1974: MARVEL'S PLANET OF THE APES MAGAZINE ISSUE 1

From 1974: The first issue of Marvel's PLANET OF THE APES magazine.

It's safe to say that Marvel, along with most other Apes merchandisers, were very late to the Apes party.  FOX really started to push the franchise when reruns of the movies became a TV hit, leading to the launch of the short-lived POTA live-action TV series.

The show was something of a missed opportunity.  The weekly format left the door wide open to further explore the future but - instead - the producers (imported - rather tellingly - from Saturday morning animation) opted to graft the familiar FUGITIVE formula (beloved of Seventies SF shows for no good reason and with little success) onto a neutered version of the first film.

Ironically, despite being tempted by the ratings bonanza promised by an Apes ongoing series (it didn't happen... the show was cancelled after only 14 episodes... and there has always been some question about whether all fourteen ever played... officially they didn't), Marvel's license covered strip adaptations of the movies, and new stories set within their universe, but not the TV show itself.  Although they covered that in text features within the magazine.

Marvel hit some last-minute licensing problems with this first issue and had to pulp some of the already printed pages.  The terms of their license - as was industry standard - did not include the right to portray the actors in print.  Fox, at the last moment, got cold feet that - despite being deliberately generic - Charlton Heston (apparently notorious for calling in the lawyers) might still sue.  So, with the first pages already rolling off the presses, Marvel had to call a hault whilst the pages were reworked by the Bullpen and then reprinted.

The strips and articles that appeared in the US magazine were - of course - ported across to the British weekly edition.  Publishing the two editions created all sorts of deadline headaches with the British edition always running close to exhausting the supply of unpublished US strips.  Some material appeared in the UK before the States (and individual pages were sometimes reworked - with panels cut - for the US edition) and - infamously - Apeslayer was created, from old Killraven pages, just to plug a gap for a few weeks.

The American magazine ultimately ran to 29 issues between 1974-77.  It spun off a regular colour comic, ADVENTURES ON THE PLANET OF THE APES, which coloured and reprinted the adaptations of the first two movies, in 1975.

The British weekly clocked up 123 issues, also between 1974 to 1977.  It absorbed the British edition of DRACULA LIVES from issue 88 and continued as a double-header for the rest of the run.  The POTA strip then moved across to THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL (from issue 231) where the remaining US material ran through to 246.  At which point Marvel surrendered the license.  The Apes slot on MWOM was taken by Dracula reprints, on hiatus since the merger.

Malibu Comics picked up the license in 1990 and mixed some Marvel reprints into their publishing schedule.  They reissued Marvel's adaptations of the first three movies (ESCAPE is interesting as it opens with a deleted scene that doesn't appear in the finished film but was - it seems - filmed and subsequently lost) and a four-issue limited series that reran the TERROR ON THE PLANET OF THE APES storyline.  All of the Malibu editions are now pretty hard to find.

This year should see the first reprints of the Marvel strips in book form... and I'm looking forward to finally seeing them widely available again.

The Marvel magazine always boasted the most wonderful covers.  These were mixed into the British run alongside a lot of specially-commissioned, and mostly not-as-good, new covers.  STARLOGGED has published a full UK POTA Apes gallery in the dim-and-distant past.

The Apes returned to British newsagents in 2001 for a brief run of a tie-in magazine/ comic pegged to the Tim Burton revival.  The terms of the licesne restricted any crossover with the classic Apes saga.  The lackluster response to the movie quickly sealed the fate of the tie-in.

1974: BUSTER BOOK OF SPOOKY STORIES 1975 (IPC)

From 1974: Not the sort of thing you'd expect from BUSTER...

In what must constitute one of the oddest brand extensions from the IPC stable, Kings Reach Tower issued this not-quite-like-the-weekly BUSTER BOOK OF SPOOKY STORIES (described as an "annual" but actually more akin to a softback album) in late 1974 for the Halloween/ gifting season.  

Does Skinn (him again) put this (and the following year's second and final outing) together after his pitch for a new IPC horror weekly (to be called CHILLER... a name he finally revived as one of the MARVEL UK POCKET BOOKS in 1980) was staked by the publisher's higher echelons. Apparently they didn't see the potential/ didn't fancy the backlash (delete as applicable) of a horror comic but thought they would get away with it... and shift more copies... by making it into a spin-off from one of their venerable humour weeklies (Buster turned out to be a good choice... it eventually became the once mighty humour group's last-man-standing title... before eventually succumbing as well). Despite the association, the links with the weekly were actually few and far between with the normal Fleetway mix of new commissions and vintage already-paid-for reprints residing in the Fleetway vaults. 

