One more Scenic Route, this time for Gold Key Comics. And only the smallest of selections, below.
By Gold Key, I mean the historical Gold Key, the imprint of Western Publishing that operated from 1962 to 1984, not the recently acquired Gold Key which misspells "its" in the first sentence of its About Us page. For the best overview of the company out there, check out this issue of Comic Book Artist, where that Bruce Timm homage above is from. Print edition is sold out, but you can still download a copy. You'll learn everything there is to learn about Gold Key there.
All info on artists can be found at Comics.org or your favorite internet site for such things. I included a link to the wiki for each title, except two which link to other DSO blogs. All screencaps from the issues indicated, all copyright to the owners, yadda yadda.
One last time: let's take the Scenic Route through the Gold Key part of town...! (As per usual: these are panels and pictures that convey deep truths about reality and/or western civilization caught my eye, grabbed without context, little to no continuity between selections. Enjoy the visuals.)
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The man in the minidress and go-go-boots, judo-chopping his way across North Am, taking zero guff from any anarcho or fascist robs! A hero made for 2021 if ever there was one, FFS. Get off your duffs, dreammakers.
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| Had to grab this series of sceencaps. Wow. |
All screencaps from Magnus, Robot Fighter, v1 issues 1, 4, 6-9, 11, and 12.
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I didn't grab too many from this one. I found this to be pretty sloppy, actually, both art and writing. Nevertheless, like all these Gold Keys, it should be rebooted/ turned into a HBO show, stat. Screencaps below from The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor issues 9 and 18.
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"Look out - honkers!"
Dumb people might feel uncomfortable about this tale of two Native American hunters who fall into a Lost Valley and must navigate its dangers armed only with their wits and a bow and arrow. I shouldn't say "dumb" people, people uber-conditioned to not enjoy something like Turok because wypippo or whatever. (First they came for Turok and I said nothing...) Ignore the haters and enjoy the dinosaur-hunting, is what I always say.
During the brief Valiant revival of Gold Key characters of the early 90s, Turok got some kind of 'roided-out reboot and even a NES game. I didn't know of this at the time - I was off comics then, "forever!" - but it's pretty lame. The originals are kind of lame, too, but they're charming and the art is fun. All Gold Key art is non-flashy but very clean; Turok's has all the great dinosaur and landscape illustrations, to boot.
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| All art from Turok v1 2, 3, 30, 50, 62, 64 |
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Never did finish making my way through all these TZ comics. Ah well. Here's what I had left in my folder, from issues 5, 10, 12, 14, and 26.
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| Menaced... by 1970s Leonard Nimoy...! IN SEARCH OF... TERROR! |
Speaking of Nimoy:
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I covered these in some depth before (although that post is kind of crap - the definitive Gold Key Trek site is here). Here's some more 'caps, though, just the same, from issues 14, 16-20, 22 and 35.
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| "Captain, please, we can't stop and look at every trio of harpies across the galaxy...!" |
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In many ways the best of the original Gold Key comics. I kind of liked the Dark Horse reboot, as well, though neither its writer (Jim Shooter) or the reading public agreed with me. Anyway, this is a fascinating comic, almost an anti-superhero comic, that is to say an unconventional hero who has a costume and super-powers and super-powered foes but otherwise is a genre of one. I like, too, how every issue has both inside and back-inside covers explaining whatever atomic physics you need to grasp the story within, but also a five page section from "Professor Harbinger."
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| All pictures from issues 1-4, 7, 10-13, 18, 20, and 27. |
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| Best date ever! |
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Another one that needs a HBO show. Or any show. Like Turok it seems to make a certain type of idiot uncomfortable. Good! Like the Phantom's skull ring, let such idiots walk around with the mark of the Phantom on their face as a warning/ message to the rest of us.
The movie was awful. Let us not speak of it. All pics from issues 1-8 and 17.
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| Not only the underwear on the outside of the pants but this crazy striped pattern to boot. |
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| Gold Key homage by Batton Lash and Bill Morrison, from Radioactive Man, Nov 2002 (nee Nov 1963) |
(1) It's funny because, while I'm sure this is a very rare experience, nowadays, there was a brief time where a lot of old Gold Key seemed to be just about get my hands on in the way of comic books.
ReplyDeleteI have no real explanation for why that should be. Nor was I ever anything like a bonafide collector of the format. Instead, it just seems like one of those lucky breaks. As a result, my own image of what comics are, or could be, always has this retro tinge to it.
