Re: CAS comic adaptions
Posted by:
calonlan (IP Logged)
Date: 23 September, 2004 11:52AM
Boyd, -- thanks for the request --
First, are you aware that Stan Lee's company adapted two of Clark's stories as "Conan" adventures? I have them both, and well recall my astonishment seeing them on the stand some years ago. At that time i had no idea of the status of his work - copyrights etc. I tried to reach their offices to find out if they had acquired the rights, but had no success.
Clark had grown up in the earliest days of the Sunday comics
era - he still enjoyed "Snuffy Smith" which was originally
"Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" as hillbillies returning home from WW1 - no resemblance today - He also enjoyed
"Lil' Abner", "The Katzenjammer Kids", "The Phantom", and
"Prince Valiant." Of the Comic book form, he had admired the earliest "Superman" (which often stole Burrough's formats),
though subsequent "superheroes" did not get his interest.
"The earliest "Tales from the Crypt" type magazines he held some hope for, but later dismissed. He believed that horror
or fantasy is far more telling when in the mind than graphically drawn out on a page, or worse, film; I do not
mean to imply that he was a devotee at any level, but that he
was aware of these things, and read them with pleasure if someone happened to leave the Sunday paper on the table at the Happy Hour, or if Marilyn Novak had a second hand one at her store which he would browse while visiting. (I used to
trade comics at her store as a kid - two for one). My knowledge of this part of Clark's makeup is due to the fact that I always bought a paper when visiting in Pacific Grove, and noticed that the funnies was the only part Clark paid attention to -- so we idly chatted on the subject one day.