Number 848
The runner-up
Tomahawk #107, from 1966, is the runner-up to tomorrow's 2010 Thanksgiving Turkey Award, when I present the most oddball comic book story I've read all year. I immediately picked up on the cover, a giant purple gorilla with headband, feather, bow and arrow. I felt this was a good candidate for the award.
Tomahawk (Tom Hawk), raised by Indians, began appearing in Star-Spangled Comics in 1947, and in his own comic in 1950. As Don Markstein writes in Toonopedia.com:
. . . all through the late 1950s and early to mid '60s, Tomahawk fought gigantic tree men, miraculously-surviving dinosaurs, mutated salamanders, and other menaces that seem somehow to have escaped the history books. There was even a giant gorilla among them, and putting a gorilla on the cover was also a contemporary trend at DC.
At the time I just didn't find these contrivances very interesting. Until the last few years, that is, when I started reading some of the crazy DC comics I'd completely skipped over during my Marvel Comics phase of the early to mid-'60s.
Two DC veterans did the story, France "Eddie" Herron wrote it, and longtime Tomahawk artist, Fred Ray, drew it. The reason it isn't the 2010 Thanksgiving Turkey Award winner is because during this era of DC Comics you could point to many of their comic books and find something as goofy as this. Come back tomorrow to see the winner.
Ooh, Pappy, you've made a kid from '60s' Liverpool, (UK), very happy indeed!
ReplyDeleteI've got a videographic memory and I distinctly remember how wide my eyes and mouth gaped whenever I saw ads for this particular issue in any of the second hand DC comics I'd buy from the local porno shop at the top of our road, (they'd give you half your money back if you returned 'em in their original condition).
The first time I saw it I literally gasped, and for years after I kept forlornly hoping a copy'd eventually show up as a result of some other poor sap giving the dark glasses and polo necked swinger type proprietor not only all their money but him all his comics back!
Borky, this is the unexpected (to me) but serendipitous aspect of doing this blog...I'm happy I was able to bring a comic to you that had piqued your interest so long ago. I hope you think it was worth waiting 45 years to see it.
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