Warrior Of The Worlds!

One of the truly outstanding ideas of Marvel's Bronze Age was when Roy Thomas decided to follow up on H.G.Wells and co-created the Killraven series, called throughout most of its run War of the Worlds. Essentially the notion is that after the Martians lost the first time, they returned a hundred years later and succeeded. Then in 2017 (no longer the distant future) they have established their rule on Earth, one populated with people and other things who work for and against the Martian masters. 

One of the greatest foes is Killraven, a trained gladiator who escaped in Sparticus fashion and leads others in a guerrilla war against the invaders. The notion comes from the novel itself when an Infantryman describes life under the Martian masters and how a few humans could wage an uprising. 

The debut issue which is the eighteenth issue of Amazing Adventures (which earlier hosted The Inhumans, Black Widow, and The Beast) is plotted by Thomas and scripted by Gerry Conway and the first part is drawn by superstar Neal Adams who does a bang-up job. With some polished inking by Frank Charamonte, the pages positively glow with energy and verve. Take a look.

But apparently, Adams couldn't get it finished on time and up-and-comer Howard Chaykin stepped in to finish the story in order for it to see publication.

As you can see, in the story Killraven confronts the "Keeper" who kidnapped him and killed his mother so many years before and learns the history of the Martians and also that he might have some mysterious gifts which will help to defeat them.

In the second installment, written by Gerry Conway with Chaykin returning on pencils. Frank McLaughlin steps in to offer up some sleek and exceedingly good inks. In this one Killraven and his "Freemen" M'Shulla, Hawk, and Arrow confront Martain-mutated women called Sirens who like their mythical namesakes can control men. Killraven is taken back to the gladiatorial ring but fights his way out, and even manages to bring down a Martian walking machine with the Staten Island Ferry during the hair-raising escape.

Set in the environs of New York City in the initial chapters, the saga offers up the usual post-doomsday scenery of a sunken Statue of Liberty and other broken icons of 20th Century existence. The scenario painted is a grim one with the Martian masters firmly in control of a shattered Earth and some people all too willing to work alongside their conquerors who we all know have a special taste for humans.

But this initial burst is a brief one. The series will stumble during its early days and by the next issue Conway and Chaykin are gone, and Killraven even gets a costume change thanks to writer Marv Wolfman and artist Herb Trime, though the design looks like the work of John Romita to me.

Arguably the most important change in the series came with the next issue in which writer Don McGregor arrives. His ornate writing gave the Killraven yarns a flavor all their own, a deep introspection which would only flourish as the series continued. This issue not only gave Killraven's ally M'Shulla a distinctive character but introduced Carmilla Frost, a scientist and new ally. She brought with her the lab-spawned creation "Grok" as well. Old Skull is another member of Killraven's Freemen and his addled mind and great strength are standout details of the series in its early days. 

The setting shifts when Killraven and his allies the Freemen leave NYC and head to Washington DC. One of the things which is great fun about post-apocalyptic stories is the way recognizable icons an locations can be used to enhance a story. So it is with the villain Abraxas selling slaves at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. We also meet a black warrior henchman who wields a mean sword in the cause of the Martians by the name of "Sabre", not something McGregor would soon forget. 

McGregor's penchant for wacky but memorable names is on display in this issue which showcases the girl with green skin Mint Julep. We also see Killraven stand up his fears as he is assaulted by rats. There's an echo of Orwell's 1984 in this ploy by the Martians. 

In the May issue Killraven and his Freemen come up against the High Overlord, a Martian who uses an anthropomorphic armor to move around. It's a new year and this establishes a conceit in the series of attempting to use real time. By the end Killraven and his mob have demolished the slavery ring at the Lincoln Memorial and get on the Martian's most wanted list. This is artist Herb Trimpe's last regular issue. 

