Planet of the Apes #17: The Newton edition

Newton Comics' Planet of the Apes #17 is cover-dated August 1976 and is the final numbered issue of the series. Two unnumbered issues followed. There was also an Annual.

The cover image originally appeared on Planet of the Apes #14.

The story contents are as follows:

Terror on the Planet of the Apes Phase Two: Up the Nose-Tube to Monkey-Trash, originally published in Planet of the Apes #14, November 1975

Escape from the Planet of the Apes Part 3: Trouble In Paradise Lost, originally published in Planet of the Apes #14, November 1975

Dreamer In Emerald Silence, originally published in Planet of the Apes #15, December 1975

The following non-comics feature is included:

Shaping A Simian World, originally published in Planet of the Apes #14, November 1975

Dreamer in Emerald Silence is a 28-page story. However, Newton buggered up and effectively made it a 29-page story by duplicating page 67 in the middle of the story, after page 78 which contains an in-house ad: 

Page 25 advises that "Terror on the Planet of the Apes continues in issue #18 with: "The Society of the Psychedrome!"" This story was not published by Newton.

Page 52 advises "Next issue: In the Cradle of a Father's Sins." This was published in the unnumbered 19th issue of Planet of the Apes.

This issue includes a 2-page letter column, a competition (no expiry date) and in-house advertisements. The Dracula advertisement above features a pre-production image of the forthcoming unnumbered Dracula issue (more on this in a later post). An image of the cover of Planet of the Apes #17 - without the date/issue number information or the poster/contest/price banner - is also included:

The Newton Comics reader in August 1976 had cause to expect the line would continue for the foreseeable future -  the letter column proclaimed changes to formats and announced new titles, the competitions were still in place - in other words, an editorial hand was evident with plans for the future in place. This would change very shortly.

Newton Comics' Dracula #12: Another Dracula Lives! connection

Newton Comics' Dracula #12 is cover-dated February 1976, and features a cover illustration which  originally appeared on the cover of Marvel's Vampire Tales #4:

A few years after Dracula #12 Page Publications published an Australian edition of Vampire Tales #4:

The contents of Dracula #12 are as follows:

The Lady Who Collected Dracula, originally published in Dracula Lives! #9, November 1974
Scarlet in Glory!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #9, November 1974
The Scars Of Dracula, originally published in Dracula Lives! #9, November 1974
A Night In The Unlife!, originally published in Dracula Lives #9, November 1974
Twice Dies The Vampire!, originally published in Dracula Lives #9, November 1974
Dracula A.D. 1972, originally published in Dracula Lives! #10, January 1975
The Blood Book, originally published in Dracula Lives! #10, January 1975
A Vampire Stalks Melrose Abbey, originally published in Dracula Lives! #10, January 1975

This issue also includes a colour poster of The Hulk based on the cover to Newton's The Incredible Hulk #13, and a number of in-house ads, a letter column and a contest.

On the one hand, Dracula #12 is directly related to the template set by Dracula Giant 100 Page Annual - it features a front cover based on a Vampire Tales issue, whilst the contents are an orderly albeit incomplete presentation from two consecutive issues of Dracula Lives!

On the other hand, continuity-wise, it is more closely related to Dracula #11 - The Lady Who Collected Dracula is Part 2 of Last Walk on the Night Side. Of course, there are as many stories from Dracula Lives! #8 in Dracula #13 as there are in Dracula #11... And in terms of continuity, the Dracula Annual precedes Dracula #11... Indeed all three issues could have been titled Dracula Lives!

Identifying the contents of Newton comics is one thing. Explaining the whys and wherefores is quite another.

