to open Detective Comics #416 in 1971 and saw artwork that I then considered a mess, so far removed from the lithe athleticism of Adams’ own pencils.  The subsequent letters page in Detective Comics #420 commenting on this issue pretty much split 50/50 for and against Frank Robbins’ artwork, and the editorial response to one letter pointed out that Adams had colored the issue. At the time, I sided with those deploring Robbins’s style, but now I see it as so revolutionary, Robbins’ pencils and inks so full of life and dynamism, and understand how the colour choices added so much to the mood of the comic image.

© DC Comics

I think the page above is my favourite image. This page of Batman pursuing Man-Bat on the Gotham subway is a prime example. Batman highlighted in the yellow glow of the subway car is particularly striking. 

Robbins went on to draw four more issues of Detective Comics in the Bronze Age, plus one more unpublished Batman story - a drugs issue - but the coloring never again reached the heights of Detective #416.

© Ian Baker

Unpublished Comics Unlimited #38 cover

Back in middle of 1976 Alan Austin mentioned that he was planning to do a Sword & Sorcery special edition of his monthly fanzine Comics Unlimited, along the lines of the previous Batman and Shadow specials. If you remember, the early to mid 1970s had experienced a resurgence of the Sword & Sorcery genre, on the heels of interest sparked by the Lancer(US) and Sphere(UK) paperback editions of Robert E Howard’s original stories, and subsequent new content by Lin Carter and L Sprague de Camp. 

This interest was most visible in the comics world through the Conan, Ka-Zar, Savage Tales and Savage Sword of Conan books from Marvel.

Ultimately Alan decided to abandon the project of devoting an entire issue of C.U.  to the subject, for fear of alienating some of the readers; he gave his reasons in the editorial of Comics Unlimited #39.

However, prior to that decision Alan had asked our SuperStuff pal Geoff Cousins to submit a draft cover for the subsequently abandoned edition. We'd all had some success at having our artistic swipes accepted as spot illos in Comics Unlimited, but here was Alan asking for a cover submission from Geoff!

I came across Geoff’s original submission in the SuperStuff files (Alan had returned the artwork to me for some reason) which I have published below for the first time anywhere!

Conan © Conan Properties International. Original cover drawn for Comics Unlimited #38

I decided to try colouring it for my own amusement, which I have included below. (Geoff has approved this).

Conan © Conan Properties International. Colourised cover for C.U. #38

Conan © Conan Properties International - alternate colourisation by IEB

So, in an alternate timeline, this might have been the cover of Comics Unlimited #38.

Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention - Con Report

It’s been thirteen years since I last attended the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, one of the premier cons in the US that focuses on pulps and related ephemera. It’s a big 3-day event held at the upmarket Westin hotel in Lombard, in the Chicago suburbs. Since it was a beautiful Spring day on Saturday (May7th 2022) I decided to head over to Lombard to see how the con had changed since I last attended in 2008.

© Ian Baker. The Westin, Yorktown Center, Lombard, IL.

I had paid $25 for a 1-day membership, which entitled me to attend the dealers rooms, the panel discussions, the films on show, and the painting gallery. A 3-day membership cost $35.

Upon arriving my welcome back contained a copy of Windy City Pulp Stories #21, an annual book published especially for the con by Black Dog books of Normal, Illinois. In addition to reprinting some rare pulp stories by Dashiell Hammett and Robert E Howard and others,it lead with a very interesting historical essay by Will Murray on the Fall and Rise of Fiction House, a prime mover in the transition of the sedate dime novel to the fast adventure stories of the pulps. The idea of this book, providing content and context to stimulate further interest in the hobby seems a very sound one to me, and could be transferred to the comic-con world as well.

© Black Dog Books, Normal, IL

I spent a very enjoyable few hours wandering around the dealer tables. What struck me immediately about a Pulp con (as opposed to a Comic-Con) was the both the attendees and dealers are in general significantly older than their Comic-Con counterparts. These are people who probably first encountered pulps through the 1960s and 1970s reprints of Doc Savage, The Shadow, Conan, Tarzan and that stimulated their passion for those characters, which in turn made them seek out the original pulps.

© Ian Baker. Dealers Room.