The artistic reins go to Rich Buckler in a story set at the Indianapolis Speedway. It introduces an important villain to the series by the name of Skar who is adept at using the Martian tripods in weird races. Truth told this a very hard comic to read and understand because of Buckler's innovative but sometimes incoherent page design. His pages seem weighed down by McGregor's heavy script which is likely a problem as well and I'd bet the timeframe was short to produce the story. 

Still casting about for a regular artist, this issue features Gene "The Dean" Colan and he pushes out a decent issue though it shows signs of hurry as well. The Freemen go to Battle Creek Michigan where they discover a group of oddly dedicated men defending a mysterious treasure, one that goes snap, crackle and pop. 

At long last with the twenty-seventh issue of Amazing Adventures and the tenth installment of War of the Worlds the artist most associated with the series appears -- P. Craig Russell. Under a dramatic Jim Starlin cover, Russell begins to give us the look that will define the strip. McGregor too seems to have found a partner he cottons to, and his script seems to get even more ponderous as we begin an extended storyline about the Martian outpost in Chicago which is set up to produce humans as livestock. 

This comic is one of the most beautiful that Russell ever drew and it features Volcana Ash who had been introduced in the previous issue. She is one of two sisters and while she was the subject of experimentation to give her the strange powers of heat and fire her sibling was to become of the many Eves who gave birth to children for the benefit of the appetites of the Martians. The Freeman break into the Death-Birth complex its master Atalon the Fear Master and the chief surgeon The Sacrificer. 

In the next issue the Freemen are able to free the captive Adams and Eves and destroy he heinous complex. But Atalon's men pursue them. It's another marvelous looking comic and I only wish Russell had been able to produce all of the issues with this level of quality, though the inker Dan Green gets some credit. With this issue a title change of sorts hits the top of the cover. Although the series has always been Amazing Adventures the feature becomes  known as Killraven Warrior of The Worlds. 

But the stresses of producing the book are too much and the thirtieth issue is a reprint of some of Herb Trimpe's best work blending issues #23 and#24 together with a framing sequence which focuses on the high Overlord. It's to be remembered that the Overlord has dispatched Skar to find the Freemen. Great cover though. 

We get the finale of the Death Breeders saga as both Atalon and the Sacrificer catch up to our heroes under a famous golden arch. There is a singularly ugly monster that some locals worship but in the end Killraven and his associates kill the monster and put down both Atalon and his ally. 

Killraven and his Freemen (made up still of M'Shulla, Hawk, Old Skull, Carmilla Frost, and an injured Grok) have to confront a complex in Nashville which is able to tap into the mind of folks and confront them with their greatest desires. Among the illusions is McGregor's spoof of Sherlock Holmes, namely one Hodiah Twist and his ally Conrad Jeavons. This is yet another beautiful issue to look at though the storytelling is a bit rugged in spots.

Bill Mantlo and Herb Trimpe step in to give us another fill-in issue, this time a new one. In a deep cavern Killraven is separated from his allies and discovers a segregated society of black men and women who had hidden away safely from the Martians. But theri haven is not safe and they leave for the surface world to see what that holds for them. This is my least favorite of the series. 

In a story titled "A Death in the Family" we do indeed lose some of our Freemen as Skar finally catches up to the rebels around Chattanooga. We learn that Grok is indeed the "Clonal Man" as he is a clone of Carmilla's dead father. The battle against Skar is brutal and the resultant deaths are impactful in an era when such things were exceedingly uncommon. One death was somewhat predictable, but the other was a bit of surprise to me, even now on this re-reading of the series. 

We get another Bill Mantlo story but this time it's in the pages of Marvel Team-Up and features a time-traveling Spider-Man as he drops into the dark era of the Martian invasion. Drawn by Sal  Buscema and Mike Esposito this story doesn't really have much to add to our understanding of the of the Killraven series though I'm sure it did its work as an advertisement for the run. 

"The 24-Hour Man" is set in Atlanta and offers up the strange person of Emmanuel who is as far as I can gather a hybrid offspring of human and some odd green creature and like a Mayfly lives out his entire existence in a mere matter of hours and must breed before that time and Carmilla is his chosen. There's some real horror in this bizarre tale. The War of the Worlds logo returns with this issue and will remain until the finale. 

