Showing posts with label adaptation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adaptation. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

FRONTIER DOCTOR "Storm Over King City" Part 1

A 1950s Old West TV series about a man who didn't carry a gun?
Yep, and this never-reprinted one-shot comic tale is adapted from one of the episodes!
To Be Concluded Thursday at...

This adaptation of the episode "Storm Over King City" in Dell's Four Color Comics #877 (1958) was illustrated by Alex Toth, whom Old West comics fans remember as the artist on the comics based on Disney's Zorro TV series!
The writer, however, is unknown, 
As for the 1958-59 syndicated TV series' protagonist...
Though he did not carry a gun, Dr Bill Baxter was not a wimp by any measure.
The medical man used his wits, medical knowledge, his fists, and, occasionally, other people's shooting irons, to aid those who needed help.
Rex Allen, who played Baxter, performed as a rodeo rider while in high school.
After graduation, he took up singing, first in vaudeville, then on radio, becoming a popular country/Western singers.
Like most of his contemporaries, he soon was doing Western b-movies as a singing cowboy nicknamed "The Arizona Cowboy", teamed up with comedy-relief sidekicks including Buddy Ebsen and Slim Pickens.
After a couple of dozen films, Rex tried to make the transition to TV with Frontier Doctor, but the show was cancelled after a single season.
But Allen made yet another transition, and became a successful voice-over artist and narrator, primarily for Disney film and tv productions.
TRIVIA:
Besides Frontier Cowboy, Rex had his own self-titled comic book series from Dell Comics that ran for thirty-one issues!
Allen was a cousin of Gunsmoke cast member Glenn Strange, who played bartender Sam Noonan.
Rex's son, Rex Allen, Jr., is a successful singer.
There's a Rex Allen Museum in Willcox, Arizona!
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Friday, February 2, 2024

FESS PARKER: DANIEL BOONE "Murderer's Cave"

Yes, the cover title actually was Fess Parker: Daniel Boone...

...because, by the time this TV show debuted in 1964, there had been several other comic book series about the legendary frontiersman and the comic's publishers wanted readers to know this comic was based on the TV series starring the guy who previously-played Davy Crockett!

As this never-reprinted tale from Gold Key's Fess Parker: Daniel Boone #2 (1965) demonstrates, racism was a part of the fabric of America from the very beginning!
Admittedly, the authorities are British, since the story takes place before the American Revolution, but even our Declaration of Independence calls Native Americans “the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”
So it's not surprising the judges take the word of disreputable, uneducated White settlers instead of the sworn testimony of an Oxford University graduate who was half-Cherokee/half-British!
It's rumored that this story, written and illustrated by Fred Fredricks, was based on an unused TV series plot.
It certainly reads as more sophisticated than the usual comic based on a movie or TV show.
Note: writer-artist Fredricks had produced all the stories in issues 1 and 2 (including this one).
Issue #3 had one story by him...which was partially-redrawn, and then he was gone from the series which ran another twelve issues.
Coincidence?
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Thursday, July 16, 2020

Confederate Comics THE REBEL "Bad Medicine" Part 2

...returning to his home town after the end of the Civil War and avenging the death of his father, former Confederate soldier Johnny Yuma feels there's no reason to stay...
Will Johnny Yuma rescue Dr Holcomb?
Will Little Buffalo Calf foul up the attempt?
Find Out...
...FRIDAY
at 
Secret Sanctum of Captain Video
Written by Gardner DuBois, penciled by Mike Sekowsky, and inked by Mike Peppe, this section of this never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #1076 (1960) shows Johnny Yuma as a rather typical noble hero wandering the Old West, without any reference to his Confederate past, an element usually played up in the live-action series!
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The Rebel
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Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Happy 60th Birthday, Zorro!

Sixty years ago today...
...Walt Disney unleashed his version of the already-legendary Zorro on America, creating a phenomenon equal to Davy Crockett-mania several years earlier!
Check out his premiere in both comics and tv HERE!
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Monday, August 5, 2013

BROKEN ARROW "Kingdom of Terror" Conclusion

(Don't worry!
You didn't miss anything.
The first part of this tale appeared at our "brother" blog, Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™!)
Cochise and his "blood brother", Indian Agent Tom Jeffords, find Nagotay, an Apache brave missing for months and thought to be dead.
The wounded brave relates how he and his brother Chalo inadvertently crossed the border into Guadalupe, an Arizona territory still under Spanish control, and how the two Apaches were framed and forced into a chain gang providing slave labor.
Cochise and Jeffords enter Guadalupe on the pretext of returning the horse Nagotay stole while making his escape, discover the region's police consist of American outlaws, and meet Senorita Serafina, the ruler of Guadalupe, who refuses to release Chalo.
When Jeffords asks to see the documents pertaining to the Spanish land grant, he discovers the Spanish birth certificate giving the Senorita legal control of the territory is a fake!
This story from Dell's Four Color Comics  #855 (1957) was adapted from the script of the TV episode of the same name broadcast Jan. 14, 1958...and was published a couple of months before the episode aired.
The adaptation was penned by long-time pulp, paperback, and comic writer Otto Binder and illustrated by journeyman artist Howard Purcell.
Cochise was played by the late Michael Ansara in what turned out to be his breakout role.
Broken Arrow was based on the novel Blood Brother by Elliot Arnold, which had already been made into a feature film starring Jeff Chandler as Cochise and a TV-movie starring Ricardo Montalban in the role.
The two-year show was the most prominent of several late-1950s TV series that featured Native Americans as heroes, rather than villains.
There's more info about the series HERE.
Oddly, none of the lead Indian characters in these series was played by Native Americans!
(For example; Ansara was Syrian!
His parents emigrated to the US when he was two.)
We'll be presenting a comic story from another one, Brave Eagle, in the next month or so...

Thursday, April 11, 2013

ZORRO "Spaniard's Secret: the Brooch"

Don't worry, you didn't miss anything.
The first two chapters appeared in other blogs...
Young Anita Cabrillo (Annette Funicello) arrives from Spain in search of her father, Don Miguel Cabrillo, but no one in Los Angeles seems to know him...or if he even exists!
Don Diego Vega (Guy Williams) and his father (George J Lewis) offer to help the girl and put her up in a guest room at their hacienda while she looks for her unseen daddy.
However, there are those who don't want Anita's search to succeed, forcing Zorro into action to save the girl's life twice...
This never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #1037 (1959) was illustrated by Warren Tufts and Joe Giella, but the scripter of the adaptation is unknown.
Trivia: Carlos Rivas, who played the villainous Ruiz was a Mexican-American actor who played both good and bad characters of various ethnicities during his long career from 1945 to 2000.
His real name was Oscar von Weber!
He was a founding member of Nosotros, an organization that works to improve the image and employment of Latinos in the entertainment industry.
Now, the episode itself...
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