(2) Sure would like to here more about those Trek comics.
(3) Ditto for the "Zone".
ChrisC.
You're in luck - I even linked to them! - there's a whole post on Gold Key Treks, as well as two posts on Twilight Zone Gold Keys.
Delete(1) Oh, man, "Magnus, Robot Fighter" looks amazing! The fact that he's running around with a hot redhead doesn't hurt, but even without that element appealing to me LCD sensibilities, this looks like 100% my cup of tea. Resisting the urge to go to Lone Star Comics and see what their stock is like; urge...rising...must...combat!
ReplyDeleteWhy do I get the feeling that's going to be a struggle throughout this entire post?
(2) Anacondas doing math, eh? God damn liberals.
(3) Okay, so ... did Gold Key from this era have THE all-time best cover art of any comics company? These things are all glorious.
(4) "All Gold Key art is non-flashy but very clean" -- The older I get, the more comics art of this precise nature appeals to me.
(5) The only reason I haven't begun scarfing up the Gold Key series of Trek comics is that I keep failing to find a copy of #1 for less than several hundred dollars. I think I may need to just commit to getting whichever ones I can afford; I'd really like to own a bunch of those.
(6) "Captain, please, we can't stop and look at every trio of harpies across the galaxy...!" -- lol
(7) I have rarely right-clicked and saved an image as fast as I did that house ad ("Beam On Board The Enterprise With Us!" Y'all, trust me, if I had that option, I'd exercise it.
(8) The art in that Abraham Lincoln panel is weird. Uhura looks green. Kirk looks like ... not Shatner.
(9) Holy shit, that cover for "Doctor Solar" is amazing! I'd love to know if Alan Moore read any of those; seems like his thing.
(10) Aw, I liked the "Phantom" movie. Granted, I know nothing about the character and only saw it the once.
(11) Great post. I remember the days when you could get bagged sets of Gold Key comics at places like K-Mart. Those never appealed to me all that much as a kid, for some reason; probably because they seemed off-brand compared to Marvel or DC (I was sensitive to that sort of thing, and it's part of the delicate brew that turned me into a chump for life, I think). Nowdays, though, I'd absolutely love to stumble into a store and see such a thing. Ah, nostalgia!
(1) I love Magnus. Shit, I'd have dropped the series on a flash drive for you had I known you wanted it. Solar, too. Like you say on the GK Treks, they're too pricey to track down, but they're lots of fun.
ReplyDeleteWhy have they not made a Magnus Robot Fighter movie? FFS. We need to lead a mob of pitchforks to the gates of Hollywood.
(4) Ditto.
(5) Even some of the TPBs and collections are kinda pricey, it's ridiculous. The quality of the work is... not good. And yet! They tingle the Trek/collector heart of us all. A good compromise if you want physical copies is to look for the softcover Star Trek annuals Gold Key put out. They collect a few issues apiece, are vintage from the era, and much less expensive. If you got all four, you'd have the first twenty issues or so, plus some bells and whistles only in the annuals, and then you can pick up trades for the rest. That's the cheapest (well, legal) option I've found.
Although trust me, once you get them all, you'll start to ask yourself why. And sell them to Lone Star Comics. Actually, you might pick up a couple of mine if you ever buy from there, I sold all mine to them (but kept those softcover annuals I mention.)
(8) True. I love that "I can't bring myself to shoot Abe Lincoln" line.
(9) Oh for sure - while Doctor Manhattan was based on Captain Atom, Captain Atom was (for my money) mostly just a rip-off of Doctor Solar.
(10) Perhaps I'm too harsh. I remember not liking it but it's been awhile. I love the character/ set-up, even the weird zig-zag external underwear. Billy Zane looked pretty good as him, though, I'll give him that.
(11) I remember the three-comic, bagged Whitman (the successor to Gold Key)s. My grandma got me one of those that had Turok, Buck Rogers, and I want to say a Doctor Solar. At the time (I was six) I was like "WTF, Grandma... this ain't Marvel." Then she pulled off her mask and I was like "YOU DIRTY DOG!" It was me again, from the future, just fucking around. That freaking guy.
(1) "We need to lead a mob of pitchforks to the gates of Hollywood." -- Probably for any number of reasons!
Delete(8) An evergreen sentiment.
(11) Ah, yes, I think it might be those Whitman ones that I'm remembering. I definitely had some Whitman comics; I'm fairly sure that's how I got them.