Captain's Library LAND UNKNOWN Part 1

Stories About Extinct Animals Surviving in Isolated Areas Go Back as Far as Fiction Itself...

..including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Land That Time Forgot and even the original King Kong!

You really didn't think we'd break away before you saw a dinosaur, did you?

To Be Continued, Tomorrow, at Seduction of the Innocent!

Adapted from the film's original script by writer Robert Ryder (his only mainstream comics credit) and artist Alex Toth for Dell's Four Color #845 (1957).

Toth took a lot of care with this project, including suggesting color effects for certain panels as shown by the original art above, which you can compare to the printed version!

Note: the movie was shot and released in black & white, so Toth's ideas about color effects are his own (pretty damn good) concepts!

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Captain's Library VALLEY OF GWANGI Part 2

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

...who haven't met this guy...yet!

"He who dares steal from the Evil One is cursed!"
So spoke the old woman after Carlos took El Diablo from the hidden Valley of Gwangi!
(But what is El Diablo?)
Meanwhile, in a nearby town, T.J. Breckenridge, beautiful cowgirl owner of a traveling rodeo, struggles with near-bankruptcy when she meets stunt rider/former fiance Tuck Kirby, who makes an offer for the only asset the show has...Omar the Wonder Horse!
T.J. refuses, saying she's about to unveil a spectacular new attraction that will turn the rodeo's fortunes around!
The next day, Tuck encounters Professor Bromley, a palentologist who claims to have discovered tracks of a presumed long-extinct ancestor of the modern horse!
How do these events tie together?
Read on...

Need we say...

Don't Miss the Thrilling Conclusion, Tomorrow at Western Comics Adventures!

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Captain's Library: ONE MILLION YEARS BC Conclusion

Previously: dinosaurs, cavemen, beautiful women in fur bikinis...

 Adaptation script by Steve Moore. Art by John Bolton. Cover by Brian Lewis.

 

The adaptation does downplay the human (or caveperson) side of the story to emphasize the spectacular dinosaur battles.
So we don't get to see Bolton rendering the (censored in America but not England) erotic dance sequence or the Raquel Welch/Martine Beswicke catfight.
You'll note the art is black and white.
The magazine (House of Hammer) it's derived from had black-and-white interiors and only the covers (and an occasional insert section) were in color, as were most magazines of the period.
For those who want to know more about the magazine, which started as House of Hammer, became House of Horror and ended up as Halls of Horror, here's a link from it's editor, Dez Skinn, where he talks about the periodical's turbulent existence.
After One Million Years BC, there were two other caveman/dinosaur epics from Hammer Films, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Creatures that Time Forgot, both of which used dinosaur stock footage from this film and featured beautiful women (including a Playboy Playmate) in fur bikinis!

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Captain's Library: ONE MILLION YEARS BC Part 1

Return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear...

...when men were cavemen and women looked like Raquel Welch in a fur bikini!

Yeah, 1966 was a great year!

 The story concludes tomorrow.

Adaptation script by Steve Moore 

Art by John Bolton

Published in House of Hammer #14, 1978

While the movie is a remake of the already-classic 1940 film One Million BC, and features kool stop-motion dinosaurs animated by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, the big selling point was Raquel Welch, who also appeared, in slightly more clothes (skintight scuba gear), in another classic sci-fi flick, Fantastic Voyage, that same year.
The film's poster and a blowup of the promo photo (left) it was based on became best-selling posters adorning bedrooms, dorm rooms, and dens of genre film buffs and/or fans of beautiful women.
The outdoor scenes were filmed on the Canary Islands in the middle of winter, when the average daily temperature was 60-65 degrees...except this was a cooler-than-normal winter! Lots of goose bumps!
Roughly nine minutes were cut from the American version, including a provocative dance by co-star (and two-time James Bond girl) Martine Beswicke.  Despite several restorations done for the domestic laser disc and DVD releases, the missing footage is not available on the US DVD (but it was on the laser disc).  If you have a multi-region player, you can see it on the British DVD!
Hammer did two other prehistoric epics which featured stock footage from this film: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Creatures the World Forgot. Though both pix featured scantly-clad cavewomen including a Playboy Playmate, neither was as successful.

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