Copies of these two books don't seem to surface very often. I found this in a secondhand bookstore last year for a couple of pounds. 

1974: MONSTERS OF THE MOVIES Issue 1 (Marvel/ Curtis)

From June 1974: the debut issue of Marvel's MONSTERS OF THE MOVIES magazine, an obvious me-to attempt to cash in on the ongoing success of Jim Warren's FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND.

The magazine boasted colour covers with black & white interiors on the cheapest possible paper, ideally unsuited for reproducing movie stills with any clarity. It was published under the Curtis rather than Marvel brand. The brand was finally phased out circa 1980, by which point Marvel only occasionally dabbled into the magazine realm. 

Despite the long running success of the Warren book, Marvel couldn't make this one stick and they pulled the plug, in 1975, after a mere eight issues. The title bounced back one final time with an annual (AKA issue nine), boasting a great Spock cover, which I've posted previously.

Although the interiors are underwhelming, and don't feature any comics material, the covers are universally gorgeous: supplied by Luis Domingquez and Bob Larkin (with Gray Morrow stepping in for the annual). 

1974: PLANET OF THE APES POSTER MAGAZINE (Top Sellers)

From 1974: the British PLANET OF THE APES POSTER MAGAZINE, published by Top Sellers.  

This coincided with the UK broadcast (which, I think, followed very hot-on-the-heels from the CBS screenings) of the TV series... a show that sparked far more interest here (and other overseas markets) than it did in the States... hence its very swift cancellation.  

Marvel UK launched their PLANET OF THE APES weekly in October (see here) and, I wouldn't mind betting, this surfaced around the same time.  

The text features covered the five movies, mentioned the TV show a bit and interviewed (possibly recycled from somewhere else... or supplied as part of a PR package) Roddy McDowall. 

1974: PLANET OF THE APES Novelization 1: MAN THE FUGITIVE

From 1974: the first (of four) of the novelizations adapting episodes of the short-lived CBS small-screen version of PLANET OF THE APES: MAN THE FUGITIVE.  

Rather than starting at the start (Escape From Tomorrow), this jumps in with adaptations of the twelfth (in network TX order) episode "The Cure" and fourth (The Good Seeds).  Go figure. 

1974: THE MARVEL SUPER-HERO INDEX

From March 1974: THE MARVEL SUPER-HERO INDEX, published by Alan Austin.

Remember when the Marvel Universe was a far more simple place?  With only a decade of appearances and (relatively) coherent internal continuity?  

This British produced guide is a throwback to that time.  I found it in my local comic book store recently.  

I've also been picking-up various Marvel first issues lately, often from the 1990s (the impending volume in their nice series of FIRSTS trade paperbacks has suddenly switched from overpriced trade (as per the previous versions) to £100 hardback whopper... which means its cheaper to raid the 50p boxes.  And, the book still only has a smattering of the myriad of launches from the time), and it struck me that indexing and cross referencing the 1990s would be a heck of a lot more complicated than tracking Marvel's first ten-or-so years.  

And today's relaunches and reboots just leave me thinking "meh". 

1974: MARVEL UK GOES GLOSSY House Ad

From January 1974: Another Mighty Marvel UK landmark moment: glossy covers!

I always think of glossy covers and the defining feature of British Marvel.  They always helped the line standout when racked alongside the IPC and DCT weeklies and their (usually) bargain-basement production standards (of course, they were investing a lot more in originating new material rather than just recycling from the States).

So, it's easy to forget that in the early (and late) Seventies, Marvel's British weeklies had newsprint covers.  THE AVENGERS, their third launch (September 1973), was the first to dabble in the new format... and their two existing titles followed at the turn of the year.  

Glossy covers and 36-page interiors remained the default format (with a few exceptions: CAPTAIN BRITAIN sacrificed the glossy covers in favour of colour interior pages, FURY deliberately aped the low-fi formats of its war rivals and STAR WARS WEEKLY sliced four pages to make life easier for the pushed-for-filler Bullpen and to recoup the costs of the license) until the Marvel Revolution of 1979 tried to make Marvel's comics look the same as all the others.  

STAR WARS WEEKLY and DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY retained their glossy exteriors throughout the Revolution (because it allowed them to showcase stills to catch the attention of casual browsers) and shiny covers returned (coinciding with the start of the SPIDER-MAN live-action TV show in the UK) in late 1981.  

They remained, with the occasional exception (the experimental THE THING IS BIG BEN), throughout the rest of the history of the Annex of Ideas... although some formats were more glossy than others. 

