Friday, June 24, 2011

Captain's Library: BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES Conclusion

This scene, printed as a fold-out in the comic book, was omitted from the actual adaptation!
Escaping from Ape City, mute native girl Nova and stranded astronaut Brent, looking for Nova's companion Taylor (an astronaut from an earlier flight), enter the ruins of New York City and discover a society of radiation-mutated telepathic humans.
Meanwhile, an Ape army is approaching the city, determined to kill anything or anyone who isn't an ape!
The mutants prepare their only weapon, a planet-destroying atomic bomb, for use if their psychic illusions can't stop the advancing troops...
The writer of this 1970 Gold Key adaptation is not known, but the art is by Alberto Giolitti and Sergio Costa, who handled a lot of the tv-movie adaptations at Gold Key including most issues of Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
It was the only Apes adaptation Gold Key would do.
In 1974 Marvel would acquire the comics license to the Apes franchise and do new adaptations of all five movies (including Beneath) as well as original stories with new characters set in the time period between Battle and Planet.

Chronologically, the movies (and tv shows) run...
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Live action and animated tv shows in this era, then...
Planet of the Apes
Beneath the Planet of the Apes

Though they had the rights, Marvel didn't do any comics material based on either of the tv shows, but the magazines ran text features about them, including behind-the-scenes stories.

Power Records, who were doing audio versions (with read-along comics) of various Marvel and DC comics, produced lp and 45 records with adaptations of four of the movies (omitting Conquest) and new stories based on the live-action tv series.
Their adaptations of the movies used totally-new comic art instead of utilizing existing Marvel art, which seemed odd as they were already using reprints of Marvel material for their Fantastic Four, Captain America, etc. read-along comics.
Depending on how our schedule works out over the next couple of months, we may present the Power Records Apes comics before Rise of the Planet of the Apes opens.
or these available-thru-Amazon Ape Essentials...

No comments:

Post a Comment