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Monday, April 09, 2012
Wood Chips #43: Jungle Jim
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Here's another of the Jungle Jim stories I wrote for Wally Wood. His only suggestion for this story was to use a giant rat. Jim's feverish line "Rats... thousands of rats" is an allusion to the "Three Skeleton Key" episode of radio's Escape. Scroll down for more background info. Click on bottom label to see the other Jungle Jim stories.
Jungle Jim #22: Roughs to Finish
In 1966, King Features began a division to publish comic book adaptations of their more popular strips, including Mandrake the Magician, Beetle Bailey and Flash Gordon.
Juggling jobs and temporarily minus his regular assistant, Ralph Reese, Wally Wood faced a sudden two-week deadline on a Jungle Jim comic book for King Comics. Nothing had been done. His solution to the problem, I was told, began with me. I was to write three Jungle Jim stories in two days, he told me. In 15 minutes, he outlined how to do it: Draw roughs on typing paper, begin each story in the middle of an action situation, write as few captions as possible (so the pictures tell the story) and use conventional panel layouts rather than sprawling, tricky page designs.
With no time to research the original Alex Raymond characters, I resorted to a near-satiric approach based on a hazy, half-buried recollection of the early 1950s Johnny Weissmuller Jungle Jim film series. Wood made only a few changes, eliminating the more obvious satire in certain lines of dialogue, and then he immediately sent them to prolific letterer Bill Yoshida (1921-2005). I gathered that Yoshida had an assembly-line approach, constantly lettering while his children traveled around the city delivering and picking up pages.
“The Wizard of Dark Mountain” is obviously inspired by my memories of Dr. No (1962). Wood turned that one over to Steve Ditko, who followed my rough layouts with such precision that he carefully included every detail. I saw that he had made a few slight alterations and improvements. On page five, panel five, I had Jungle Jim holding Rima’s ass as he gave her a boost into the ventilating shaft; Ditko gave it a simple change to make it acceptable to the King editors. On page three, panel four, my rough of the trio rock climbing was awkward, and he easily solved the problem by repositioning the characters.
Wood gave “The Golden Goddess of Thalthor” to Tom Palmer, and I arrived at the West 74th Street studio while Wood was looking over Palmer’s penciled pages. Wood said, “His drawing looks like Archie, Betty and Veronica, but since he told all the kids in his neighborhood that he’s now a famous comic book artist, I can’t bring myself to reject this. I guess I’ll give him a chance to redraw some of it.”
A few nights later, I learned why Wood had expressed little concern for the tight deadline. Artists from all over the city converged like cockroaches to his two-room studio. Someone sat in every available inch. I walked over and said hello to Roger Brand (1943-1985), who looked up and said, “Hi! I’m drawing your story.” As he completed pages of “The Witch Doctor of Borges Island”, they were passed to Dom Sileo and other inkers—who were adding finishing touches to all three stories. Wood, at his drawing table, meticulously inked faces for a while and eventually vanished. He returned shortly with his wife, Tatjana, grinning as he showed her the white heat of activity, leading her into that maelstrom of streaming Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes and flowing India ink.
With a few phone calls, Wood had contrived to recreate the mood and atmosphere of a 1940s comics shop. It was an exhilarating evening, one that he obviously enjoyed manipulating as much as I enjoyed seeing panels springing to life exactly as I had designed them.
I had completed one more script when Wood phoned to explain that King Comics had decided to withdraw from publishing comic books and had passed all materials to Charlton. Wood dropped out, and Pat Boyette (1923-2000) took over the book, illustrating scripts by Joe Gill. My last Jungle Jim script was “The Black Blossoms of Death,” an attempt to do a Lovecraft-type tale. It was illustrated by Boyette in Jungle Jim #23.
Here's another of the Jungle Jim stories I wrote for Wally Wood. His only suggestion for this story was to use a giant rat. Jim's feverish line "Rats... thousands of rats" is an allusion to the "Three Skeleton Key" episode of radio's Escape. Scroll down for more background info. Click on bottom label to see the other Jungle Jim stories.
In 1966, King Features began a division to publish comic book adaptations of their more popular strips, including Mandrake the Magician, Beetle Bailey and Flash Gordon.
Juggling jobs and temporarily minus his regular assistant, Ralph Reese, Wally Wood faced a sudden two-week deadline on a Jungle Jim comic book for King Comics. Nothing had been done. His solution to the problem, I was told, began with me. I was to write three Jungle Jim stories in two days, he told me. In 15 minutes, he outlined how to do it: Draw roughs on typing paper, begin each story in the middle of an action situation, write as few captions as possible (so the pictures tell the story) and use conventional panel layouts rather than sprawling, tricky page designs.
