The Charlton Konga!

Of all the great apes in science fiction, including the great King Kong himself, the humble Konga from American International was the one to find success in comics. Konga was picked up by Charlton Comics and offered at first as a compliment to the film itself. But it became a relative success for Charlton and ran for nearly half a decade. Much of that success was due the fabulous artwork of Steve Ditko who was at the same time making his mark at Marvel on science fiction stories, ghost yarns, and superheroes such as the Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. 

The comic stayed reasonably close to the set up in the film for the first several issues of its run. In the comic the side characters Sandra and Bob are not killed as they are in the movie and Doctor Decker is a much more reasonable man, though no less a tragic one. Through Sandra and Bob we get a second Konga, using Decker's theories and it is this Konga who is the focus of the remaining issues of the run. Eventually this second genesis is forgotten and Konga is again presumed to be the original, though it's murky. Joe Gill wrote the Konga stories and in these tales he spends his time fighting sea monsters, space aliens and the Red Menace. He also is the reason for many young couples to find love, as it is the people around the lonely figure of Konga who are the center of our attention. 

Artists other than Ditko worked on the series. Dick Giordano drew many of the covers and the fine team of Bill Montes and Ernie Bache took over the series after Ditko withdrew. Their take on the giant ape made him a cuter figure despite his great bulk, and their charming style always makes everyone resemble dolls somehow. It works very well on this series. Other artists are Charles Nicholas and Nick Alascia who created the second issue between Ditko's run. 

Here are the covers for the run. 

This reprint from 1968 was the final issue of Konga from Charlton Comics. 

I read the series this time in the two-volume reprint series which offers a barebones reprinting of the stories scanned from the original copies. The quality of some of the scans is suspect, but it's handy to have all of this epic tale in a couple of handy volumes. 

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