WAR OF THE WORLDS - IN COLOR!

H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds is one of my favourite stories. I grew up with Jeff Wayne's musical version and loved it because it was terrifying. I was fascinated by Orson Welles' radio play and the fact that on broadcast people believed it was real, an early introduction into how powerful the media is. There's a 1970s comic book version drawn by Yong Montano that I thought was brilliant. And then the novel itself, still genuinely scary to read even though you know so many of the events therein beforehand. I bought the Classics Illustrated version from January 1955 recently, mostly out of curiosity. There are no credits, but according to John Gosling's very good War of the Worlds website it's written by Harry Miller and drawn by Lou Cameron. I was immediately pleasantly surprised by the terrific splash page with the spaceship hurtling towards Earth. Click images for larger versions.

Then, looking at the second panel on page 2, seeing the enormous burst of gas erupting from Mars, and similarly gigantic shadow on the red and green planet surface, I thought I may actually be in for something quite good here.

I am very impressed by the colours in this book. It's all standard four colour process, but there are violent clashes to evoke mood. Look at the faces on panel 2 page 10 and panel 2 page 16.

This book has shaken up my impression of Classics Illustrated. There's a middle two pages splash and energetic figure movement and explosions throughout. I expected it to be much more staid. Maybe the comic is dramatic because the story is just so good. It's hard to imagine not managing to inject any tension into adapting the scene in the cellar with the martian tentacle groping around the room.

The Classics Illustrated comics are designed to be educational tools. Following this credo, the comic ends with informative articles on H.G.Wells and Orson Welles.

The comic ends with the statement "Now that you have read the Classics Illustrated edition, don't miss the added enjoyment of reading the original, obtainable at your school or public library." Good advice!

GLASGOW COMIC CON

I've written a report on last weekend's Glasgow Comic Con over at Down the Tubes. Have a look here. I was especially pleased to have a wee chat with Jim Starlin while he sketched Adam Warlock for me. That's always been a favourite series of mine from the 1970s.

THE END OF LIFE IN HELL

Matt Groening has finished with his strip Life in Hell. It was first published 32 years ago and has run weekly ever since, despite the massive success of The Simpsons on TV. He stuck with it in amongst all the madness I can’t begin to imagine that must come with being involved in something as influential as The Simpsons. He kept it up because he's devoted to comics. He also set up Bongo Comics to do Simpsons titles and Zongo Comics to do more experimental stuff. Here’s an excellent example of Life in Hell from 1987. Click for a larger version. I dare say you won't forget this one in a hurry.

WUP ASS KING SIZE

A couple of years ago I wrote this. It annoyed me at the time that I couldn't find Beland's cartoon to put in there too. Well, it turned up. I knew I had it somewhere...

SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS

I just enjoyed a blog article by Steve Goble on Spider-Man and Zoids. I enjoyed it as I read that Marvel UK comic every week back in 86, so Steve's piece was a nostaglic trip. He goes into detail about the differences between the original US comics and the British reprints throughout the entire 51 issue series. Except he wrote that he didn't have issue 51, and so missed the end of the series. I felt his pain, and leapt to his rescue. If you can stomach two grown men waxing lyrical about mid 80s Marvel comics, have a look here.

R.I.P. TONY DEZUNIGA

I've just read the very sad news that Tony Dezuniga has died. A great artist from the Philippines who did a lot of work for the big US companies in the 70s and 80s. Here is some artwork from the stories I really enjoy that he drew. Dezuniga and John Albano created the western character Jonah Hex in the early 70s.

He had a crack at Star Wars. Around the same time, Marvel were publishing a magazine called The Rampaging Hulk. This had some quite racy back up stories. So a youngster who wanted to read about The Hulk off the telly also got to read the adventures of Shanna the She-devil.

In the early 90s Marvel UK were publishing Strip. The comic reprinted Dezuniga's Punisher stories from years before. Dezuniga was the first of a wave of Filipino artists who were given work by DC Comics because they could be paid much less than US artists. In fact Dezuniga acted as an agent of sorts for a "Filipino invasion". This led to another favourite comic of mine - the adaptation of War of the Worlds by Yong Montano. There was also Ernie Chan, a very good artist, especially his inking. Dezuniga was criminally underused in comics once the 90s began, which is a shame, but he had already left behind a great body of art.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE

When I was a kid I liked the Avengers comics. From a young un’s point of view you can buy a comic with Spider-Man in it, one with Batman in it, or you can cheat and get one comic that has loads of superheroes in it.

If one character in a comic was great and getting more was a bonus, the Jim Shooter/Dave Michelinie era was like getting away with murder. Look at the opening page to “The End…and Beginning!”.



Later on in the same story they had a sequence featuring a man and a woman in a sensual embrace. It seemed very risqué at the time.



There was a great one by 70s superstar artist John Byrne where Count Nefaria became all powerful and was able to defeat the Avengers easily. They all tried to stop him to no avail. There is tension throughout the story while everyone wonders where Thor is, as surely he could defeat him?





So imagine my excitement back then when I saw that they were going to be showing a TV programme of the Avengers! Unbelievable!

And imagine my disgust at some bloke in a bowler hat and a woman sticking a flower in his lapel. OK, she did shoot his champagne bottle, but that was hardly in the league of tackling intergalactic menace Korvac!

Now they’ve finally made a live action Avengers movie, but it’s years too late for me to conjure up the same excitement. Oh well…



The Avengers was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Captain America was created by
Kirby and Joe Simon. Iron Man is credited to Lee, Don Heck and Larry Lieber as well as Kirby.

Here’s a very nice written piece by Neal Kirby on watching his Dad working at the drawing board as a kid.

SCIENCE MUSEUM

I had a visit to the Science Museum in London last week.

Very interesting place to see, but then what a bonus: a Frank Hampson wall!

Four original pages of Dan Dare. They were all fantastic.

And then later on, more: an Enki Bilal wall.

Eight pages from La Femme Piege.

In the space exploration area, they have a display based on Amazing Stories magazine.

They currently have an exhibition with artwork by Suzanne Treister called Hexen 2.0. I can see it making a good underground comic.

The shop had a couple of nice comic books; Robot City by Paul Collicutt and Robot by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal.


There was even a display on a book called The 1950s Kitchen by Kathryn Perry that was open at a page with this four panel strip. Always interesting to see comics used in advertising.

So go along to check all this stuff out. Even without the comic bonuses, it’s a great museum. Just look at the layout of Making the Modern World hall. Really impressive.

DUMP PENCILS

I’ve been productive comics wise this month. I’ve pencilled twelve pages of my story Dump in the past two weeks. Here are four of them...

JOOST SWARTE

After decades of fascinating snippets of Joost Swarte work appearing in the likes of Raw, there is now a translated book of his work “Is That All There Is?” It’s a lovely collection, full of humour and great artwork. The title comes from the fact it’s quite a small book, and contains his lifetime’s comics work. However, if you order from the publisher direct, you get an extra minicomic with a few more bits and pieces.