Entering the main ballroom, at first glance it seems similar to a comic mart, but this time the long boxes are full of pulps in Mylar bags. Immaculate pulps are displayed on stands and it is quite a sight to see the bright painted covers of The Shadow by George or Jerome Dozen on display, along with the Spider and The Avenger, amongst others.

The Adventure House dealer's table.

Part of the Adventure House stand.

Of course, copies of Astounding Stories and other seminal SF pulps are also to be found alongside the more character-driven pulps.

In addition there were quite a selection of Golden Age comics from a few dealers, along with a good selection of DC and Marvel comics from the 1970s that featured comic adaptations of famous pulp characters (eg Ka-Zar, Conan, John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, etc) .

But it is not all pulps. Mass-market paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s were also on sale - those cheap sci-fi and cheap-thrill paperbacks with frequently sleazy covers that really filled the vacuum left by the pulps after they died in the late 1940s.

A typical $2 box

I saw no price gouging at all. There were a few slabbed CGI-authenticated pulps but usually valuable stock was displayed in the usual Mylar bags, and available for inspection. Comics for sale were in the $3-$5 range. I saw good quality Doc Savage Bantam paperbacks for sale as low as $1 each. People were there to enjoy themselves and meet old friends.

I wound up having an enjoyable discussion with Will Murray (foremost authority on Doc Savage and the writer of a score of Doc Savage novels since the 1990s, writing under the original house name of Kenneth Robeson). Mr Murray is in process of arranging the publishing of a revised and updated version of his “Duende History of the Shadow”, a book I first bought back in 1979. I’ll be first in line to get the revised book. For anyone interested in the history of the pulps, I can particularly recommend three of Mr Murray’s non-fiction books - “Writings in Bronze” (essays on Doc Savage), “The Rise of The Shadow” (essays focusing on the background to the character and the original radio show), and “Wordslingers” (a history of the Western pulp, which I found fascinating).

I ended up buying a few old Avenger paperbacks for the re-acquisition nostalgia value, a couple of 1970s “Weird Heroes” anthologies by Byron Preiss, and two of the most recent Doc Savage novels by Will Murray. I returned home a happy man.

Part of my haul.

So, it was a very enjoyable morning and afternoon. I did not get the opportunity to return in the evening for the Saturday panel sessions (the son of artist Norman Saunders - famed for his Mars Attacks and Batman trading card paintings - was due to run a session), but I will be sure to return next year.

© Ian Baker

Three boys and three typewriters: the secret origin of SuperStuff

[Thanks to regular commenter McScotty for posing the question...."Was SuperStuff a real fanzine?" My good pal Nigel Brown, co-editor, co-founder of this blog, and regular columnist, took up the challenge of telling the SuperStuff story... ]

 by Nigel Brown

It was Ian Baker’s idea to do our own comics fanzine. I came up with the name SuperStuff, no doubt inspired by my favourite comic book character.

We’ve already described how it was, fifty years ago, when we hunted down American comics books all over Portsea Island (‘Mad DC Comic Hunt’ and ‘Comics Shops in Portsmouth (Upcoming blog entry)’). 

To set that time in context, that was just before Marvel decided to enter the UK comics market with their own comics (they had earlier allowed reprints in Fantastic, Terrific, Pow! Wham! and Smash! comics in the late 1960s).The Mighty World of Marvel # 1, a UK comic, arrived in September 1972. This was successful enough for them to follow it up early the next year, with the appearance of Spider-Man Comics Weekly #1 in February 1973. (I remember we were pretty scornful of these comics when they first appeared, comparing them to the full colour and up-to-date American originals that were still available in newsagents, and as back-issues in second-hand shops.)

A more epoch-defining event in the SuperStuff story occurred that following Easter, on April 22nd 1973, when Ian Baker received his first issue of Alan Austin’s Fantasy Unlimited #14, having seen an advert for it in Exchange & Mart.

I subscribed soon after, and together with Ian we began to send postal orders off for back-issue comics to ‘fill those gaps’ in our comic collections.

It took another year before we produced our own comics fanzine.

Shang-Chi swipe © Marvel. The rest © SuperStuff.

SuperStuff #1 debuted in May/June 1974 (with an optimistic March cover date). It was, frankly, the best imitation of Fantasy Unlimited that we could manage… but so what? We had tremendous fun doing it. If we could have only transferred a small part of our enthusiasm onto our schoolwork I’m certain our schoolteachers would have been impressed by our diligence and energy!