Newton Comics' Dracula Giant 100 Page Annual: Speculations, second-guesses and reversed images

This is the front cover to Marvel's Vampire Tales #1:

The image was reversed in Page Publications' Vampire Tales #1:

The reversed image appeared a couple of years earlier in Australia, on Newton Comics' Dracula Giant 100 Page Annual:

The contents of this issue are as follows:

Fear Stalker, originally published in Dracula Lives! #4, January 1974

This Blood Is Mine!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #4, January 1974

In Search Of Dracula: A True History of Dracula and Vampire Legends, originally published in Dracula Lives! #4, January 1974

Look Homeward, Vampire!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #4, January 1974

A Duel Of Demons, originally published in Dracula Lives! #5, March 1974

Night Flight To Terror!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #5, March 1974

A Death in the Chapel!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #6, May 1974

Yes, Virginia, There IS a Real Dracula (Undead and Well in Wallachia), originally published in Dracula Lives! #6, May 1974

Shadow Over Versailles, originally published in Dracula Lives! #6, May 1974

Although the cover is from Vampire Tales #1, the contents are unrelated to that series. In fact they are an orderly albeit incomplete resume of the Marvel Dracula Lives! series. The first two stories had already been published in Dracula #11. The Dracula Lives! title on the cover of Dracula #11 suggests Newton was gearing up towards a comprehensive restaging of the Dracula title from a predominantly Tomb of Dracula-based title towards a Dracula Lives!-centric title. This is partly true - even though the preceding 11 issues of Dracula did contain a rather random selection of Dracula Lives! and Vampire Tales content, the subsequent Dracula issues featured a larger portion of Dracula Lives! reprints, even as it continued with the Dracula title on both the cover and indicia.

Dracula Giant 100 Page Annual has a January 1976 cover date. This places it neatly between Dracula #11 (cover date December 1975) and Dracula #12 (cover date February 1976). I note however that the competition expiry date in Dracula #12 (21 February 1976) is a week earlier than the expiry date for the competition in the Dracula Annual (28 February 1976). I expect this is due to the longer shelf life of an Annual compared to a regular issue. but it is also symptomatic of problems in the Newton offices in December 1975/January 1976.

Consider also why it was necessary to publish the Dracula Annual in the first place. I mentioned in my previous post that Dracula #11 was the first of the new monthly editions with an increase in price and page count. The increase was significant - basically double the page count and price. Dracula #11 was lumbered with the stresses of both a page increase and a fortnightly schedule - it was the first monthly edition, but it filled the slot originally reserved for a 44-page fortnightly issue. Given the first two stories in the Dracula Annual are also the last two stories in Dracula #11, it appears likely that Fear Stalker and The Blood is Mine! were dragged into urgent service for Dracula #11 to help fulfil a higher page count at the expense of the next Dracula/Dracula Lives! issue scheduled for January 1976. This may have had a flow-on effect as those two stories were already prepared for the January1976 issue, at which point it was decided that in order to compensate for the duplication, extra pages would be added to the January 1976 instalment, which caused the page count to balloon to 100 pages, and voila!, a 100-page Annual was born! Pure speculation on my part, but it does account for the duplication of the stories and the interruption to the schedule of new, monthly numbered issues - and maybe it also accounts in some way for the contest dates.

Dracula #12 did indeed proceed to reprint Dracula Lives! stories - but that's a story for another blog post.

Newton Comics' Dracula #11: Dracula Lives!

Dracula Lives! was a Marvel Comics series which ran for 13 issues between 1973-75. Despite the title on the cover, this is Newton Comics' Dracula #11, published 27 December 1975. It is the only issue in the series to bear this title on the cover, even though some of the issues contained cover images and contents drawn from the Dracula Lives! series. The cover for this issue originally appeared on Marvel's Dracula Lives! #11. There was a shortlived Dracula Lives! series published in Australia by Yaffa a couple of years after the Newton Dracula series.

Dracula #11 is the first of the new 84-page $0.75 monthly editions, as announced in the letter column of this issue. As mentioned earlier, this schedule was to be thwarted for various reasons, resulting in only three more numbered issues in the series, published rather haphazardly over the next 8 months or so. (Two other Dracula issues were published by Newton in 1976 - an unnumbered issue, and a Giant 100 Page Annual, which would in part account for some of gaps... but I digress...). 

