Thursday, November 27, 2014

Martians Illustrated Again!

Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum

In 1976 Marvel Comics was publishing a number of new adaptations of a host of classic tales and soon enough War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells was picked to be a part of the run. Dave Cockrum apparently was given the nod to design the tripods for this one though the story itself was written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Yong Montano and Dino Castrillo, two of the reliable cadre of Philipino artists who powered through Bronze Age comics.

Below is a glimpse of two of the better splash pages.



Here's a nice peek at Dave Cockrum's own work and his design for the Martians and their awesome war machines.


Marvel adapted three other Wells stories.




To read Marvel's The War of the Worlds in all its glory check out this very Groovy link.

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4 comments:

  1. GrahamNovember 27, 2014 at 12:37 PM

    Hi, Rip. Was thinking that I remembered seeing that Marvel also did H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon as part of the Classic Comics series, too, and a look at the cover of #31 shows that they did. However, but the cover showed it as being written by Jules Verne, who wrote From the Earth to the Moon.

    When I was in grade school, I remembered seeing the first dozen or so of these in our school library, in black and white format, in a series of small paperbacks. A couple of years later Marvel presented them in full color, which was cool because hopefully, it gave more people the chance to find out about them, and maybe go back and read the books in the process.

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    1. Rip JaggerNovember 29, 2014 at 2:55 AM

      Classics comics were a neat sly window into some reading which seemed a bit off-putting when you got a look at the original volume. I've read so many classic comics and so many novels, I sometimes cannot remember which I've actually read in the original and which only the comic version.

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  2. Britt ReidNovember 28, 2014 at 12:53 AM

    Graham is correct.
    1-12 of the Marvel Classics Comics series were reprints of Pendulum Press digest-sized b/w books which had heavy cardstock covers.
    They were distributed to libraries and schools through a book club distribution system, though not Scholastic Books.
    Besides the comics, there were manuals to help teachers incorporate the comics into their lesson plans.
    From #13 onward, Marvel did new material.

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