As Alan Austin has described himself in his book about his life in comics (Comics Unlimited: My life as a Comic Collector and Dealer ), a major problem with producing fanzines is the duplication required for any kind of wide circulation.

Alan himself eventually solved this problem by acquiring a second-hand Gestetner Roneo No.2 duplicator. We never got that far, using two pieces of carbon paper with our typewriters to produce three copies in total of our own fanzine. Three sheets of carbon paper rendered the last page too faint to be legible. (Ian recalls experimenting with four carbon papers, but he had to hit the keys on his old Remington typewriter so hard that his Dad would call upstairs: “Stop that racket!”)

After the debut of SuperStuff #1, we were away. A second issue followed shortly afterwards.

Although I was the ‘editor’ of the first issue, in truth it was a total joint effort. We would each type up our own pages, then put them all together to make up the fanzine.

Once SuperStuff was established, it became an outlet for our creative energies and we produced further issues down the years. Some I produced wholly by myself, others were typed out by Ian and our other comics-collecting friend, Geoff Cousins. A healthy rivalry developed between us, leading to greater efforts to produce bigger and better fanzines, although still with circulations of three!

At least we knew our readership.

The SuperStuff contents were a mixture of comic and science fiction paperback reviews, along with some original fiction and articles (many of which were swiped from sources as varied as other fanzines, the comics themselves and, as I recall, even The Radio Times). We did come up with the odd original article, or took what was there and rewrote much of it to fit in with our own opinions.

Ian remembers that the paper we used for SuperStuff originally came from school, so the most expensive outlay was the carbon paper and the photocopies (5p) for the covers, first done at the Portsmouth Main Post Office, then later in the Main Library by Portsmouth Guildhall.

Here’s what we produced; see the end of this blog entry for a selected list of the contents of each issue.

SuperStuff covers #1-#10. Characters © their respective publishers

I was pleased enough with SuperStuff #7 to send one of my precious copies to Alan Austin. He wrote back with a encouraging letter (that I published in the letter column of SuperStuff #9) but – more importantly – he asked if I had any material he could use for his own fanzine, by then named Comics Unlimited. I sent him a reworked article I’d written for my other fanzine Fantastic Voyages #2 (A Chronology of the Planet of the Apes), and he published it as the cover article in Comics Unlimited #36 (May 1976).

Planet of the Apes Chronology republished in Comics Unlimited #36

This was the second SuperStuff era-inspired article to see print in another fanzine. Previously, I’d had an article I’d written in SuperStuff # 1 (about Kirby’s 4th World) appear in the fanzine Eon #2 (May/July 1975).

EON #2 reprinted the Kirby 4th World article from SS #1

Geoff Cousins had a contribution published in one of Alan Austin’s fanzines, with a Silver Surfer illo in Fantasy Unlimited #27 (June 1975), and he also drew a Conan cover (unpublished) for Alan Austin's abandoned Sword & Sorcery issue of Comics Unlimited, which would have been #38.

Not that Ian Baker’s name was lacking in Fantasy Unlimited, either. He often contributed a wide range of interesting questions to the popular ‘We Want Information’ feature that Alan Austin ran.

Looking back, Ian notes now that we pretty much achieved our aim of producing a new SuperStuff every school holidays from March 1974 to May 1976, which covered eight issues.

1974 to 1976 was really the heyday of our fanzine-producing, but I decided to produce a SuperStuff swansong in 1984.

By then, I had access to Alan Austin’s own Gestetner 160 in the basement of his Islington shop, Heroes. He was generous with his time and patience and, along with his encouragement and advice, I managed to print enough copies of SuperStuff #11 (August 1984) to go on sale to the public.

We had begun SuperStuff as an imitation of Alan’s own Fantasy Unlimited fanzine, and now I determined to make this final SuperStuff a true tribute, printed on the same hallowed machine that had printed Fantasy Unlimited.

The main feature was an interview with Alan himself. I also was lucky enough to commission an original Baragrin strip for SuperStuff, generously provided by Patrick Marcel and Jean-Daniel Breque. SuperStuff #11 also featured articles by Ian Baker and others such as the leading Portsmouth Star Trek fan and founder of S.T.I.G. (Star Trek Information Group), Ross Carter.

