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Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.

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topic icon Author Topic: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.  (Read 388 times)

The Australian Panther

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Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« on: March 13, 2024, 08:02:34 AM »

Somewhere on CB+ there was a recent post looking at how many PD characters/names  from the Golden Age were appropriated by the 'Big Two.' I was recently looking at the list of all the Doc Savage Books and it seems that there were just as many concepts 'borrowed' from the pulps.
Found these.
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  The Red Skull: A Doc Savage Adventure (Doc Savage #17)
1933 !!
Fortress of Solitude: A Doc Savage Adventure (Doc Savage #23)
1938
[The deepest mysteries of Doc Savage are finally revealed as John Sunlight, poetic genius of evil, discovers the innermost secrets of the Arctic refuge known as the Fortress of Solitude. Here Doc has hidden the super-scientific weapons confiscated during the course of his career along with inventions of his own for which the world is not yet ready. Ready or not, here they come! ] Sound Familiar?
The Vanisher: A Doc Savage Adventure (Doc Savage #52)
 
Doc's Fortress of Solitude was featured in the Ron Ely Movie.
The Vanisher was the second X-men Villain.
I'm sure if I had comprehensive lists of THE SPIDER, THE SHADOW, G8 and others I would find more.
cheers! 
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SuperScrounge

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2024, 09:04:18 PM »

The first Batman story was apparently 'borrowed' from a Shadow story.

Secret identities, obviously.

Jungle heroes are all basically Tarzan, although Aquaman was probably the most creative Tarzan knockoff.
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bowers

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2024, 07:25:22 AM »

 This is actually a fascinating subject, as some of the early comic writers got their start in pulps. One of my favorite connections is pulp/comics writer Gardner Fox naming The DC Silver Age "Atom"  Ray Palmer. Palmer was a writer and editor of pulp mags- https://fancyclopedia.org/Raymond_A._Palmer     Not sure if they ever met or worked together, but still a very nice "tip of the hat" to a fellow writer!  Cheers, bowers
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The Australian Panther

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2024, 08:40:24 AM »

Forgot that Doc Savage is actually CLARK Savage Jr. !

cheers!
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paw broon

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2024, 05:23:10 PM »

As bowers says, a fascinating subject. 
Secret I/Ds.  Where would comicbook masked mystery (wo)men be without them?
Zorro; Crimson Clown; Shadow; Spider; Thunderbolt and other McCulley characters.  All costumed.
The super villain/ evil scientist. As foe or starring in their own titles, often recurring - Black Star for instance.
Then in what was a British version of pulps, both Dixon Hawke and Sexton Blake had recurring super foes -
Marko The Miracle Man and Waldo The Wonder Man respectively.
I've read a lot of pulps and, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed them.  OH, nearly forgot to mention The Phantom Detective, although he's referred to as The Phantom in the stories.  Masked and all, plus like some of the above, a short career in comics.
Any pulp characters who didn't make it to the comics that you'd like to see in the comics?
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bowers

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #5 on: March 15, 2024, 01:14:18 AM »

 Alright then, Paw, here we go! I'd love to see a really good comic adaptation of "G-8 and His Battle Aces"!  I know Blazing Comics made a failed attempt to resurrect this character and Gold key did do a one-shot, but neither did justice to my favorite daredevil ace! Holy cow, this guy had to take on zombie pilots, The Doom Legion, swarms of vampire bats, and a plethora of evil aces, such as The Iron Claw and The Green Assassin. Derring-do with just the right touch of weird menace would translate quite well to a visual format. Cheers, bowers
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The Australian Panther

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #6 on: March 15, 2024, 01:45:11 AM »

G8 and his Battle Aces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-8_(character)
With just a cursory glance, i see,
The Black Terror, the Condor, The Falcon, The Panther Squadron, The Spider Staffel,  The Midnight Eagle.
Someone will revive the character, but Steam Punk. Watch.
It surprises me that ECLIPSE didn't do G8, it was right up their alley.
Actually the best current aviation comics are coming out of Europe, particularly France.
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neither did justice to my favorite daredevil ace! 

My biggest disappointment, in that regard, is what happened to The Blackhawks when DC inherited them from Quality.
As a teenager, I was hanging for some good WWII aviation excitement, but DC didn't seem to know what to do with them and we got ridiculous sub- superhero stories. No real character development and I never warmed to the art.
Later attempts at revival didn't get much better. The best were when Dan Speigle was doing them.
Howie Chaykin tried the Blackhawks, but there were almost no planes and certainly no air battles in his story.       
In comparison, the 10 or so first Sgt Fury and the Howling Commandos that Kirby did were state of the art. Great Covers too.

