Thor # 243, January 1976, by Gil Kane
Probably my favourite cover of all time.
Gil Kane can make me believe that a Norse God fighting Mongolian warriors, a dinosaur and flying Space Police is something that he's seen.
If only Thor had been a frog in this issue.
I remember Gil Kane more for his silver-age Green Lantern, last year's Green Lantern film release, DC revealed that they had based Hal Jordan on the looks of Paul Newman, Carol Ferris/Star-Sapphire in her magenta tiara and matching one piece swiming cosi plus boots was Elizabeth Taylor and Sinestro on the widow peaked, mautached, English actor David Niven. Gil was the master of changing perspectives, Green Lantern over the city, looking up from the floor at a villian who had bested him, angles and reverse angles were aplenty, quite an accomplished artist, maybe yearning movie director or Thomas Hardy fan. The English writer when one character was morally above the other would physically be writen thus. It is suggested his first Green Lantern uniform Marvel copied over to their X-men or other way about.
ReplyDeleteOldham Press at the tail end of the 1960's bought the Eagle title, the eagle had started as a Chritian comic it feature factual articles of places in the Bible, Colliseum ect relating it to the stories in the Bible suggesting that they might well be true. frank I understand was suffering what he called his Black Dogs, churchills term for periods of deep depression, he quit the magazine but Oldham reprinted his stories on the cover, and they opened the floodgates for Marvel to wow the British public as they printed in monchrome the Thor second feature: Tales of Asgard. Soon Oldham were reproducing Marvel stories in weekly Smash and Wham comics. Oldham who published Tiger, Hurrican and the Valiant went out of business, killed off by the more original Marvel Comics that they had introduced. Instead of two page stories as of old the Marvel ones were four or five page segments.
ReplyDeleteIn Smash I saw the early Jack Kirby illustrated Nick Fury stories and see his flying Porche in the Roger Moore: James Bond tenue Lotus car,submarine combo the way the wheels tuck up, dashboard turn over seem to echo frame for frame the way the film was shot. But that's what you get when Brocolli let his son write the script with assistance. But in truth Ian Fleming was influenced by Fu Manchu writer Sax Rohmer.
Sax Rohmer had failed in the civil service exam to get into the Foreign Office as he desired to see the world, he wrote horror stories involving mummies, though they sold, he hit paydirt with the books leaving the shelfs with Dr. Fu Manchu, writen about 1914.
One of his Fu Manchu books title was Yellow Claw. It all comes around. Fleming copied Rohmer's escaping situations. The evil oriental became popular, Hollywood films and radio plays, but in 1953 he signed over the copyright as he was ill and needed the money for treatment. He died broke.