With no time to research the original Alex Raymond characters, I resorted to a near-satiric approach based on a hazy, half-buried recollection of the early 1950s Johnny Weissmuller Jungle Jim film series. Wood made only a few changes, eliminating the more obvious satire in certain lines of dialogue, and then he immediately sent them to prolific letterer Bill Yoshida (1921-2005). I gathered that Yoshida had an assembly-line approach, constantly lettering while his children traveled around the city delivering and picking up pages.
“The Wizard of Dark Mountain” is obviously inspired by my memories of Dr. No (1962). Wood turned that one over to Steve Ditko, who followed my rough layouts with such precision that he carefully included every detail. I saw that he had made a few slight alterations and improvements. On page five, panel five, I had Jungle Jim holding Rima’s ass as he gave her a boost into the ventilating shaft; Ditko gave it a simple change to make it acceptable to the King editors. On page three, panel four, my rough of the trio rock climbing was awkward, and he easily solved the problem by repositioning the characters.
Wood gave “The Golden Goddess of Thalthor” to Tom Palmer, and I arrived at the West 74th Street studio while Wood was looking over Palmer’s penciled pages. Wood said, “His drawing looks like Archie, Betty and Veronica, but since he told all the kids in his neighborhood that he’s now a famous comic book artist, I can’t bring myself to reject this. I guess I’ll give him a chance to redraw some of it.”
A few nights later, I learned why Wood had expressed little concern for the tight deadline. Artists from all over the city converged like cockroaches to his two-room studio. Someone sat in every available inch. I walked over and said hello to Roger Brand (1943-1985), who looked up and said, “Hi! I’m drawing your story.” As he completed pages of “The Witch Doctor of Borges Island”, they were passed to Dom Sileo and other inkers—who were adding finishing touches to all three stories. Wood, at his drawing table, meticulously inked faces for a while and eventually vanished. He returned shortly with his wife, Tatjana, grinning as he showed her the white heat of activity, leading her into that maelstrom of streaming Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes and flowing India ink.
With a few phone calls, Wood had contrived to recreate the mood and atmosphere of a 1940s comics shop. It was an exhilarating evening, one that he obviously enjoyed manipulating as much as I enjoyed seeing panels springing to life exactly as I had designed them.
I had completed one more script when Wood phoned to explain that King Comics had decided to withdraw from publishing comic books and had passed all materials to Charlton. Wood dropped out, and Pat Boyette (1923-2000) took over the book, illustrating scripts by Joe Gill. My last Jungle Jim script was “The Black Blossoms of Death,” an attempt to do a Lovecraft-type tale. It was illustrated by Boyette in Jungle Jim #23.
Labels: jungle jim, tom palmer, wood chips
¶ 9:24 PM 0 comments
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wood Chips #39: Roger Brand
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Kim Deitch's recent very moving writing about Roger Brand has stirred a lot of comments, with people posting their own memories of Roger. It all brings back those long ago days and nights of creative jaunts at drawing boards all over Manhattan. You can read Kim's memoir and the remarkable comments it triggered here.
This prompted me to recall my own meeting with Roger when he drew one of my scripts for Jungle Jim #22 (February 1969), following my layouts. This was actually written by completing a script someone else at the Wood Studio had started and then abandoned. The four Jungle Jim stories I wrote for Wally Wood were penciled by Roger, Tom Palmer, Steve Ditko and (in a later issue) Pat Boyette. Of the four, this one is the weakest. The convoluted plot elements barely hang together, but Roger's considerable drawing skills keep the story from totally collapsing. I like the coloring effect of the pure white beam. Wally Wood inked, along with Roger, me and others in a group inking session at the Wood Studio in 1967. Bill Yoshida did the lettering.
For the rest of issue #22, visit Pappy's Golden Age.
Kim Deitch's recent very moving writing about Roger Brand has stirred a lot of comments, with people posting their own memories of Roger. It all brings back those long ago days and nights of creative jaunts at drawing boards all over Manhattan. You can read Kim's memoir and the remarkable comments it triggered here.
This prompted me to recall my own meeting with Roger when he drew one of my scripts for Jungle Jim #22 (February 1969), following my layouts. This was actually written by completing a script someone else at the Wood Studio had started and then abandoned. The four Jungle Jim stories I wrote for Wally Wood were penciled by Roger, Tom Palmer, Steve Ditko and (in a later issue) Pat Boyette. Of the four, this one is the weakest. The convoluted plot elements barely hang together, but Roger's considerable drawing skills keep the story from totally collapsing. I like the coloring effect of the pure white beam. Wally Wood inked, along with Roger, me and others in a group inking session at the Wood Studio in 1967. Bill Yoshida did the lettering.
