Top Tens: The (at times) controversial Frank Thorne

Frank Thorne (1930- 2021) had a comic book career that spanned over 80 years starting in 1948 when he worked for Dell comics before moving to Gold Key in the 1950’s and then onto DC in the 1960's. However, it wasn't until the mid-1970's when I first became aware of his work when he drew Marvel's Red Sonja in "Marvel Feature" (vol 2 #2-7) and then when the character moved to her own comic. At first glance it’s not hard to see why a 15-year-old boy may have been attracted to Franks art, but he was much more than just a "good girl" artist he was an excellent storyteller. Saying that once Marvels Red Sonja title was cancelled, Frank did make a successful “career" from drawing erotic fantasy type characters including Lann, Ghita of Alizarr, and Ribit some of whom bore more than a passing resemblance to Red Sonja. Regardless of the controversial nature of some of his material, his earlier (Joe Kubert inspired) DC, and 1970's Marvel work remains some of my favourites of the genre.

Ribit: This was a really fun 4 issues fantasy series beautifully drawn by Frank about a lizard that was transformed into a young woman.

Frank was one of the many top artists that worked on the ill fated 1970's Atlas/Seaboard comics group. Apart from the above 3 covers he also drew part one of a very nice adapation of Lawrence of Arabia. Thorne also drew the interior art on the first and only issue of the "Son of Dracula" comic which was one of their best comics.

Planet of the Apes (UK weekly) issue 100 - I think this was a UK original and Franks only UK cover.

Above: Amazing Heroes #123 (pro-fanzine) cover which featured some of Frank Thornes more adult orientated characters . Frank Thorne passed away on 7th of March 2021 at the age of 90, followed only a few hours later by his wife of over 60 years Marylin.

Favourite Comics: Thrilling Adventure Stories #2

During the 1970’s comic book newcomers Atlas/Seaboard stormed on to the spinner racks with no less than 23 colour comic titles and 5 black and white "adult-orientated" mags. Despite the many problems the company faced they did produce some decent books with arguably their best title being the black and white anthology magazine “Thrilling Adventure Stories” (TAS), in particular issue 2 of that title. While the first issue of TAS was a good attempt the title exploded with its second and sadly final issue with some wonderful strips by the top writers and artists of the day all wrapped up in the above wonderful Neal Adams cover. Below are a few pages from what I consider to be one of the best black and white magazines of the 1970’s and beyond.

Above: The splash page from perhaps the most famous of all the stories in this issue by the legendary "Manhunter" team of Archie Goodman and Walt Simonson (which I may shown more of later)

Above: The magazines only returning character from TAS #1 "Kromag" by Gabriel Levy with art by Jack Sparling. Although Sparling wasn't one of the top hot comic artists at this time, this was a pretty decent strip.

Above: 2 pages from the John Albano and Russ Heath tale "Tough Cop" - Heath at this time never failed to produce anything less than jaw dropping art.

Above: 2 pages from "Town Tamer" by Steve Mitchell and the wonderful John Severin. Second page image from Comic Art Collectors ( I deleted my image in error after scanning and I'm too lazy to scan it again lol ).

Above: "A job well done" by Rick Meyer and Alex Toth. This was a pretty grim and gritty tale even for the 1970's expertly drawn by Toth who added some nice touches including not using word ballons.

Above: The cover to the first issue of "Thrilling Adventure Stories" by Ernie Colon.

This issue wasn't quite the end of TAS as in 2021 a third issue (of sorts) of "Thrlling Adventure Stories" was published featuring text stories of Targitt 2021/ Man Hunter and Bog Beast by Jeff Rovin, John Albano and Richard Meyers. Cover image from Amazon.

Favourite covers: The savage pencil of Neal Adams

There are so many exceptional artists who have produced amazing work on barbarian characters over the years including John Buscema, Barry Windsor Smith, and Earl Norem. But perhaps my favourite of these was the legendary Neal Adams. He didn't draw a lot of books in this genre but he did produce some of the best covers featuring savage barbarians. Below are some of my favourites.

Above the UK "Savage Sword of Conan" #15 featuring the cover of the US SSOC #2

Above: One of my all time favourite black and white magazines from the Atlas/Seaboard group - "Thrilling Adventure Stories" # 2 - more on this issue in my next blog.

Above: Conan the Barbarian # 37 - Another of my favourite comics which I have prattled on about previously.

Comics go to the movies

In celebration of the 97th Academy Awards (the Oscars) I thought I would look out a few of the comic book adaptions of some of the best SF / fantasy films of the bronze age. The above cover to "Marvel Special Edition" #1 (Star Wars) by Rick Hoberg is from the internet (I never had this book) but you can't focus on comic book adaptions of films without Star Wars.

"Alien The Illustrated Story": Written by Archie Goodwin with art by Walt Simonson. Simply put the Heavy Metal adaption of "Alien" is a blood-soaked comic book masterpiece. I have been looking for a copy of this book for years having read nothing but positive reviews, and only purchased my copy a few months ago - the hype was justified.

Logans Run - This was a 7 issue monthly series that adapted the popular 1976 film. Written by Gerry Conway with art by George Perez and Klaus Janson "Logans Run" is probably best known to comic book fans for featuring the first Thanos solo adventure story in # 6.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Cover by Bob Larkin. Written by Archie Goodwin with art by Walt Simonson and Klaus Janson - With such talent on board it's not surprising this was an excellent comic book adaption of one of the best ever SF movies

The Land that time Forgot - Cover by Nick Cardy - Written by Marv Wolfman with some nice art by Sonny Trinidad this comic was far better than the movie.

