Konga and Gorgo make a cameo of sorts in 1990 in Marvel's
Web of Spider-Man Annual #6. That appearance is Steve Ditko's final take on these two monsters in a story by fan of those 60's comics Tony Isabella. Renaming the two monsters "Kongo" and "Gorga", Isabella has the two Charlton giants appear as a product of the nigh unlimited power of Captain Universe, a power that endows various individuals with that power. This time in a story titled "Child Star" it's a kid who gets the power and he uses it to save the world from two demons. The page above shows the appearances of the Charlton monsters in their Marvelized forms.
I read this story in the Captain Universe collection Marvel issued some years ago.
Steve Ditko drew several
Captain Universe stories. The character was a spin-off of
The Micronauts series.
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Ironic that Ditko's last Gorgo and Kong hurrah would end up being in a Marvel title. If it hadn't been for Isabella, it's likely Charlton would have been their last home.
ReplyDeleteTony Isabella loved these monsters and it's his affection which convinced me to give them a closer look.
DeleteThanks for mentioning this oddball short tale. An additional irony is that even though Ditko swore he'd never work on SPIDER-MAN again, the Isabella-Ditko story got placed in a SPIDER-MAN title anyway-- the same one in which, for some reason most fans won't recall, Stan Lee himself purportedly scripted the feature S-M story. So in a strange way, Lee and Ditko again appeared within the covers of the same SPIDEY book. I like to assume Stan was not responsible for the tone-deaf use of the title "Up from Slavery" for a routine Spidey-fights-aliens tale.
ReplyDeleteLee and Ditko between two covers on two different stories is about as close as it could get I reckon.
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