1974: GIANT SUPERHERO HOLIDAY GRAB-BAG House Ad (Marvel UK)

From late 1974: a MARVEL UK House Ad for that year's festive-themed GIANT SUPERHERO HOLIDAY GRAB-BAG, the latest imported installment in the ongoing run of Marvel Treasury Editions.  100 pages of tabloid goodness. 

1974: CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM MARVEL UK

From December 1974: The cult of Stan grows again with this seasonal greeting from the MARVEL UK weeklies...

1974: PLANET OF THE APES and DRACULA LIVES Launch Ads (Marvel UK)

 

It was forty years ago this week...  Here are some MARVEL UK House Ads for their two October 1974 new weeklies: PLANET OF THE APES and DRACULA LIVES.  

1974: PLANET OF THE APES and DRACULA LIVES Launch (Marvel UK)

 

Regular reader Colin Jones (Hi Colin... and thanks!) tipped me off yesterday that it was 40 years ago this very week that MARVEL UK launched these two iconic new weeklies: PLANET OF THE APES and DRACULA LIVES.  

Not only are these both stonking reads but they were also landmark issues for the Annex of Ideas:

• These were the fourth and fifth (following THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL, SPIDER-MAN and THE AVENGERS) weeklies launched in the UK.
• They were the first of the British weeklies to feature contemporary, made-the-same-decade, strips as the main attraction.  THE AVENGERS weekly had already, riding the martial arts craze, included Masters of Kung Fu and and Iron Fist.  The tight turnaround between the two sides of the operation created scheduling problems later (hello Apeslayer!).
• Both of them were a departure from Marvel's usual super-powered stable.  Marvel UK's next experiment, SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN, in March 1975, didn't fare so well. 
• POTA was the first time that Marvel had adapted a screen property.  The POTA TV show (which mustered more enthusiasm in the UK and other international markets than it did on CBS in the States) premiered around the same time and, although Marvel didn't have the strip rights, they could benefit from the free marketing.  
• Horror was also something new for the Annex of Ideas.  The black & white format, and larger pages, actually benefited the strips and gave them a Hammer noir atmosphere.  Surprisingly, the contents didn't seem to ever generate any negative publicity in the British press.  Something that, maybe, IPC's nervous management should have noted when they got cold feet over SCREAM a decade later.  
• This was the first time that British Marvel had launched two new titles simultaneously and, as such, marked a significant expansion for the small operation. 
• For the record, DRACULA LIVES clocked up a run of 87 issues before merging with its stable (coffin?) mate.  POTA eventually ran for 123 issues before folding into THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL (allowing Marvel to burn-off the last of the licensed strips). 
• DRACULA LIVES, without benefit of a merger, became DRACULA LIVES FEATURING THE LEGION OF MONSTERS from issue 60 with, MWOM style, the interlopers given prominent billing on the masthead. 

I've covered POTA in several previous posts (including cover galleries and the "missing" prelude to ESCAPE FROM THE POTA) and I've always planned to do more with DL once I've unboxed my collection from storage.

This is also an appropriate place to mention that Titan Books have a new hardback overview of the whole saga in shops now (not to be confused with their excellent art book devoted to the two recent revivals).  I've not had a chance to study the text in detail (so much scanning... so little time) but it looks a highly agreeable addition to anyone's bookshelves and, probably, the most significant new tome on the saga (except for the excellent SIMEON SCROLLS fanzine and the two Hasslein volumes) since the 2001 book boom.  

1974: STAN LEE VISITS THE UK (Marvel UK)

I've already published details, from the MARVEL UK weeklies, of STAN LEE's October 1975 sojourn to the UK, including the ICA exhibition and his one-night-only outing at the Roundhouse, but Stan was making annual (or more) transatlantic trips throughout the seventies.

Here's a full page account (published 25 January 1975) of his 1974 trip including a TV appearance on PEBBLE MILL AT ONE, presumably now purged from the BBC archives.

1974: MARVEL 1975 ANNUALS HOUSE AD (Marvel UK)

As I posted last week, this is the beginning of "ANNUAL SEASON", that time of year when no visit to a larger newsagent or bookshop wasn't complete without perusing the copious number of annuals on sale.

Today's house ad, from November 1974, plugs MARVEL UK's three 1975 cover-dated offerings: MARVEL, THE AVENGERS and SPIDER-MAN.

1974: COUNT DRACULA'S SECRET ICE LOLLY ADVERT

Dracula sucks! Or, Suck Dracula!  

This full-page advert for the COUNT DRACULA'S SECRET (or - possibly COUNT DRACULA'S DEADLY SECRET, it's hard to tell from the advert) ice lolly is from July 1974.