The contents are as follows:

Bloody Mary, originally published in Dracula Lives! #13, July 1975

Blood of My Blood!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #13, July 1975

Last Walk on the Night Side, originally published in Dracula Lives! #8, September 1974

And in That Sleep..!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #8, September 1974

Fear Stalker, originally published in Dracula Lives! #4, January 1974

This Blood Is Mine!, originally published in Dracula Lives! 4, January 1974

The poster included in this issue is a modified black and white print of the cover on Newton's Doctor Strange #7. The rest of the issue includes in-house advertisements, a competition and a letter column.

Newton Comics' Dracula #13: Bloodier than the original

Newton Comics' Dracula #13 is cover-dated April 1976. 

The contents are as follows:

Black Hand...Black Death!, originally published in Dracula Lives! #8, September 1974

Child Of The Sun, originally published in Dracula Lives! #8, September 1974

Nobody Anybody Knows, originally published in Dracula Lives! #11, March 1975

Bloodmoon, originally published in Vampire Tales #9, February 1975

The Bleeding Time, originally published in Vampire Tales #9, February 1975

Shards Of A Crystal Rainbow, originally published in Vampire Tales #9, February 1975

The cover image is from Vampire Tales #5:

As you can see, the original is darker, and the Newton cover is literally bloodier. This appears to be an unintentional albeit effective result of a printing error. The single-coloured blue Newton title box on the top left hand corner appears to be symptomatic of this printing error.

The April cover date suggests this issue was delayed from the scheduled March publication. Dracula #12 was cover-dated February 1976, and there are five separate in-house advertisements for March 1976 cover-dated issues, all declared as On Sale Now. Dracula #14 would suffer a substantially more significant delay, cover-dated August 1976 (more on this issue in a forthcoming blog).

The following iron-on transfer was printed on the rear cover:

This is sourced from the cover of Newton's The Amazing Spider-Man #16:

A giant-size lift-out poster is advertised on the front cover of Dracula #13. My copy does not have this poster but I expect it would be similar to the one found in my Newton Spectacular. Note that Monsters Unleashed! #3, which I blogged recently, was also published with a March 1976 cover date and also advertises a giant-size lift-out poster in the same font. 

Monsters Unleashed! #3: The Newton edition (and a little dash of Yaffa....)

Newton Comics' Monsters Unleashed! #3 has a March 1976 cover date. 

The contents are as follows:

One Hungers, originally published in Monsters Unleashed!#8, October 1974

A Martian Genesis, originally published in Monsters Unleashed! #8, October 1974

The Conscience of the Creature, originally published in Monsters Unleashed! #9, December 1974

Snowbird in Hell, originally published in Monsters Unleashed! #9, December 1974

Swamp Stars of the Silver Screen, originally published in Monsters Unleashed! #8, October 1974

The Serenity Stealers, originally published in Monsters Unleashed! #10, February 1975

The Little People!, originally published in Strange Tales #103, December 1962

The rest of the pages consist of in-house advertisements, a contest and an iron-on transfer.

The reprinting of One Hungers in Newton's Monsters Unleashed! #3 is obviously associated with the printing in Marvel's Monsters Unleashed #8, but this story appeared earlier in Tower of Shadows #2, November 1969. One Hungers was published by KG Murray in Doomsday Annual #2, which was published within a few months of the Newton printing. Maybe the Doomsday Annual version was in some way associated with the Tower of Shadows print. 

Swamp Stars of the Silver Screen is not a comics story. It's prose and photos, which I guess is why it doesn't appear in the GCD entry and I had to go looking elsewhere to identify the source.

The Little People! is the odd one out here. Whilst everything else is related to various Marvel Monsters Unleashed! issues, this story originally appeared in Strange Tales #103, December 1962, and according to the GCD, the only subsequent reprintings were in UK magazines. Even then there is some query as to the source material. I expect more reprintings of this story will be unearthed.

