Just finished reading the Len Wein / Michael Wm. Kaluta version of Carson of Venus from 1972. And? 72 pages of pure plum pleasin' pleasure. This was pretty early in Mr. Kaluta's career, but he already had it together...though his work looked a little more Barry Windsor Smith-y then. I was particularly impressed by his design work exhibited in the title headings.
Very classy. Len Wein was a young buck back in those days as well, though he and Bernie Wrightson had already created Swamp Thing by the time he took on Carson, so I'm thinking he was a bit more seasoned than Kaluta. ANYway, he did a pretty good job of adapting the Pirates of Venus novel...I mean, pretty good is about the best that you can hope for in terms of turning a novel into a 57 page comic book, right?
The whole thing breaks down like this:
"Mars--Or Bust!" 9 pages
"The Girl in the Garden" 6 pages
"Battle Cry!" 6 pages
"Gathering Tarel" 7 pages
"Terror From the Sky!" 7 pages
"Mutiny at Sea" 7 pages
"Duare...Princess of Venus" 5 pages (script and art by Kaluta henceforth)
"Catastrophe" 5 pages
"Into the Land of Noobol" 5 pages
This is where the adaptation of Pirates of Venus ends...
...and in the next issue the adaptation of Lost on Venus begins:
"Lost on Venus" 5 pages
"Babes in the Woods" 5 pages
"Into the Noobolian Valley" 5 pages
At the end of episode 12 there's a
Next Issue: "The Black Castle!" blurb, but, alas, it was never published.
The art on the Lost on Venus sections seems different to me...more like it was shot from pencils, almost. Maybe Kaluta had just taken a lighter touch on his inks at this point. At any rate, it's here that his work begins to look more like Modern Kaluta...both in the look of the art and in the way he breaks down the pages. The breakdowns are much more sophisticated, much less generic from this point on.
The last published episode, "Into the Noobolian Valley," bears the credit WM Kaluta and Phil Trumbo--with whom he would later work on The Adventures of the Galactic Girl Guards. The art is very different on this episode, so I'm guessing that Kaluta did the layouts and Trumbo finished it off. And since this is the last published episode, maybe that's indicative of the fact that Kaluta had found bigger game and no longer had the time to devote to Carson? The Tarzan comic book (in which this episode appeared) kept chugging along for a couple of years after this...although it's possible that the powers that be decided that Detective Chimp (the feature that replace it in the next issue of Tarzan) would be a bigger draw than Carson. (Although I've got to say...I think not.) So let's see what Kaluta was doing...oh. Oh, right. A little something called The Shadow with Denny O'Neil. Maybe that mystery is solved, then?
ANYway...this was a fun strip. And on October 31st American Mythology is starting a reprint of this thing...and I might could have to buy it, since (1) it's Michael Kaluta and (2) the online version was not exactly crisp, and I would really like to see this thing in all of its glory. The only thing that might prevent me from buying the comic books when they come out (I presume that it will take at least three issues, since the original run was 72 pages long) is that I would really like to have a deluxe hardcover version of it. Or maybe I'll just do both. But you know what would be really super de dooper cool? If Kaluta decided it was time to finish this adaptation off. Oh, yeah. That would work.
The whole thing breaks down like this:
"Mars--Or Bust!" 9 pages
"The Girl in the Garden" 6 pages
"Battle Cry!" 6 pages
"Gathering Tarel" 7 pages
"Terror From the Sky!" 7 pages
"Mutiny at Sea" 7 pages
"Duare...Princess of Venus" 5 pages (script and art by Kaluta henceforth)
"Catastrophe" 5 pages
"Into the Land of Noobol" 5 pages
This is where the adaptation of Pirates of Venus ends...
...and in the next issue the adaptation of Lost on Venus begins:
"Lost on Venus" 5 pages
"Babes in the Woods" 5 pages
"Into the Noobolian Valley" 5 pages
At the end of episode 12 there's a
Next Issue: "The Black Castle!" blurb, but, alas, it was never published.
The art on the Lost on Venus sections seems different to me...more like it was shot from pencils, almost. Maybe Kaluta had just taken a lighter touch on his inks at this point. At any rate, it's here that his work begins to look more like Modern Kaluta...both in the look of the art and in the way he breaks down the pages. The breakdowns are much more sophisticated, much less generic from this point on.
The last published episode, "Into the Noobolian Valley," bears the credit WM Kaluta and Phil Trumbo--with whom he would later work on The Adventures of the Galactic Girl Guards. The art is very different on this episode, so I'm guessing that Kaluta did the layouts and Trumbo finished it off. And since this is the last published episode, maybe that's indicative of the fact that Kaluta had found bigger game and no longer had the time to devote to Carson? The Tarzan comic book (in which this episode appeared) kept chugging along for a couple of years after this...although it's possible that the powers that be decided that Detective Chimp (the feature that replace it in the next issue of Tarzan) would be a bigger draw than Carson. (Although I've got to say...I think not.) So let's see what Kaluta was doing...oh. Oh, right. A little something called The Shadow with Denny O'Neil. Maybe that mystery is solved, then?
ANYway...this was a fun strip. And on October 31st American Mythology is starting a reprint of this thing...and I might could have to buy it, since (1) it's Michael Kaluta and (2) the online version was not exactly crisp, and I would really like to see this thing in all of its glory. The only thing that might prevent me from buying the comic books when they come out (I presume that it will take at least three issues, since the original run was 72 pages long) is that I would really like to have a deluxe hardcover version of it. Or maybe I'll just do both. But you know what would be really super de dooper cool? If Kaluta decided it was time to finish this adaptation off. Oh, yeah. That would work.
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