1974: MARVEL COLLECTORS MEDALLION-COINS (Marvel UK)

Years before SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER made them an essential seventies accessory,  British readers could step-out with these bronze MARVEL COLLECTORS MEDALLION-COINS, as plugged in this August 1974 copy of a Marvel UK weekly.

1974: MARVEL TREASURY EDITIONS - MARVEL UK ADVERTS

The new issue of the ever-brilliant BACK ISSUE MAGAZINE is now on sale on both sides of the Atlantic.  And, if you go down to the Geek Store today, you won't be able to miss it.  Just look for the huge Alex Ross Legion of Super Heroes cover.  Yup, it really is huge.  The new BI looks back at TREASURY COMICS from various publishers and gets in the mood by going - for one issue only - tabloid-sized too.

So I've been rummaging in the Slow Robot vaults and found these early Marvel UK House Ads for imported copies of Marvel's Treasury Editions, starting from the start in 1974.

These ads appeared in the UK weeklies, reminding British Bullpen Buyers to seek out these oversized monsters.  

The dates beneath each ad correspond with the month they appeared, although some may have started to appear slightly earlier... or continued to appear into the following month.

These Treasury Editions are one of the reasons that Marvel UK didn't publish standalone Holiday Specials (a great British comics tradition) until the summer of 1979 (under the stewardship of Dez Skinn), these imports were considered to serve a similar function (although their publication wasn't limited to the traditional school holiday sales dates).

The imports continued throughout the 1970s, although I can't be certain that the entire US range reached British newsagents.  Also, despite the heavy plugging, I'm not sure quite how well they were distributed.

The books themselves were identical to the US editions, just with the US price box substituted for the UK one.

ISSUE 1

September 1974

ISSUE 2

March 1975

ISSUE 3

April 1975

ISSUE 4

July 1975

ISSUE 5

August 1975

ISSUE 6

September 1976

1974: MARVEL UK POSTER OFFER

Here's a Mighty Marvel UK offer from April 1974: MARVEL POSTERS (by an uncredited Spanish artist... any ideas?)!  Six poster for 90p (and that includes VAT and the postage). Brilliant!  What could possibly go wrong?  

Well... as it happens...

As this Bullpen Bulletins (masquerading as the Marvel Bulletin Board) page from August 1974 shows, the posters were delayed (apparently by a combination of vaguely feasible events... including a missing Daredevil poster) on their land journey across the continent to the UK.

What I do find intriguing is the reference to "announcements in the Daily Express and Daily Mirror".  Does this mean that the poster offer also ran in those papers (possibly as an editorial promotion) and Marvel were forced to apologise there to?  Why else would they want to draw attention to their failures in logistics?  Did anyone reading this get the posters through the papers?  Was it their first introduction to - ahem - the mighty world of Marvel?

1974: MARVEL UK'S WEEKLIES GET GLOSSY COVERS

Here's a monumental moment in the hallowed history of Marvel UK: the time, in January 1974, when the Annex of Ideas' weeklies adopted glossy covers and what became their standard seventies format.

Prior to this point, Marvel's UK books had cheap covers and interiors using the same paper stock throughout, except for colour printing on the covers.

THE AVENGERS weekly was the first to go glossy, from issue one, followed by its older siblings THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL and SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY.

The glossy covers would remain until January 1979 and Dez Skinn's Marvel Revolution which drastically overhauled the superhero books (what we call the 'Skinn I' format) but left STAR WARS WEEKLY largely unscathed.

Glossy covers would stage a triumphant return in 1981 and remain, with a few exceptions (THE THING IS BIG BEN, THE PUNISHER, THE INCREDIBLE HULK PRESENTS etc), until the company became Panini Comics in 1995.

1974: KILLDOZER (TVM)

Connoisseurs of seventies (and early eighties) tele-fright-flicks know that they're a mix of the really rather good (DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW, THE NIGHT STALKER), the legendary (SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, CROWHAVEN FARM, PHANTOM OF HOLLYWOOD) and the daft (CRUISE INTO TERROR, DISASTER ON THE COASTLINER).

Steven Spielberg's 1971 classic DUEL (originally an ABC flick of the week later given a theatrical release with some extra footage to bump-up the thrills and the running time) made other menacing-machine-movies inevitable and Universal turned to Theodore Sturgeon's 1944 novella for more of the same.

The 1974 TVM is seventy-odd minutes of a (swiftly diminishing) construction crew, having accidentally awakened an ancient alien entity somehow entombed in a half-meriod bit of space rock, being (very) slowly menaced by the mean-spirited machine.  It's very silly stuff, completely lacking in menace despite the hardware-of-hate's success in offing the bumbling humans.  Not even The Asylum would dare to remake this one.

