Lands Of The Lost!

Mankind's fascination with unknown territories is the very stuff of myth and legend and adventure. We are a species not content to live within our established habitats, we have constantly sought out the mysteries of hidden lands and then converted them. if possible, to our use. We even imagine it is our right to do so as the dominant species on this planet, either by dint of a god's imprimatur or

seeming evolutionary superiority. With our globe largely settled now (at least the terrestrial parts) we feel an impulse to push into space or beneath the waves to find yet more "lands of the lost". What we will find in these hidden territories we don't really know, but as often as not thanks to our popular literature we suspect we'll find dinosaurs.

Land of the Lost was a terrifically entertaining television show by Sid and Marty Krofft productions. It hails from those halcyon days of the 1970's, an era much put upon by modern opinion the days. 
the show concerned itself with a family of a father, a son and a daughter who fall into a strange land by a means unexplained and have to not only survive but use their wits and strengths to solve the abounding mysteries so that perhaps one day they can return home. And they do find dinosaurs. It was a very entertaining show in a cascade of Saturday morning fair that had often lost its luster in the 70's. It was also a show that had some fascinating science fiction at its core, a commodity all too common in popular entertainment today but rare and of great price back then.  So look for a Land of the Lost review each Saturday this month. 

Hanna-Barbera got in on this kind of story with Valley of the Dinosaurs. This cartoon series was about yet another family which became stranded in a prehistoric world. Given the freedom of animation and a lighter tone we get a different kind of interaction. Also, the prehistoric people in this one are bit more designed along traditional caveman tropes. There was also a Charlton Comics series developed from this show. 

Another Saturday morning offering about a Stone-Age family was Korg:70,000 B.C. which was live action despite also being a Hanna-Barbera offering. This was a surprisingly relaxed and serious presentation which attempted to show a Neanderthal family dealing with the rigors of their dangerous world. The narration by Burgess Meredith is warm and friendly and does much to make the show enjoyable. Bronson Canyon gets showcased in this TV effort. Charlton Comics produced some dandy work by Pat Boyette in support of his show as well. 

Pellucidar was the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a magnificent world it is. It's at the center of the Earth and operates with entirely different physics than does the world we live in here on the surface. David Innes in At The Earth's Core went to Pellucidar by means of an iron mole and found there the love of his life, the vivacious Dian. DC adapted some of these stories when the picked up the license for ERB's creations in the early 70's. 

Burroughs also created Caspak, another strange land in which evolution is explored with some startling differences. Caspak was presented in a trio of novels beginning with The Land that Time Forgot. Later Russ Manning had Tarzan himself visit the bizarre island in two beautiful adventures. 

One of the earliest Burroughs efforts is a strange story originally titled The Eternal Lover. Given the more robust title of The Eternal Savage it and its companion story Nu of the Neocene tell how an ancient caveman came to live in modern times on the Tarzan estate in Africa. 

More Tarzan thrills as I wrap up my look at Burne Hogarth's spin on the Lord of the Jungle. We'll look at his final comic strips as well as the lush 70's work he did on the Ape Man. 

Skull the Slayer is an oddball little item from Marvel's hectic Bronze Age. It's a vintage lost world story with the obligatory dinosaurs but loaded up with much more, including aliens, deadly Incans, and the Black Knight to boot. 

One of my favorite Indy books was Mark Schultz's Xenozoic Tales (also known as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) for Kitchen Sink. This black and white beauty showcased Schultz's developing art and takes the reader on a grand tour of a world which has survived an apocalypse but with some startling changes. 

And dinosaurs are also on the schedule for Showcase Presents: The War that Time Forgot. This series became a mainstay of Star-Spangled War Stories with many tales of dumfounded G.I.s battling an astonishing array of prehistoric monstrosities. This volume doesn't quite have all of the stories, but it has quite a lot. Catch it in this month's "Showcase Corner". 

And The War that Time Forgot was too good a concept to ignore and so DC has brushed it off and brought it forward a few more times over the decades, often blending it with their other creations. In this version by Bruce Jones we see a clutch of DC's vintage heroes from many periods of time come together to stand up to the dinosaur menace. 

And no look at lost worlds would be complete without including Turok Son of Stone who with his staunch ally Andar was stranded in the Lost Valley fighting cavemen and "Honkers" for several decades in those Dell and Gold Key classics. "Sundays of Stone" will return this month. 

All this and even more exciting prehistoric ephemera in this first full month of Spring. Keep your head on a swivel for deadly dinosaurs amigos. 

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