© Nigel Brown. SuperStuff #11 - 1984

Alan Austin sold SuperStuff #11 in his shop Heroes, and Paul Hudson in Comics Showcase was also kind enough to allow a box of SuperStuff for sale on his shop counter in Covent Garden.

I can’t recall how many were sold, but an issue has turned up on eBay. If anyone still has a copy I’d advise them to hold onto it as one of the rarest genuine fanzines of that era!

That was intended to be the end of the SuperStuff story, but thanks to advances in technology since those days, SuperStuff has come alive again as the blog Superstuff73…  as much fun to produce, I admit, as those type-written carbon-copied fanzines of yesteryear.

©Nigel Brown

List of SuperStuff issues 1-10

SuperStuff # 1

March 1974 cover date (May/June 1974 interior date)

Nigel Brown editor. Nigel Brown, Ian Baker contents

This featured articles on Kirby’s 4th World, World’s Finest Comics, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and various comic indexes, ending on a page with our spare comics for sale.

SuperStuff #2

April 1974. Nigel Brown editor. Nigel Brown, Ian Baker contents

This featured a Neal Adams biography, along with articles on C.C.Beck, DC’s Plop!, Marvel’s Iron Fist, and a feature on the best Batman artists.

SuperStuff # 3

Summer 1974. Ian Baker editor. Ian Baker, Geoff Cousins contents

This issue was more TV orientated, with an interview with Burt Ward of the Batman TV series and a piece on Star Trek, alongside articles about Iron Man, Robert E. Howard and a biography of Walter Gibson. 

SuperStuff # 4

March/April 1975. Ian Baker editor. Nigel Brown, Ian Baker, Geoff Cousins contents

This had articles about the origins of some Marvel super-heroes, Kirby’s Forever People and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke. 

SuperStuff # 5

July/August 1975. Ian Baker editor

We featured Kirby’s O.M.A.C., Ditko’s The Creeper, the best way to store comics, and an index of the first Bantam paperbacks reprinting Doc Savage pulps.

SuperStuff # 6 (incorporating Nigel’s separate fanzine Fantastic Voyages # 3)

April 1976. Ian Baker & Nigel Brown editors & contents

This issue continued the Bantam Doc Savage paperback index, a retyping of a Batman TV series script, as well as an article about The Spectre.

SuperStuff # 7

April 1976. Nigel Brown editor & contents. 

This was a Superman Special, featuring articles about the Golden Age Superman, a comprehensive origin of Krypton and Superman, as well as the second part of The Spectre article.

SuperStuff # 8

May/June 1976. Ian Baker & Geoff Cousins editors & some contents

This issue featured the changing images of women in comic books, along with articles about Red Sonja, the origin of The Batman, and the Alan Dean Foster Star Trek paperbacks.

SuperStuff # 9

July 1978. Nigel Brown editor & contents.

This featured articles about comic back-issue prices, the new super-hero TV series (one starring Wonder Woman, the other The Hulk), and an index of SuperStuff issues 1 to 8, 

SuperStuff # 10

July 1980. Nigel Brown editor & contents

This slimmer issue featured comic and book reviews.

We also produced our own fanzines separately, towards the end of 1975:

Fantastic Voyages #1

August 1975. Nigel Brown editor.

Similar mix of contents to SuperStuff, with opinion column, comic information feature and comic quiz.

Fantastic Voyages # 2

Autumn 1975. Nigel Brown editor

Similar mix of contents to SuperStuff, with a Planet of the Apes chronology, Denny O’Neil interview.

The Light of Other Days #1

Autumn 1975. Ian Baker editor

An intended mix of Science Fiction paperback reviews and discussions of Black & White SF comics. This never got beyond the "ashcan" stage.

The Light of Other Days and Other Worlds

Winter 1975. Geoff Cousins editor

Amazing Science Fiction Stories # 1

April 1976. Nigel Brown editor & contents

Science fiction.

SuperStuff Special #1

September 1979. Ian Baker editor & contents. 

An original Shadow story.

