Captain's Library MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. "Human Bottle Affair"

Here's something a little different...a prose story with illustrations...

...from the British weekly TV Tornado., which ran strips and stories based on other British and American tv series, as well as a couple of features not based on video shows!

TV Tornado ran U.N.C.L.E. text stories like this, but no strips, like The Saint feature we ran last week.
However, in the hardcover annuals that TV Tornado (like other weekly magazines produced), there were U.N.C.L.E. strips...and they were in color (or colour, as the British spell it)!

Captain's Library THE SAINT "Death in the Sky"

Though the tv show ran for several years in America...

...there was no comic book based on it.

Rumor was that The Saint's creator Leslie Charteris was unhappy with 1940s-50s comics based on his novels and refused to allow one based on the tv show.

However, in England, there was a comic strip as part of the TV Tornado comic anthology weekly...

These weeklies had color covers and centerfolds, but the rest of the interiors were b/w.

TV Tornado later merged with other weeklies, first with Solo (from which this story was taken), then with TV Century 21.

The Saint strip survived both mergers, but ended in 1969 when The Saint tv series was cancelled.

Regrettably, both the artist and writer of the strip are unknown.

Captain's Library: VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA "Crime Island"

Return to the 1960s, when super-subs prowled the oceans...

...at least on TV and in the pages of one of England's comic weeklies, TV Tornado!

I have no idea why Chief Curley goes ashore with Nelson instead of, say, Crane (who's called "Commander" instead of "Captain") or Kowalski.

It's nice, though, to see the usually ship-bound Chip get some action, even if he's misspelled "Mortin" instead of "Morton" and the art looks nothing like actor Bob Dowdell!

(And was "Chip" the character's name or just a nickname?)

While the artist swipes shots from the Gold Key comic book version, this is a new story written for the British audience and never published in America!

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Captain's Library: VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA "Green Monsters of the Deep"

Return to the 1960s, when super-subs prowled the oceans...

...at least on TV and in the pages of one of England's comic weeklies, TV Tornado!

Actually, shark with chips (or fries, to us Americans) and tartar sauce is delicious!

While the artist swipes shots from the Gold Key comic book version, this is a new story written for the English audience, including British phrases like "I wouldn't fancy it..."!

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Captain's Library: VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA "Seaview's Ghost"

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea comics were also published in England...

...in a tabloid format (9" x 11 3/4") weekly comic anthology called TV Tornado.

This particular strip is from the very first issue.

Other strips and illustrated text stories were based on Bonanza, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Batman, among others.

Here's one of the few covers to spotlight Voyage...

The magazine had a short life-span running 88 issues plus a couple of annuals from 1967-1969 before merging with rival TV Century 21.

We'll be presenting more of the Voyage strips over the next few weeks...

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