The Myth Of Kong!

King Kong is a myth. Imagined by Merian C. Cooper and fashioned with the help of a writers such as Edgar Wallace, Ruth Rose, James Creelman, and Delos Lovelace. But King Kong was also created by Willis O'Brien, a master of stop-motion filmmaking who took a model and turned it into a legend with the help of talented folks like Marcel Delgado. I daresay it's impossible to say that King Kong is the creation of any one person, but the result of the merging of the imaginations and talents of many persons. He is a whole greater the sum of his parts. 

Over the decades countless others have added to the myth with new versions of the mighty beast from Ishiro Honda, John Guillerman, Peter Jackson, and others. He's been rendered as a Saturday morning cartoon, and later cartoons as well, and weirdly even for an animated musical. There have been countless comic books from many publishers. And the story has been analyzed by film critics and literary critics and academics. So, I put forth that no two people on the planet understand King Kong in quite the same way. 

I first encountered the mighty ape of Skull Island in the Gold Key comic book adaptation. Then I saw the Saturday morning cartoon show. Then found the novel and only later was I able to finally see the movie on television. 

And then I was watching an edited version which had been cut for reasons of violence and racial tolerance. It was only years later that I saw the full film after it was reconstituted. And by that time, we had remakes and sequels to remakes and parodies in places like MAD magazine, Not Brand Echh, and elsewhere. The King Kong of my imagination as has much "Ping Pong" and "King Konk" in its fabric as anything from the films. 

So, when someone like Joe DeVito comes along and wants to tinker with the King Kong mythology, I'm all ears. I'll be delving into the various books which have developed what I've dubbed the "Devitoverse". In these various tomes the story of Kong is expanded, and details are added which are intended to expand the world of Kong and of Skull Island and explain some aspects of the original story which are glossed over by the original creators. In their retelling of the original story, we get added scenes aboard the ship which expand the characters and new characters are brought into the yarn which answer the questions about how the Denham expedition was able to manage and transport Kong. 

Above are the books by DeVito and Will Murray which tell the untold saga of Kong. In one we return to Skull Island in 1957 and learn what became of Kong and of Carl Denham and others in the original cast. In the two books by Murray, we see how King Kong came to be in Africa and met a certain Lord of the Jungle as he was being transported to New York City to begin with and how Doc Savage already was familiar with the great beast after his fall from the Empire State Building and what he did then. 

This is one retelling of the Kong myth. There are countless more, but idulge with me this week as we visit the "DeVitoverse" and learn the origins of King Kong. 

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