The cover image to Newton's Monster's Unleashed! #3 was reprinted in mid-1979 by Page Publications for Monsters Unleashed! #2:

From a distance they appear identical, the requisite branding and text superimpositions notwithstanding. On closer inspection the Page edition is distinctly more reddish, and the Newton edition more yellowish. The contents however are completely unrelated. A quick check suggests the Page edition is more closely related to the US mother as it replicates the main comics features and two of the three text only features of Marvel's Monsters Unleashed! #2:

Yeah, suddenly the Newton and Page editions look much more closely related to one another than to the parent issue!

Newton Comics' The Fantastic Four #1: Querying the publication date and the cover

Here's a cover scan of my copy of Newton Comics' The Fantastic Four #1:

Here's a scan of a pre-production advertisement for The Fantastic Four #1 as it appears in Newton Comics' Planet of the Apes #1:

As you can see it is the same image albeit with somewhat lower resolution and cropping on the right hand side. The difference between the two is in the text overlays and the caption boxes. 

The advertisement announces an on sale date of 14 June. The 14 appears to have different characteristics to the rest of the date related text. 

I date Planet of the Apes #1 as released on or before 7 June 1975. The competition on the rear cover expires 7 July 1975. However, the competition on the rear cover of The Fantastic Four #1 expires earlier, on 30 June 1975. In the normal sequence of events the competition on The Fantastic Four #1 would expire shortly after the competition in Planet of the Apes #1. I also note that my date for the release of The Fantastic Four #2 is 12 July 1975. In this initial stage of their publication program Newton Comics published their titles fortnightly. The pre-production advertisement, the out of sync competition dates and the July date for The Fantastic Four #2 all suggest there was a delay in the publication of The Fantastic Four #1 on 14 June 1975. I haven't checked the editorial notes in the letter columns for more information in this regard, but will update this note should pertinent information come to hand.

Something else of interest - see below a scan of the original Marvel cover to The Fantastic Four #1:

Quite apart from the colouring, there are distinct differences between this and the Newton Comics edition. In particular, look at the male figure on the right hand side near the fire hydrant and above Mr Fantastic's speech balloon. The original cover clearly looks like a Jack Kirby figure - even if the pencil work is too small to identify it, the posture is pure Kirby. However, the figure in the Newton Comics edition is completely different. In fact his shoe intrudes into the speech balloon!

Now, I'd love to claim this as an exclusive Australian edition variant, but I can't. The same modified cover is reprinted in my Marvel Masterworks Vol. 2, and a quick check of covers on the GCD tells me the modified cover was published as early as 1966 on nothing less than The Fantastic Four Golden Book and Record Set. It appears the modified cover has become the standard in reprints of The Fantastic Four #1. I've checked over a dozen cover scans from various US and International editions and they all have the modified version.

I'm sure there's a story behind this that Kirby experts have addressed before. I'm no Kirby expert, but I'm interested as to how this came about, so if there's a good article online or in The Jack Kirby Collector or some other reputable source about this, I'd be grateful to be pointed in the right direction.

Update 21/11/2018: Marvel published a facsimile edition of The Fantastic Four #1 in 2018 with the original cover. (A shame about the bar code and the new cover price.)

Update 13/12/18: Here's a photo I took of the advertisement for The Fantastic Four #1 as it appeared in the Sunday Observer 15 June 1975:

It appears conclusive that this issue was indeed published 14 June 1975.

The following two advertisements appeared in the Sunday Observer in successive weeks, 22 June 1975 and 29 June 1975 respectively:

Given they advertise The Fantastic Four #1 as being currently on sale until at least the end of June 1975, this does at least confirm my assertion above The Fantastic Four #2 was published in July 1975, meaning this series was not published on a fortnightly schedule as other Newton books were at this stage, although it would be shortly.

Update 15/5/2019: Here's a good rundown on the alternate covers by someone more expert and eagle-eyed than moi - there are more differences than I initially noticed.

Super Adventure Comic #44: Freudian rockets and an Australian batmobile

The cover to Super Adventure Comic #44 is stupid. I get that. But I love it anyway. I'm a soft touch for such Hart Amos covers, and that's as apologetic as I will get. And if you want to get all Freudian about it, I suggest you apologise too.  