Marvel rolled-out its own adaptation of the novella at the beginning of '74, presumably tipped-off that the TV movie was in production.

ORIGINAL ABC TRAIL

1974

THE FULL TV MOVIE

(It's a good quality print too - better than the bootlegs that have been doing the rounds)

ORIGINAL ABC PRESS ADVERT

1974

WORLDS UNKNOWN - Marvel Comics USA

ISSUE 6

April 1974

Marvel's adaptation of the Sturgeon book, published several months before the broadcast of the tele-flick.

1974: PLANET OF THE APES (MARVEL UK EDITION) - PART 1

Back to 1974 and Marvel UK... GOES APE!

- The first PLANET OF THE APES film was released in 1968, the last (BATTLE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) in 1973.
- The second film, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, had already been adapted by US publisher Gold Key Comics in 1970.  Marvel adapted it for a second time.
- The POTA material published in the weekly was, with one exception, all also seen in the US black and white PLANET OF THE APES magazine, published by Marvel New York's Curtis Magazines imprint (29 issues, 1974-77).
- The UK POTA weekly launched the same week as the horror-themed DRACULA LIVES weekly.
- POTA was the first Marvel comic based on a Hollywood property.
- Future SMASH HITS editor (and pop star) Neil Tennant was Marvel's London editor although most production work was handled by the New York office.
- POTA was the first M-UK title to publish material almost simultaneously with the United States.  This meant, at times, that the UK edition was running material BEFORE the US edition, effectively making the US magazine the reprint.
- This unique situation, and the UK strip's more flexible page count, occasionally meant that panels published in the UK weekly were omitted (to condense pages) in the US magazine.
- Marvel UK's other weeklies were still reprinting sixties inventory, giving them the luxury of not having to worry about the supply running out anytime soon.  Not so for POTA and, in issues 23 - 30, Marvel had to devise a brief filler to bridge the gap before regular service was resumed.  The cost-conscious solution was APESLAYER, butchered reprints of US Killraven strips, replacing the existing aliens with apes!
- The weekly ran a mix of covers created for the US magazine and newly created covers by American artists.
- US writer Doug Moench adapted all five Apes movies... but never even saw the later ones.  In the days before VHS, and working years after they were released in movie houses, he had no practical way of viewing them.  He worked from scripts instead.
- Marvel encountered an unexpected problem with their adaptation of the first movie.  Their license didn't include likeness rights to actor Charlton Heston so Marvel's Taylor was deliberately drawn to look very different.  Except FOX's licensing people thought their first efforts still looked too much like the actor... and demanded changes.
- The weekly ran for 123 issues.  It absorbed DRACULA LIVES from issue 88, adding US Tomb of Dracula reprints.  It merged with THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL from 231, running Apes material until 246 (June 1977).
- Back-up strips included the jungle-themed Ka-zar, adaptations of Killdozer (also made into a TV movie) and The Day of the Triffids (years before the BBC adaptation), Tomb of Dracula and Man-Thing (carried-over from the cancelled DRACULA LIVES) and, latterly, Conan the Barbarian.
- The UK saw three hardback POTA annuals, from Brown & Watson, published from 1975-77.  These were based on the TV series and published independently of Marvel.
- Both the US and UK editions ran articles on the making of the POTA TV series but Marvel never secured the comic strip rights.  The only strips to feature the characters and situations appeared in the UK annuals and an unlicensed Argentine comic.
- The first part of Marvel's ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES adaptation features an apes-in-space sequence entirely omitted from the film.  This sequence was scripted (and possibly shot) but the film begins with the craft already splash-landed on 20th century Earth.

ISSUE 1

26 October 1974

PLANET OF THE APES movie adaptation begins.

Free poster.

Stan Lee editorial from issue 1.

ISSUE 2

2 November 1974

ISSUE 3

9 November 1974

ISSUE 4

16 November 1974

ISSUE 5

22 November 1974

ISSUE 6

30 November 1974

ISSUE 7

7 December 1974

ISSUE 8

14 December 1974

ISSUE 9

21 December 1974

ISSUE 10

29 December 1974

ISSUE 11

4 January 1975

ISSUE 12

11 January 1975

ISSUE 13

18 January 1975

ISSUE 14

25 January 1975

ISSUE 15

1 February 1975

ISSUE 16

8 February 1975

ISSUE 17

15 February 1975

ISSUE 18

22 February 1975

ISSUE 19

1 March 1975

ISSUE 20

8 March 1975

ISSUE 21

15 March 1975

ISSUE 22

22 March 1975

ISSUE 23

29 March 1975

ISSUE 24

5 April 1975

ISSUE 25

12 April 1975

- TO BE CONTINUED -