To be honest I had to read "Red Dust Legacy" a few times to figure out what was happening. As far as I can tell Killraven is able to use his talent to enter the mind of a young Martian who has lived its full life on Earth and yearns for the understanding of its home world shared by its elders. Killraven and gang destroy a nursery full of Martian young (the bud off their parent asexually and are collected and put into incubators). It's possible this action of attempted genocide cost Killraven a chance at understanding with the young Martian. 

In the thirty-seventh issue the Freemen reach the Okefenokee Swamp and meet another group who have found safety in the swamp. They take the time to rest, and we learn by stories around the campfire how Old Skull met Killraven and more. McGregor has a bit to say about how the retarded children ae treated in our society. We learn that Old Skull lost his dad on the very first day of the second invasion and was swept up into the gladitorial program of the Martians when his ability to defend himself was noted. 

Bill Mantlo returns with another fill-in issue this one drawn by Keith Giffen and it's a doozy. Killraven enters a strange dome in which he becomes enmeshed in the dreams of a stranded man. Those dreams involve many famous visages from the Marvel Universe. Even President Gerald Ford makes an appearance. This one is really entertaining. 

The thirty-ninth issue is the final issue of Amazing Adventures and the last War of the Worlds story by McGregor and Russel for some time. The go out with a beautiful issue about yet another weird mutant creature called Mourning Prey who is beautiful like a butterfly but deadly nonetheless they think. It's a  nifty little story told in flashbacks that is rather eloquent and ties a bow on the series even if it doesn't really resolve anything. 

The final Killraven story was wrapped in 1976 and it would be seven years later that McGregor and Russell world attempt a true finish to the saga. The format was Marvel's popular Graphic Novels of the decade. The story picks up where it left off in Florida just outside of what was once Cape Canaveral. The Freemen meet a lady named Jenette Miller who was an astronaut in the 1990's before the second Martian invasion. She has stayed hidden from the Martians all this time and gives the Freemen some essential information about the world before the Martians. Carmilla has some news for M'Shulla of a bouncing baby type. We then meet Joshua, Killraven's long-lost brother. But all is not what it seems since Joshua has been prepared by the High Overlord and his minions to be Deathraven a technologically produced werewolf. He poses a lethal threat to the Freemen until Killraven uses his abilities to their maximum for the first time and not enters the mind of a Martian but controls that Martian to kill his own brother. They then proceed to blow up the High Overlord's installation and presumably him with it before the saunter off into the Florida horizon to heal and live life. 

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Steven Spielberg's War Of The Worlds!

I was a tad gobsmacked when I dug out the Steven Spielberg version of War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise. The reason was pretty simple, I'd forgotten a young Dakota Fanning was in the movie and when I saw how young she was, I realized with grim immediacy how old I must be. Somehow, I'd imagined thoughtlessly that this movie was made in the teens but alas it was from way back in 2005. But once I recovered from that daily shock, I had other things to reflect on. 

This is a remake and update of the classic George Pal movie. It's based on the novel by H.G. Wells as was the Pal film, but there's little doubt this one was made with a mind on the vintage 1953 movie, but it does create new sequences inspired by the 1897 novel. Like the novel we see the invasion from the extremely limited perspective of one man and his estranged family who are struggling to survive as the invasion sweeps across the Northeastern United States. It works marvelously well in the original book and ads some tension to this version as well. We don't get explanations for what happens so much as we are swept along and made one of the fearful mobs who are trying to just stay alive. 

The tripods are exceedingly well done, movie magic at its finest. That these alien walking engines of destruction are fastened to a very recognizable landscape is critical to making the fantastic feel immediate and palpable. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is the divorced father of a teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and a much younger daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) who has custody of his kids for a few days and their strained relationship is central to underlying themes of the movie. Ray seems to be a man who is self-absorbed if not reflective and has little to suggest he connects with his children. But when the crisis comes and it's all mankind can do to survive a quick and devastating attack by aliens in deadly dreadnoughts of destruction, he latches onto his kids and does all in his power to protect them and get them back to their mother (Miranda Otto). 

