The Charlton Reptilicus!

Reptilicus was the least successful of Charlton's monster trio, likely because the monster is the least identifiable of the three monsters. It's just an animal, large and often ferocious, but still difficult to get any sense of what Reptilicus is thinking. Also, Reptilicus never was graced with the artistic power of Steve Ditko, instead had to deal with the competent but less exciting duo of Charles Nicholas and Nick Alascia. And besides that, there are only technically two issue of "Reptilicus", because Charlton lost the rights to the name. 

Sid Pink was not happy with the sexual elements added to the novelization of the movie story published under Charlton's Monarch brand. He pulled the rights I assume, and Charlton was left with only two comics titled Reptilicus. 

The first issue featured a great Rocke Mastroserio cover while the second featured the artwork of Dick Giordano with the Nicholas and Alascia combo still on board between the covers. Reptilicus revives and threatens areas of Africa in the sequel. As far as I can tell Joe Gill wrote all the issues of the run. 

With the third issue the title of the comic is changed to Reptisaurus and the artwork is by Bill Molno. Sal Gentile and Nick Alascia supply a less than satisfactory cover. Reptisaurus is red where Reptilicus was green and gets a mate and a family. But don't wait to see what happens as continuity on this comic is pretty much nonexistent with each issue seeming to start from scratch. 

The artwork is then taken over by the team of Joe Sinnott and Vince Colletta and their work here is even less impressive than it was on Gorgo. Part of that is that Reptisaurus is hard to draw in any way which allows the reader to get a sense of his feelings. The rendition by the team makes him quite comical in places. 

Eventually like all the other monster series, the art team of Bill Montes and Ernie Bache take on the book toward the end of its run and they redesign the monster quite a bit, making him much less like the original Reptilicus. This is not a bad idea and we get some decent storytelling in the final issues of the original run. 

Following the cancellation of the original run after a meager eight issues we are treated to a special edition which puts a wrap on the character sort of.

Reptilicus the movie is a guilty pleasure of mine and I watch it on the regular, and I was pleased to finally get to read all the Reptilicus/Reptisaurus comics despite the meager quality. I am always curious and like a bad movie, even bad comics can be entertaining in their own way if you adjust your expectations. 

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Reptilicus!

Once upon a time in the late 50's and early 60's, giant monsters were all the rage. Denmark feeling that it too wanted to contribute its unique flavor to the monster surge of the time initiated by Japan's Godzilla, unleashed the prehistoric might of Reptilicus on the the city of Copenhagen and film-going public has never been the same since. I've certainly never been, since I lensed the movie as part of an all-night Halloween film fest when I was youngster. The first few scenes scared me pretty well, though even as a kid I found the big monster's romp somewhat regrettable.


Sidney Pink produced this flick and thought the way to go for special effects was puppets. Puppetry was a classic approach, and one only has to look back to the very first giant monsters created by the master special effects kahunah Willis "Obie" O'Brien, to see the stop-motion mastery of that form. That's not the way they went with Reptilcus. They went with a marionettes and hand puppets. Take a look.



On another front Ib Melchior had worked on early versions of Gigantis, the Fire Monster, the Americanized Godzilla sequel and took some of the discarded concepts from that project and used them on this movie. Reptilicus does have one advantage over Godzilla and Kong, he can fly. But for some reason those scenes get cut from the American version and so his little wings seem attached to the big lizard for no good reason. Here's a look at him on the fly.


Needless to say Sidney Pink was interested in maximizing his profits from this creation, so he licensed the creature to comics, in particular Charlton Comics. They had a history with these kinds of things, having done Konga and Gorgo. But Charlton also was associated with the paperback imprint Monarch and they too adapted Reptilicus using the writer David Owens. Pink took issue with some of the scenes created for the novel version which are reputed to have a somewhat lascivious quality. I've never read it, so I cannot speak firsthand about it. But apparently it upset Pink who pulled the license from Charlton. But Charlton must've seen some good numbers from their monster book, so they just kept on publishing it under the new name "Reptisaurus". It ran for six more issues through 1962, and a 1963 summer special edition to boot. Some years ago, an independent science fiction movie was made using the "Reptisaurus" name. I've not been able to see most of this movie, but I have seen the trailer and for this kind of Indy stuff it looks typical. I'd love to see it full length.

So we are faced with the odyssey of this monster character who begins life in the cinema and then tumbles into comics only to return under his new name to the screen again. There is an irony here somewhere. For more details on this offbeat tale of monsters and comics, see this link at Stephen Bissette's rather scholarly blog.

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