A curious point of interest in this issue is the illustration of the batmobile at the bottom of page 24:

This appears to be an in-house Murray illustration. It is unsigned. It takes the place originally reserved for advertising the Superman television series in Batman #77 for the story Batman Pounds a Beat!:

Batman Pounds a Beat! has two panels prominently featuring the batmobile:

Either of these two images could have provided the template or visual cues for the illustration in Super Adventure Comic #44. Of course, this image of he batmobile may have been used in other Murray comics before this issue, but it's the first time I've seen it.

It is also worth noting that Batman Pounds a Beat! was reprinted along with the accompanying batmobile illustration in Colossal Comic #48. This is further evidence that the contents of the Colossal Comic series were largely drawn from the 1950's Murray issues. 

Dracula #5: More Newton errata

Here's an in-house advertisement for Dracula #5:

All well and good, but the buggers have mistakenly used the cover image to Dracula #6:

This is the cover to the Dracula #5:

The muckup may be related to the fact that the main feature in Newton's Dracula #5 reprints the cover and main feature from Tomb of Dracula #6, at which point the alignment between the Newton and Marvel editions was derailed, and would be exacerbated in a few issues time. The alignment between the editions was initially compromised with Dracula #2 which was, in effect, a 'skip' issue, as the two editions did manage to get back on track for the next couple of issues but, as we can see, this was to be a shortlived correction. 

I'm rather fond of such Newton errata, and the Dracula series is quite the goldmine in this regard, beginning with Dracula #1.

Kid Colt Picture Library #3: A true oddity

Kid Colt Picture Library #3 is a digest-sized Western comic published by Page Publications Pty. Ltd. c.March 1975. It has a $0.40 cover price, 64 pages plus covers, and a front cover illustrated by Keith Chatto. All good and regular so far - yet this issue is quite the oddity.

To begin with, the title is anomalous for a digest-sized Western Page Publications issue of this era. I don't recall seeing another such issue titled after a featured character. Sure, this was common for Page Publications series post-Newton Comics, and there were plenty of regular-sized Horwitz-spawned issues and series with eponymous titles such as Rawhide Kid, but the digest-sized Westerns published between 1970 and 1976 that I'm aware of  are of the rather traditional and generic Gunshot Western Library and Western Illustrated Stories variety, whether they carried familiar characters or not. 

Secondly, this issue is based on the previously published Gunslinger Western #1, but it is not a reprint with a new cover. If the indexing on AusReprints is correct - and I have no reason to think it isn't - Gunslinger Western #1 is 54 pages plus covers. Kid Colt Picture Library #3 has the same contents as Gunslinger Western #1, but also includes the following features:

The Challengers (Sheriff of Tombstone) 5 pages

Hoofs of Doom! 4 pages

Hot Headed Helen.... 1 page

Further, assuming the sequencing of the stories is correct on AusReprints, the order has been changed in Kid Colt Picture Library #3. 

The curiosity is that the subsequent edition should have more material and more pages than the previous edition. There are many possible reasons for this, and on balance I reckon the most plausible one is that Gunslinger Western #1 is a reprint of a previous 64-page issue but with material deleted due to a reduced page count. This would mean that the subsequent reprint has reinstated pages, not just extra bonus pages. But this is just my guesswork and is TBC.

Thirdly, to go back to the title - it's a hybrid of the character's name and the tried and true house-style Picture Library, yet the issue does not feature Kid Colt predominantly, nor does the Kid Colt feature kick the book off. 

If all that isn't enough to qualify this issue as an oddity, then how about this: there is another Kid Colt Picture Library #3!  Now, I've seen plenty of recycled and retitled digest-sized Page Publications comics post-Newton Comics, and plenty of recycled, reprinted and renumbered regular-sized post-Horwitz issues, but I certainly don't recall this phenomenon from this era. Unfortunately the copy on AusReprints is not indexed, so I cant crosscheck the contents. Most likely this is a case of an incorrectly numbered #4 in the series. But something tells me this is merely the beginning of the inquiry into Kid Colt Picture Library #3. And as they say in the classics - the thick plottens!