![]() ![]() Here archer Hunt Bowman is apparently the last man on thirty-third-century Earth following an Invasion by the Voltans…. Its storyline is encapsulated thusly by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: To be a bit more precise, “The Lost World” began in Fiction House’s Planet Comics #21 (Nov., 1942) and continued through #64 (Spring, 1950). This aspect of the feature draws from what Thomas identified in Alter Ego as “a secondary influence on my concept… the ERB-inspired series ‘The Lost World,’ which ran for years in the Planet Comics of the 1940s-50s, with a hero named Hunt Bowman.”Ĭover to Planet Comics #33 (Nov., 1944). That said, it’s also pretty obvious that the milieu of this new series has at least as much in common with such post-apocalyptic, humanity-on-the-ropes future landscapes as those of the Planet of the Apes franchise, or Jack Kirby’s Kamandi title for DC Comics (though I should note that the latter had yet to appear at the time Thomas was working up his series proposal for Lee and Goodman), as it does with the Hyborian Age or Barsoom. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs.” * And it’s not at all hard to look at the long-haired, muscle-bound, mostly bare-chested figure drawn by John Romita for Amazing Adventures #18’s cover, and see a hero designed more on the model of Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria, or Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars, than the more intellectually oriented Narrator of Wells’ book - “a professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes”, evidently based on Wells himself. As Thomas would write several decades later in the pages of his own fanzine, Alter Ego, “I hoped to develop a series to appeal to readers who liked Marvel and DC comics based on the fiction of Robert E. The longtime science-fiction and comics fan’s inspirations didn’t begin and end with Wells’ novel, however. Nearly everything set forward in the main line of this series comes from his speeches: earthmen living in drains (read: subways) Quislings who hunt and rule earthmen for their Martian masters plus a host of things still upcoming… The direct inspiration for the story, I suppose, was the chapter Wells called “The Man on Putney Hill,” in which a visionary artilleryman talks at length about how life will be under the triumphant Martians. A storyline which would pit earthmen in a kind of guerrilla warfare against the Martians, who had returned approximately 100 years after their initial invasion attempt… and who this time had come, seen, and conquered.” More specifically, Thomas imagined “a vast, hopefully unending sequel to the Wells classic. Wells’ classic late-Victorian science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. Among those ideas was a series concept based on H.G. (“Two long and not always enjoyable years,” to quote the man himself.) It had all started in 1971, when Marvel was looking to expand its market share in a big way, and Stan Lee (himself still editor-in-chief at that time) asked Thomas to submit a list of ideas for new comics for consideration by Lee and Marvel’s publisher, Martin Goodman. According to the account given by Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas on the letters page of Amazing Adventures #18, the new feature that made its debut in that issue had been gestating for some time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |