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.