Meeting Neal Adams

 [With the sad news today of Neal Adams’ passing at age 80, I thought I’d post this piece I’ve been holding back for a while.  baggsey (Ian)]

© Forbidden Planet. Neal Adams at Forbidden Planet 16th June 1979

My good chum Nigel Brown tells me that we first met Neal Adams in Forbidden Planet at their old premises in Denmark Street, London on June 16th 1979 at a signing that Neal Adams was doing to promote a Ms Mystic art portfolio. Nigel reminds me that we had to queue around the block to get in. My mate Geoff Cousins tells me the same thing ; that he has a note in his pocket diary from those days that we headed to London on June 16th 1979 and met the great man himself. Nigel relates how Neal signed one of his comics.

I have no strong memory of any of this. Well, perhaps an inkling of remembrance of the queue outside the shop. I have no idea why. Okay - at that time I was approaching twenty and my interest in comics had waned considerably, and I was getting into pulps and private detective fiction, but surely I would remember meeting Neal Adams?  Surely I got something signed by him? But I have only the vaguest memory of it, and even the photo that Forbidden Planet published in their 40th anniversary magazine (reproduced above)  does not trigger a strong memory.

So it was 30 years later, on the evening of Friday Oct 16th, 2009 that I came across an ad that the New York Comic Con was being held at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC over the next 2 days (I’d already missed opening day ), and on a whim I resolved to head to New York City the following Saturday morning on the off-chance that  I could meet my teenage idol Neal Adams. I’d heard that he was working on a new Batman comic in collaboration with Frank Miller (which would eventually be Batman Odyssey (sans Miller)), and thought that this might be my one chance to meet the guy. 

American Airlines had a promotion for return tickets from Chicago to New York for $69 return from O’Hare to La Guardia, so I took the plunge. I could get up early, drive to the airport, get a 6:30am flight, head to the con, have lunch, and be back home that evening. I mentioned my intentions to both sons (aged 17 and 15 at the time) and they voiced their desire to accompany their middle aged Dad (presumably to stop me getting lost).

So the following morning at quarter past 10am all three of us, having landed in New York, found ourselves  in a taxi traveling past Long Island City and by 11:25am, I was shaking hands with the great man himself.

It happened this way.

When we got to the con, the doors had already opened, and as we entered the complex we were confronted by crowds of people in cosplay milling around. There were multiple Rorschachs (remember this was the year of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen).

Almost immediately I was button-holed by a number of art dealers who pressed their business cards on me (presumably assuming I was in the business). Although the NYCC is probably still the largest comic con on the East Coast (and probably has the largest number of well-known dealers) it is increasingly dominated by individuals in costume who have trouble discerning the line between reality and fantasy. This makes for an uneasy mix of professional artists and writers, long-time dealers and hordes of people for whom the Marvel and DC films dominate their waking hours (but have little interest in the comics themselves).

Anyway, having spent a while looking at original art on display behind glass display cases, we headed further into the arena along celebrity row, where actors of cult TV shows had individual booths.

We passed David Hedison of “Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea” fame in his own booth standing next to a model of the Nautlius on display. I didn’t ask if he’d made it himself.

Jackson Bostwick (Captain Marvel from the 1977 “Shazam!” TV series) looked lonely and depressed in his booth, with no-one stopping by. It probably didn’t help that he was lounging back on an orange plastic chair with his feet propped on the low fence at the front of the booth.

Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk) was grinning, flexing his biceps, and posing with fans for photographs. Seemed a very approachable guy.

Silver haired, sharp-suited Jim Steranko was being interviewed in the main lobby by Mickey Dolenz of Monkees fame (wearing Pork-Pie hat) for a news segment.

Adam West, Julie Newmar and Adam West’s son were setting up their table getting ready for punters to pay $50 a time ("cash only please") for a photo with Mr West. [I cannot fault this approach, as both actors and comic artists rarely have Pension plans].

But we pushed further on into the hall, first past one of the many George Barris-designed  Batmobiles, then past a table where Joe Kubert had a number of fans clustering around , and then further back to the Neal Adams table, where there he was. Surrounded by his books and artwork, and no-one, NO ONE, else around. He seemed glad at the prospect of someone to talk to.

What a great conversationalist! Full of energy and ideas. He was interested in why a Brit was there on a Saturday morning? Had I flown from the UK? What did my lads think of their dear old Dad being there? We got talking. I told him what an impact the splash page of Batman #234 (Half an Evil) had had on me as a 12-year old, how it had cemented me as a Batman fan and set me off on a lifetime of comic collecting. He told me some of his future ideas for Batman Odyssey - bringing in Deadman, having Deadman inhibit the Joker’s body in the Batcave ; the attraction of straightening out long-time continuity issues in the Batman canon.