Labels: jungle jim, roger brand, wood chips
¶ 12:09 AM 2 comments
Saturday, November 13, 2010
I was once reading a Steve Ditko Dr. Strange when I discovered that the repetitive key dialogue from Michael McClure's controversial 1965 play The Beard was actually taken directly from a fantasy sequence in Dr. Strange: "Before you can pry any secrets from me, you must first find the real me. Which one will you pursue?"
Marvel Comics knew this, because I told them, but they chose not to promote the connection, evidently because they didn't want their comic book associated with a play that included a scene of cunnilingus between Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid.
Below is the beginning (parts 1/2/3 of 7) of Jonathan Ross' BBC-4 documentary, In Search of Steve Ditko (2007). I was fortunate to have Ditko illustrate two of the comic book scripts I wrote in the 1960s and 1970s. Ditko and Wally Wood were friends and did a number of pencil/ink collaborations; I had the opportunity to color one of those, the first issue of The Destructor (1975).
“The Wizard of Dark Mountain” (from Jungle Jim 22) is obviously inspired by my memories of Dr. No (1962). Wally Wood's instruction when he suggested this story: "Remember, they are little people. Not pygmies. Little people." When I turned in the script, he handed it to Ditko, who followed my 8 1/2'' x 11'' layouts with such precision that he carefully included every detail. Ditko made a few slight alterations and improvements to my panel roughs. On page five, panel five, I had Jungle Jim holding Rima’s ass when he gave her a boost into the ventilating shaft; Ditko gave it a simple change to make it acceptable to the editors. On page three, panel four, my rough of the trio rock climbing was awkward, and he easily solved the problem by repositioning the characters.
In addition to the nice costume designs, he also injected an intensity to heighten the mood of the melodrama. Panel three on page five is executed with that imaginative and dynamic flair so typical of Ditko that the panel was duplicated to become the front cover.
Go to YouTube to watch Part Four.
Labels: BBC, ditko, jonathan ross, jungle jim, michael mcclure, wood
¶ 9:33 PM 4 comments
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
To read my article about scripting Jungle Jim #22, go to Pappy's Golden Age Comics. I remember Wood saying, "Oh, and Bhob... make sure they are little people, not pygmys." I immediately had the image of Princess Rima riding on Jungle Jim's shoulder. Rima, of course, is a reference to W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions (1904), which you can read here.
My every action, word, thought, had my feeling for Rima
as a motive. Why, I began to ask myself, was Rima so much to me? It was
easy to answer that question: Because nothing so exquisite had ever been
created. All the separate and fragmentary beauty and melody and
graceful motion found scattered throughout nature were concentrated and
harmoniously combined in her. How various, how luminous, how divine she
was! A being for the mind to marvel at, to admire continually, finding
some new grace and charm every hour, every moment, to add to the old.
And there was, besides, the fascinating mystery surrounding her origin
to arouse and keep my interest in her continually active.
That was the easy answer I returned to the question I had asked myself.
But I knew that there was another answer--a reason more powerful than
the first. And I could no longer thrust it back, or hide its shining
face with the dull, leaden mask of mere intellectual curiosity. Because I loved her; loved her as I had never loved before, never could love
any other being, with a passion which had caught something of her
own brilliance and intensity, making a former passion look dim and
commonplace in comparison--a feeling known to everyone, something old and worn out, a weariness even to think of.
From these reflections I was roused by the plaintive three-syllable call
of an evening bird--a nightjar common in these woods; and was surprised
to find that the sun had set, and the woods already shadowed with the
twilight. I started up and began hurriedly walking homewards, thinking
of Rima, and was consumed with impatience to see her; and as I drew near
to the house, walking along a narrow path which I knew, I suddenly met
her face to face. Doubtless she had heard my approach, and instead of
shrinking out of the path and allowing me to pass on without seeing her,
as she would have done on the previous day, she had sprung forward to
meet me. I was struck with wonder at the change in her as she came with
a swift, easy motion, like a flying bird, her hands outstretched as if
to clasp mine, her lips parted in a radiant, welcoming smile, her eyes
sparkling with joy.
--W. H. Hudson
--W. H. Hudson
Labels: dom sileo, jungle jim, roger brand, steve ditko, tom palmer, wood
¶ 9:03 PM 2 comments
