(Tom Gill and others; 175 pages; HERMES PRESS, 2010)
Before he became the Cecil B DeMille of disaster movies (THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO and many more), Irwin Allen was the Sherwood Schwartz of television sci-fi and fantasy adventure. Allen was the producer and creative force behind such TV fare as VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, THE TIME TUNNEL and what was probably the crowning achievement (it was definitely the most fun to watch!) of his small-screen output, LOST IN SPACE. For two seasons (1968-1970), one of the most ambitious series to date, ABC’s LAND OF THE GIANTS, battled LASSIE and THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY (perennial powerhouses for, respectively, CBS and NBC) for early Sunday evening television supremacy. It was, at the time, the most expensively produced program on TV, costing a whopping $250,000 per episode. With it costing so much to produce and considering the formidable competition, it is a wonder that it lasted as long as it did!
As with Allen’s other shows (and some of his films, as well), Gold Key Comics published a tie-in book for LAND OF THE GIANTS. Unlike the TV show, the comic version was only around for 10 months – long enough to produce five issues of ultra-sanitized (Gold Key was probably the most family-friendly comics publisher on the market) stories. Now, Hermes Press has digitally spruced up those old pages (with a few extras to flesh out the page count) and put them in a nice looking hardcover collection for all of us nostalgia lovers.
So… here’s the premise: It’s the future (1983) and a passenger ship (Allen’s version of the SS Minnow), with seven people on-board, end up on a world where they are only six inches tall. Whether they were shrunk to that size or if they remained regular-sized and the inhabitants of the planet truly are giants, I was never really sure of. Anyway, you’ve got the crew of the Spindrift (there’s a name that elicits confidence, huh?) – pilot, co-pilot and a stewardess prone to hysterics – a self-absorbed society girl, a super-smart-guy type, a sniveling, unscrupulous type (think LOST IN SPACE’s Doctor Smith… only less) and, naturally, a boy and his dog. They’re confronted by the usual misguided guest stars (you know… well-meaning or merely curious folk, lonely kids, big-brain scientists who see them as an experiment) and down-right mean guest stars (you know… criminals who want to use them in some get rich scheme, lonely kids, big-brain scientists who see them as an experiment). Of course, the dangers weren’t always what you’d expect. Sometimes, just surviving in a well-manicured park lawn could be as dangerous and terrifying as traversing on foot and unarmed a jungle filled with wild beaties; a mud puddle would seem like an ocean when you’ve got to cross it to get home. You get the idea.
The stories collected here follow suit and aren’t brain-achingly difficult to decipher. Nor are they intensely stooge-like in their simplicity. Yeah… the scripts (most likely written by Paul S Newman) may be overly predictable, but they still manage to be engaging in fun way. Likewise, the artwork isn’t spectacular in a Neal Adams or Gil Kane way, but it is servicable. Tom Gill’s style is clean and very much to-the-point. Gill was a mainstay at Dell and Gold Key for years and years. He and Newman had a 107-issue run of Dell’s LONE RANGER book and Tom illustrated stories for BONANZA, THE TWILIGHT ZONE and many others for Gold Key. He once said that he would only produce two pages of comic art per day, which isn’t a lot. That is indicative of how seriously he took his craft. My sole complaint with his LAND OF THE GIANTS work is that – virtually from panel to panel – the main characters’ appearance change from resembling the actors portraying them in the TV series to something almost unrecognizable. While it is annoying, it certainly didn’t keep me from enjoying this book as a whole. I’m sure you’ll agree.