Cheers!

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bowers

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2024, 05:45:08 AM »

 I agree, Panther, Blackhawk did start to lose some quality (no pun intended) when DC took over. There was a quick period of adjustment when the comic was still quite good- I wonder if they were using the last of the Quality scripts before writing their own. I still bought them, however, until the infamous issue 197! I started reading them again when Evanier and Spiegle took over and put out a much better product. Who was the clown who gave Blackhawk the name Janos Prohaska? The real Prohaska  was an actor/stuntman very well known for portraying bears, gorillas, and just about anything that required wearing a fur suit! Did the writer think nobody would notice? I also bought a copy of the "Blackhawk: Fearless Champion of Freedom" movie serial with our old friend, Kirk Alyn . Oh, my.....  it was truly jaw-dropping! (Good thing I got it at the Dollar Store!) Cheers, bowers
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The Australian Panther

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #8 on: March 15, 2024, 09:25:01 AM »

Blackhawk Fearless Champion of Freedom 15 chapter serial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4swscHF9I8w

Going to watch this now, while I'm eating my evening meal!

Thanks Bowers for the tip.   
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paw broon

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2024, 11:18:37 AM »

G8, what a great suggestion.  I'd buy that as long as it was close to the pulp version.
Here we had a number of prose characters who could be adapted to comics.  The Owl - not the American hero.  Silk could be a sort of Copperhead but very British.   Actually, more like Blackshirt who did make it into the comics.
The pulp movie serials have always intrigued me even though some of them - Blackhawk, Mandrake for instance - aren't very good, to be kind.
Bear in mind that we didn't have access to many American comics prior to 1959, so I knew very little about Blackhawk and similar. Even into the 60's, I was reading the odd Blackhawk story in b&w reprint form.
But there was that awful time when they became superheroes. Oh dear.
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crashryan

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2024, 09:55:34 PM »

I bought most of the Corinth paperback reprints of old Popular Publications pulps (Phantom Detective, Operator 5, G-8, Dusty Ayres, etc) which came out during the US nostalgia fad of the late 60s. I was surprised when out of nowhere, in 1966, Gold Key published one-shots of Doc Savage (a Street & Smith character) and G-8 and his Battle Aces. Their "Thousand-Headed Man" adaptation was updated to the present but otherwise respectful to the original, and I wondered if there was a Doc Savage movie in the making. There wasn't, not until 1975 when the campy Michael Anderson feature died a deservedly quick death at the box office.

I have no clue why of all the Popular characters Western decided to adapt G-8. Being set in World War I it didn't have the superhero appeal of the Phantom Detective or The Spider. The Gold Key G-8 was adequate but suffered under the rigid Gold Key layout formula. The GCD credits George Evans with the pencils and Mike Peppe with the inks. If so it's neither man's best work. By straining I can make myself see Evans in some of the drawings, but if he were truly involved it was only to the extent of the layouts and the airplanes.

I always thought a Dusty Ayres comic would be cool, given that it was about crazy future airplanes, but I'm not fool enough to believe such a book would enjoy decent sales. I should know.
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The Australian Panther

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #11 on: March 15, 2024, 09:56:45 PM »

Then there is Edgar Wallace.
Not sure if the 'FOUR JUST MEN' were ever adopted to comics, but they did get a TV series.
Characters;- The Ringer, The Avenger, The Black Abbott, the Green Archer, the fellowship of the frog, The Little Green Man, Mr J. G. Reeder and the Twister.  And others.
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Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932)
A prolific writer, one of Wallace's publishers claimed that a quarter of all books then read in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. [Many in Europe] He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and the Green Archer. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions and The Economist describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century", although few of his books are still in print in the UK.--Wikipedia.

So, we are going back another generation now. Clearly Wallace and his contemporaries were an influence on the Pulps.
cheers!

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The Australian Panther

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #12 on: March 15, 2024, 10:06:38 PM »

Superscrounge said, 

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The first Batman story was apparently 'borrowed' from a Shadow story.

Somewhere, a few years back I came across a guy, obviously an obsessive, who claimed that every panel,and the cover in the first Batman story was swiped. And he posted all of 'the originals'   
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SuperScrounge

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2024, 12:36:08 AM »

Oh, yeah. There's probably a couple of swipe sites out their showing the panels that Kane seems to have used as reference. Most were from some guy whose last name started with a V, but there's one iconic shot of Batman that was swiped from a Hal Foster Tarzan panel.
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bowers

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Re: Comic book ideas borroed from the pulps.
« Reply #14 on: March 18, 2024, 01:05:50 AM »

 Well, if you have to steal, steal from the best! Cheers, bowers
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