That’s when Mr Adams asked me if I’d like to get a view of the artwork he was working on for Batman Odyssey, and invited me to come behind the table and sit down further to continue our chat. He then produced his art portfolio from under the table - basically a folder comprised of two bits of hinged hardboard, sandwiched between which were all the pages he’d drawn so far for Batman Odyssey #1. Some were still pencils ; others were partially inked. He let me read them all and asked for my opinion.

You can see the smile on my face in the photo below. 

© Ian Baker. baggsey and Neal Adams, 2009

Mr Adams then mentioned that he had to head over to participate in a panel with Joe Kubert discussing their work during the Bronze Age, and would I like to sit in on it? 

So we traipsed over to a break-out conference room and my sons & I spent a couple of hours first sitting in an audience of about 40 people asking Neal and Joe questions about the genesis of many of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Sgt Rock comics, and then Joe Kubert conducted an impromptu art class, developing a comic page in real time with input from the audience. Andy Kubert teamed with his Dad in the art workshop. Considering the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fans at the Center that day, I despaired that so few were motivated to attend these sessions by the masters of the Bronze Age.

After the panel and class wrapped, my sons and I grabbed a hamburger and then caught a taxi back to La Guardia and on to home.

As we left the Jacob Javits Center my last memory is of the long Adam West table with his son managing the queue of fans, holding a fistful of tens and twenties as he collected the funds before shepherding fans alongside the trestle table to meet his Dad and Julie Newmar.

I’d turned 50 that year and meeting Neal Adams in person was quite a transformative event for me. It re-ignited my enthusiasm not only for comics, but also for my day job - reminded me that anything was possible as long as I got on my hind legs and made it happen. I remembered how back in 1971 I’d pored over Brave & Bold #93 - the Batman….and the House of Mystery team-up issue “Red Water, Crimson Death” issue - and seen the drawing of one of my heroes in the ACBA ad -  Neal Adams - and could never have imagined that one day I would meet the man who had made Batman real to me fifty years ago.

H G Wells and War of the Worlds

[I started writing this before I’d read McScotty’s blog entry about Amazing Adventures #18 over at his blog  which is well worth a visit].

© Marvel

H.G. Wells - © Public Domain

My home town of Portsmouth and its seaside resort Southsea has many historical heroes with links to the Bronze Age of comics, of which famed SF & Fantasy writer and visionary Herbert George Wells is but one.

It is hard to imagine if HG Wells, while working in a Draper’s Bazaar in Elm Grove, could have foreseen that one day he would be teaming up posthumously with Stan Lee and Don McGregor on Amazing Adventures #22, wherein Killraven battles the Human Squid, but I’m sure that he would have found the Marvel adaptation “inspired” by his War of the Worlds in tune with many of the ideas of his vast portfolio of SF creations.

Wells’ connection to Southsea stems from the time between 1880 and 1883, when he had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at Hyde's Drapery Emporium in Southsea. His experiences at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, later inspired his novels The Wheels of Chance, The History of Mr Polly, and most appositely Kipps, which portray the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of society's distribution of wealth.

It was soon after leaving Southsea for Woking in Surrey that Wells enjoyed his most creatively fertile period, when  he planned and wrote The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine and completed The Island of Doctor Moreau, (all of which would inspire later Marvel comics adaptations).

Slightly more than a generation later, in the United States in April 1926, famed editor Hugo Gernsback would reprint much of Wells's work in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, regarding Wells's work as "texts of central importance to the self-conscious new genre".

And so a further generation after the pulp Amazing Stories, it was fitting that Wells’ work was featured in Marvel’s own Amazing Adventures comic in the guise of Killraven - freedom fighter Jonathan Raven - depicted in several post-apocalyptic alternate futures. Created by co-plotters Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, under the auspices of scriptwriter Gerry Conway and initially penciller Adams himself, the character first appeared in Amazing Adventures vol. 2, #18 (Cover-dated May 1973) .

© Marvel

The cover was very clear on the basis of the source material “Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the prophetic novel by H G Wells!” .

