Friday, June 6, 2008

I thought I had better come clean about where the title for
my little rant came from....

As a kid growing up in the early seventies The Planet of the Apes
was pretty much a phenomenon equal to Harry Potter today.
In fact, before Star Wars, it was the box office and merchandising bonanza of its time. One thing's for certain, it sure did capture my young fertile imagination.
Cashing in on this success was the Marvel B/W format 'magazines/comics' that featured adaptions of the movies (the original film spawned 4 sequels no less), articles, as well as all new original stories.

Look it's probably nostalgia, but there's something really neat about
the format of these mags that I still find exciting, even today.

The writing chores on all the stories were pretty much single-handled by Doug Moench. Man, some of the way out stuff he would think up...wow. Anyone who comes up with 'Up the Nose Tube'....
Mike Ploog is the artist you see here on this interior page. He did most of the issues featuring 'Terror on the Planet of the Apes'. There were other stories like 'Future History Chronicles' and 'Evolution's Nightmare' featuring some really great underrated artists.

The covers were done by a bunch of different fellows...but I always liked this guy Bob Larkin. He had such a solid, dependable style...I think his covers really inspired me.
So many of these artists are kind of disregarded because they were more 'substance' over 'style' and these days it is all about style.

This magazine format pretty much died with the seventies...I've missed it ever since.


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