The most disappointing thing about his movie is that the aliens are not actually from Mars. In fact, Mars is not mentioned at all. Spielberg suggests the aliens might have journeyed from a dark part of the same region of space from which sprang the rather cuddly E.T. They come to Earth, or better yet into it by riding lightning bolts. These bolts take them to massive war machines which seem to have been lying dormant for millions of years. Once again, we are not going to get any explanation of this really, but it does seem stranger even than massive projectiles that unscrew. 

This movie is a thrill ride and a good one. We enjoy Ray's problem solving in the early stages of the movie and later we feel his helplessness when he seems incapable of keeping everyone safe. There are of course the usual bits of business which seem a bit to handy at times, but movies require that sometimes to keep the ball rolling. The story is fine and all, but the alien tripods are fantastic. It still holds up quite nicely after all these years, even though there have been more years than I remember. 

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To Life Immortal!

"To Life Immortal!" is mantra the "Martians" chant when they feel the need to express their core mission. But these are not your daddy's aliens. They've changed quite a bit. 

In 1988 at long last a sequel to George Pal's classic War of the Worlds appeared, but not on the big screen. Rather it was an independent television series that speculated what might have happened after the earth-shaking events of 1953. It seems the "deceased" aliens (which turn out not to be Martian after all) were gathered up and put into barrels and stored away in secret locations around the planet. As the show opens some of these barrels are unwittingly stolen by terrorists who expose them to radiation and the aliens revive after over thirty years of storage. They are somewhat different than we saw before, a bit more robust physically and they seem to have a new talent to actually absorb and become other living creatures, specifically human beings. This change in modus operandi is necessary to maintain the budget of a small independent television show which couldn't showcase war machines each episode, though they did for the debut. 

Really this is a story of four people who are put together to combat the aliens. Their leader is the wildly eccentric Dr. Harrison Blackwood (Jared Martin) who as it turns out was the adoptive son of Clayton Forrester who battled the aliens in the original Pal movie. He is joined by his colleague Norton Drake (Phil Akin) who is a paraplegic and a computer genius. Also on hand is Dr. Suzanne McCullough (Lynda Mason Green), single mother and microbiologist. Her daughter turns up now and again. Their official liason is Colonel Paul Ironhorse (Richard Chaves) who is a by-the-book military officer. These four and a few others are a tiny taskforce with the mission to locate the stymie the aliens who are constantly plotting mischief around the globe. It's a pretty good premise for a TV show and it worked pretty well for one season. 

Adding a great deal of heft to the cast is Anne Sullivan who reprises her role of Sylvia Van Buren from the 1953 original Pal movie. She is an older lady now who suffers from mental illness as a result of her close encounter to the events of 1953 which for reasons that stay vague, most of the world has forgotten or repressed. Another recurring character is John Colicos (of Battlestar Galactica fame) who plays an alien called "Quinn" who has been alive and on his own since the 1953 invasion. A nifty tie-in is made to the 1938 "Panic Broadcast" of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles and we learn that the radio drama was a cover for a real incursion by the aliens in anticipation of the full-on invasion fifteen years later. 

The schemes the aliens devise to do in mankind range from terrifying to thoroughly half-baked. They use atom bombs, contaminated food products, subliminal messaging, and more. The show can really be quite lurid such as the one where an alien gets sick and his two comrades (they operate in teams of three all the time) get him well by cutting out human brains and dumping them into a big super-science vat. There's a gimmick where an alien possessing a human can somehow reach out of the chest to snatch up anyone who gives them lip. The aliens thrive on radiation and so when they inhabit a body it slowly burns up as evidenced by little black blisters that erupt on the face and elsewhere. It's all pretty yucky.