Co-creator Neal Adams' early ideas for Killraven involved the character being the son of a Doc Savage archetype. (Ref: Comic Artist #3). This concept had been reworked by the first issue in which co-creator Adams penciled only the first 11 pages with Howard Chaykin completing the remaining nine. The second issue was fully written by the debut's scripter, Gerry Conway, followed in the third by Marv Wolfman.

On the alternate-future Earth designated Earth-691 by Marvel Comics, the Martians from H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds return in 2001 for another attempt at conquering the planet. With humanity enslaved, the men forced to battle gladiator-style for the Martians' amusement, Jonathan Raven (dubbed Killraven as his gladiatorial nom de guerre), escapes to join the Freemen, a group of freedom fighters .

As the series progressed, the link to Wells’ original vision became more and more tenuous, as reflected in the constantly changing book’s title across 22 issues (Amazing Adventures #18-#39 inclusive).

#18 "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the prophetic novel by H G Wells"

#19 (Note “Prophetic” was dropped) "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the  novel by H G Wells"

#20-#27( New tagline “The Most Widely Acclaimed Science Fiction Series Ever!”) "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the  novel by H G Wells"

#28 (All reference to H.G. Wells dropped from the cover) "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” - featuring Killraven!"

#29-#34 (rebranded - and H.G. still gets the boot!) "Killraven…WARRIOR OF THE WORLDS”

#35-#39 "War of the Worlds"

While the series was running, Marvel UK had developed a headache over content for their Planet of the Apes weekly, as they were running out of US Planet of the Apes content to reprint.  They hit upon the idea of repurposing Killraven as “Apeslayer” for the UK Planet of the Apes fan base as an emergency measure. The US Killraven stories were partially redrawn and re-lettered to create a new story that would fit into the Marvel version of the Planet of the Apes continuity. (Fun Fact: technically Apeslayer is the first ever Marvel UK-originated character).

Apparently, the UK team felt that Apeslayer, by way of Killraven, was so far removed from the original source material that H G Wells did not require a credit in the UK P.O.T.A. weekly. In fact, the credits for “The Birth of Apeslayer” do not even mention Neal Adams himself as either co-creator or contributing artist despite integrating artwork by the great man himself

© Marvel - enbiggen this to read !! Comparison of Killraven and Apeslayer

As H.G. Wells’ books were still within UK copyright at the time, rebranding Killraven as Apeslayer in the UK, and removing any reference to H G Wells on the US comic covers, may have been a move to avoid any legal issues.

The UK Apeslayer adaptations appeared in just 8 issues of Planet of the Apes weekly (#23-#30) , running from March 29th 1975 to May 17th 1975.

What was strange is that Marvel did not choose to stop distribution of the US Amazing Adventures in the UK during this period, which would have been the May-September 1975 cover issues (#30-#32),  but they had previously stopped the distribution of US issues #23-#25 a year earlier in 1974, with those issues not being available in UK price-variant guise.

Amazing Adventures was eventually cancelled with issue #39. I don’t believe that I owned all of the issues. I certainly collected issues #18 and #19 in 1973 (bought from Simpsons in Osborne Rd), and was again buying later issues in April 1976 from See's newsagents in Copnor, but it was not a regular purchase by that time. The overlap with Planet of the Apes weekly had caused me to put the US Amazing Adventures comic far down the list of US Marvels to buy each month. 

Marvel tried some innovative pricing approaches with their UK price variants; issues #18-#22 were 8p each ; following the “non-distributed” hiatus of issues #23-#25, issue #26 was priced at 7p, before returning to 8p pricing with the next issue. In that time of rampant inflation, the price quickly rose from 9p to 10p, and became too rich for my blood. However, if HG Wells had miraculously survived into the 1970s, I suspect he would have sought out and enjoyed every issue.

Killraven would later resurface in his original incarnation in the UK Star Wars Weekly a few years later.When Marvel UK eventually began reprinting the original Killraven series in Star Wars Weekly, one reader complained that they had 're-drawn Apeslayer, with Martians'.

A week in Ventnor - July 1972

Sometimes comic memories stick in the mind because they’re linked to seminal events in your life.

In the summer of 1972 I had just turned 13, and so I was allowed to go on my first holiday on my own, to Ventnor on the south side of the Isle of Wight to stay with my Aunt and Uncle for a week.