The Labyrinth - This book was illustrated by the great John Buscema from a script by Sid Jacobson. This didn't really contain big Johns best art, but it was largely faithful to the plot of the film. Following its initial release as a Marvel Super Special, the comic was split and released as a three-part limited series between November 1986 and January 1987. Cover from internet (I only have the 3 issue limited series comics - covers aren't as good)

Jaws 2 - Cover by Bob Larkin. Written by Richard Marshcall with art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. "Jaws 2" was the best of all the Jaws sequels and this adaption does the film justice. Colan's pencils are inked and painted by Tom Palmer and look excellent.

Planet of the Apes - Cover by Bob Larkin. Written by Doug Moench and illustrated by George Tuska and Mike Esposito . This is another of my favourite comic book film adaptions. I actually read this tale in the UK weekly POTA comic before I saw the film.

Milestones: The Super-Heroes" & "Savage Sword of Conan" first issues from 50 years ago!

Fifty years ago (yes, it really was that long ago) on the 8th March 1975, the company that would become known as Marvel UK expanded on its stable of 5 weekly titles by adding two more comics to its UK portfolio: "The Super-Heroes" (cover above) and "The Savage Sword of Conan" (cover below). While both titles were not that successful (Conan was a downright failure) I was initially pretty excited by their introduction as the Silver Surfer and Conan were (and still are) 2 of my all-time favourite comic book characters.

As was the case with most British comics the first issue (at least) always contained a free gift, in the case both titles this was a free poster (see below). The "Super-Heroes" comic initially featured reprints of the US Silver Surfer and X-Men strips and when the Silver Surfer reprints ran out (after issue 30), they were replaced by The Cat. Later issues of the title included Doc Savage, Giant Man, The Scarecrow, The Thing (from "Marvel Two-In-One"), Bloodstone, and Black Knight. I personally lost interest in the title after the Surfer tales ended as the revolving door of reprints (some looking very dated in 1975) were of little interest to me. The "Super-Heroes" comic only lasted for 50 issues before it merged with "Spider-Man Comics Weekly".

The "Savage Sword of Conan" reprinted the US tales from the colour "Conan the Barbarian" comic as well as "King Kull" strips. Despite containing some of the 1970's best illustrated and written comics, the title was not a success and was cancelled after just 18 issues on 5th July the same year. In a strange move by Marvel, they merged the Conan strip into the pages of the weekly "Avengers" title before Conan then moved into the pages of the "Mighty World of Marvel" weekly for a short time. Of course, you can't keep a barbarian down and Conan would eventually be resurrected as a successful monthly title in 1977.

Above the excellent free poster from the weekly "Savage Sword of Conan" by Neal Adams (the cover of issue 2 of the US "Savage Sword of Conan" magazine) - This was one of the few non-pop star ( Debbie Harry, Bowie, Velvet Underground etc) posters that I ever had on my bedroom wall as a teenager.

Bring on the Back ups: Alex Nino & Robert Kanigher - Space Voyagers

When it comes to drawing sci-fi, barbarian, fantasy and horror comics few artists can compare to Alex Nino. My first encounter with Nino's work was in the pages of "Adventure Comics" where he drew the Captain Fear back up strip, but it was in the pages of "Rima the Jungle Girl" (stunningly illustrated by Nester Redondo) that I came across one of my favourite of Alex Nino's many back up tales "Space Voyagers". These short 4 or 5 page strips written by Robert Kanigher showcased the talents of Alex Nino perfectly. Sadly "Space Voyagers" only lasted for 5 issues before "Rima the Jungle Girl " was cancelled. Below is my favourite of the series from the last issue of Rima:

Although Nino's page layouts could at times be overly detiled and confusing (but always interesting) on "Space Voyagers" he kept it simple and a joy to look at.

Above the cover to the final issue of "Rima the Jungle Girl" where this tale was taken from.

Bizarre Characters: Arm-Fall-Off Boy

There are weird comic book characters and then there are really stupid comic book characters and Arm-Fall-Off-Boy probably falls into the latter of these two descriptions. Arm-Fall-Off-Boy’s first appearance was in Secret Origins Vol. 2 #46, in December 1989 in a story based on a fan parody, this came as a bit of a surprise to me as in my mind the character was a throwback to the late 1960’s silliness of DC comics. The characters powers are pretty much as you would expect from his name, he can detach his own limbs and use them as weapons – well I did say he is a pretty stupid character.

Above the splash page from the"Sercret Origins" tale that introduced Arm-Fall-Off Boy to an unsuspecting world. The only thing more surprising than a comic character with these powers was the fact that DC hired Superman legend Curt Swan to illustrated this tale.

Despite the silliness of the character, DC did give Floyd Belkin aka Arm-Fall-Off-Boy a second outing in the pages of “The Legion of Superheroes in the 31st Century “(splash page above at header) which featured tales based on the Warner Bros animated cartoon series of the same name.This was actually a really fun comic expertly illustrated by Shawn McManus as can be seen from the opening page above.

Despite the abusurdity of the character Arm Fall-Off Boy has even been used in movies where his name was changed to TDK (The Detachable Kid) played by Nathan Fillion, a member of the Suicide Squad. And in comics in an attempt to make him more believable, the character was reintroduced as Splitter.

Above the cover to "Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century" Despite my misgivings of the character I actually enjoyed both this comic and Secret Origins # 46.