With the second season new folks took command and the premise was changed. We follow some of our original cast into the near future where the alien "Mor-Tax" have themselves been overrun by another wave of invaders called the "Mothren". It's a rather bleak world we are reintroduced to, and these new aliens are even more vicious than the previous batch. Adrian Paul (of Highlander fame) joins the cast as a resistance fighter of sorts and all around badass. This attempt to make the show more apocalyptic with more action, is a bit of a mess though still quite watchable. Aside from the abysmal fashions of the late 80's and the entertaining but quaint technology on display this is a pretty rousing show, at least in the first season. 

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George Pal's War Of The Worlds!

George Pal's spectacular full-color presentation of H.G.Well's The War of the Worlds remains to my mind the definitive on-screen version of the story despite many later renditions which were truer to the novel or attempted a more recent update. The reason is that this version of the Martians and their deadly machines is at least as locked into the popular imagination as are the original illustrations and descriptions from the classic novel. That said, the movie is limited in some ways. 

Moving the story into the then modern day was like the infamous radio broadcast before it was a good move to make the threat in the story feel immediate and not remote and archaic. As compelling as the original Wells passages can be, seeing the Martian tripods stomping on horse-drawn carriages is less effective than seeing them blast tanks out of existence. The famous green machines from Pal's version are limited by the technology of the time which would've proved quite expensive to create for the screen in stop-motion which was the only option available. Animation was not a viable option given the conflict of imagery which would've resulted. I've seen this movie many times and on my recent viewing it was long enough that I was able to bring somewhat fresh eyes to the experience and I was frankly impressed all over again by what Pal and his team pulled off. I even like the somewhat hokey Martians they cooked up -- which were suitably mysterious since showing them was a nonstarter. 

Another thing that struck me was the heavy-handedness of the Christian theme which takes its origin in a single line from the novel. "...the Martians were destroyed, and humanity saved by the littlest things which God, in His wisdom, had put upon the Earth."  The Pal takes this message of a Godly plan and makes it the underpinning of the entire project with the finale taking us on a tour of several Christian churches before we learn that the Martians have succumbed to Earthly bacteria. 

Gene Barry does a crackerjack job as the scientist-hero who becomes our interpreter of events. He shows a skill and yet also a humbleness which allows us to like him as he faces up the threats of both Martian and his own fellow Earthmen. Anne Robinson is the traditional damsel in distress, and she gets hysterical a few too many times even for a woman of that stereotypical way. It's always a smack in the face to confront the rank sexism of the time with men making all the decisions and taking all the actions to confront the threats while the dames are only good for moral support and a hot cup of Joe. But it's the 50's and while some folks are eager for that halcyon time to return, I can wait thank you very much. 

More on the influence of this classic movie tomorrow. 

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Dojo Classics - Martians Illustrated!

The War of the Worlds has been adapted to virtually every medium, but few as memorable as the vintage Classics Illustrated rendition by writer Harry Miller and artist Lou Cameron. The cover is without doubt one of the best in the whole of the Classics Illustrated run.

Cameron does his own distinctive interpretation of the invaders, creating a robust variation on the tripods. These have a slightly modern flavor to them.

And this issue of Classics Illustrated is unique to my experience in that in addition to several full-page images it has a center two-page spread, which must've been quite awesome in the early 50's when such tour de forces were quite rare save for Simon and Kirby.

The story by Wells has been simplified for comic use here and perhaps some of the horror stripped out for the benefit of the young target audience. The infamous Black Smoke is not evident as the invaders just plow ahead with highly visible heat rays. Also gone are the red weeds which create such a weird atmosphere in the latter stages of the story. Otherwise the tale stays true to the general structure of the Wells original.

This one has been reprinted by Jack Lake Productions who have the Classic Illustrated right these days. The asking price is steep, but for the War of the Worlds completist necessary, though I personally have this one as well as a rough copy of the original for less money.

Classics Illustrated adapted five of the Wells novels, but War of the Worlds was easily the most successful. Here is a glimpse at the others.

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