I went with high hopes of getting more comics at Mr Keen’s antiquarian bookshop in Pier Street, Ventnor. Earlier that year  on a holiday with my Mum and Dad - at Easter -  I had hit the jackpot with scoring a pile of comics in Mr Keen’s antiquarian bookshop in Ventnor at 2p each, including a run of most of Detective 390-412- which included those classic Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams Man-Bat stories plus the Enemy Ace crossover. (For those you wishing to take a look at Google street view , the address is 19 Pier Street, Ventnor. Mr Keen is long gone, of course, owning the shop from 1972-1981.)

Each day that week  in July I would walk down from Upper Ventnor to the town centre in the hopes of finding new comics in John Menzies or at one of the seafront gift shops.

Even though it was Summer, I felt compelled to wear my over-sized army-surplus combat jacket which had come from Ben Grubbs, a store in Portsmouth. I felt it lent me an air of rugged individuality.

My Aunt and Uncle’s daughter, my cousin, who was four years older than me at seventeen, welcomed me to tag along with her, her boyfriend and their friends. Her boyfriend (“call me Zak”) was an amiable bearded long-haired groovy guy with a penchant for check jackets with wide lapels.  I felt honored to be allowed to hang out with them (no doubt at the behest of my aunt).

The Regal, Shanklin, 1972

The week kicked off on a Sunday night with a trip to Shanklin to see Diamonds are Forever at the Regal cinema in Shanklin. We went in a van driven by a friend of my cousin. I think there were five of us siting on a mattress on the floor in the back, as we rattled around inside the rear of the van. (I have an inkling that the driver - a curly-haired, more conventional, friendly guy inclined to a rosy complexion - had a crush on my cousin.)

What a film! This was my first exposure to Sean Connery as Bond (having previously seen OHMSS in 1969), and the early scene where he is trapped in a coffin inside a crematorium incinerator sticks in my mind. I also took notice of the film poster (by the great Robert McGinnis), realizing how the common motif of Bond with his arms folded had become connecting tissue across all the Bond film posters.

As I went to bed that night at my Aunt’s house (I was staying in the room vacated by my cousin’s older brother who was away) I became aware that a paperback book had fallen on the floor from where it had been tucked under the mattress. It was a bit of an eye-opener for. 13-year old.

That book was The Perfumed Garden (Panther Edition,1966), a translation of an ancient Indian sex manual by Sir Richard Burton, famed Arabist, polymath and explorer. I would a few years later re-encounter Sir Richard Burton as the fictional protagonist in Philip Jose Farmer’s book To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Well, those Indians knew a thing or two about human gymnastics that wouldn’t end up an an Olympic sport , and I reflected that learning a different language at school may have had applications I had not previously appreciated. 

The Silvermere Cafe gift shop where I found Detective #355

The next day I decided to walk down to the seafront, and on the spinner rack of a gift shop I found an excellent condition copy of Detective #355  (“Hate of the Hooded Hangman”).What a find! Six years after publication and not a crease! It felt almost as good as if I’d found Detective #27! I can remember the crispness of it now (presumably sun-baked over the previous 6 summers, even though there was no evidence of direct sunlight fading)

The Rex Cinema, Ventnor

As the week was coming to a close, hormones raging, I persuaded my Aunt to take me to see Up The Front at the Rex Cinema on Thursday. I was a great fan of the Carry On films at this time, and figured that this would probably be a bit risqué, with Frankie Howard ably supported by the ample charms of Madeline Smith. I was not disappointed, although I think that my Aunt had some misgivings that she was culpable in exposing her nephew to something so salacious (well it was “A” rated).

So at the end of the week I returned home with the experience of having moved in a maturer circles of friends, had some education that garden swings had more uses that previously envisaged, had seen an exciting Bond film with a fantastic poster by Robert McGinnis, had seen Madeline Smith in fine form on the silver screen, and had an immaculate copy of Detective #355 safely stored in my haversack.

Shanklin - the Isle of Wight ferry

As I crossed the Solent back to Portsmouth on the Isle of Wight ferry "Shanklin", waiting for me back in Pompey was the prospect of the new DCs hitting the spinner rack on the following Thursday.

What a summer! Golden Days indeed.