These pre-George Lucas sci-fi movies were the perfect fodder for comic book adaptations, since the special effects end of them hadn't really kicked into high gear, leaving comics to provide the visual spectacle that you couldn't really get anywhere else at the time.
This fifty-one page version of the movie is by Marv Wolfman and Sonny Trinidad, and it kicks off with a great, movie-poster-ish splash page:
(click to enlargify!)
The story opens on an unnamed soldier, manning a lonely post, who discovers a cannister floating in the water. It contains a letter describing a most amazing story...
A British passenger ship is torpedoed by a German sub, leaving just a handful of survivors in a small lifeboat. They manage to get aboard the sub and take command, and its during this that our storyteller, Bowen Tyler, starts to fall for the beautiful Lys, who shows grit and determination when she shoots one of the Germans to save Bowen's life.
The sub is shot at by another British ship, which forces it to drive and head vastly off course. So far off course that it sails into seas rarely visited by man, and its here they discover a mysterious island:
They land on the island, and discover it truly is the Land That Time Forgot, as it is filled with dinosaurs and even cavemen!
After several life and death battles with both, our heroes begin to figure out that there is some approximation of a society on this island, with some of the cave people being more evolved than the others. And while the visitors try to co-habitate with their less evolved friends, sometimes its Survival of the Fittest:
Eventually, some of the German sub officers figure out a way off the island, and they betray Bowen and Lys, and leave them behind! Unfortunately for them, the sub is damaged, and as they fight amongst themselves, it sinks into the inky blackness of the ocean.
Bowen and Lys decide to try and live the best they can in this new land, and they write down their story and send it into the ocean...who knows if anyone will ever read it?
Like I said at the beginning, stories like this are perfect for comics, because they weren't limited to the special effects at the time. Indeed, this magazine comes with some stills from the movie, and the comic is, well, way cooler:
Sadly, this was the first, last, and only issue of Marvel Movie Premiere--why Marvel didn't continue with it as a series we'll probably never know. Its not like they didn't do like a thousand movie adaptations after this!
3 comments:
This is really cool! I had no idea that Marvel did this adaptation. It's a shame they didn't also do The People That Time Forgot, At The Earth's Core, and Warlords of Atlantis, all made in the mid- to late-70s by the same company and featuring Doug McClure. It's true that comics were once the only place where fantasy and science fiction could be portrayed in a visually satisfying style. Movies have now caught up, but they cost $200 million to produce and only give you 2 hours of entertainment. They can't match the depth of story that you can get from a monthly comic.
fantastic art!
It's funny because I was just reading about this and The People That Time Forgo and At The Earth's Core. I wanna read the original books too.
I have fond memories of buying this in a used book store as a kid. I loved these movies so this was a major score...
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