Number 1886: Turok goes 'round 'n' 'round

The original Turok comics had a very simple premise. Turok and Andar, two pre-Columbian Native Americans, wander into a lost valley. They become lost within the lost valley and can’t find their way out. They share what seems like a huge place with a variety of prehistoric men, and creatures extinct in the outside world. This particular story, from Turok Son of Stone #4 (1956), fits that storyline. Turok and Andar, and their caveman pal, Lanok, look for Lanok’s home, and get into tussles with dinosaurs. The second story in the issue (not shown here), continues from this story, but is more of the same. That is not to say that Turok Son of Stone is not entertaining within its self-contained parameters, but a reader knows what he is going to get.

The story is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Gaylord Dubois for the script, and Bob Correa and John Celardo for the artwork.

Number 1510: Turok and Andar and lost world fantasy

Turok and Andar, our Pre-Columbian Indian heroes, are men of their time period, and have weapons and skills of their time, primitive by our standards. The cavemen of the hidden valley, who might have been living there for centuries, have to be taught that simple technology. How did they survive in a world of giant predators, and how can men share space with dinosaurs, who predated them by many millions of years?

It is fiction so we just accept it. But cavemen and dinosaurs existing in a modern world, a lost world tale, was part of a genre of fantasy fiction. It may have been inspired in part by The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle's book was very popular, but the idea wasn't new even when Doyle wrote his work. I guess the fantasy goes to a longing on the part of people who want to see the ancient Earth and its wonders.

From Turok, Son of Stone #5 (1956), story by Gaylord DuBois, art attributed to Bob Correa with inks by John Celardo.

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TUROK AS A DINOSAUR RAMBO:

A week after this post appeared I was in a dollar store and picked up a two-pack of comics in a plastic bag labeled Super Hero Comic Book Spectacular. I was interested because I saw one of the titles was Valiant’s Turok Dinosaur Hunter #2 (1993). (Coincidences of all types happen often to me, but I don’t usually mention them because it seems self-serving, but they do happen.)

When these comics came out originally in the early '90s I ignored them. I saw they were an attempt to take a good character and turn it into a modern equivalent with hyper-violence and other mayhem. What I see here is not the lithe pre-Columbian Indian hero of the Dell Comics title, but some sort of Rambo-type with long hair and a machine gun.

I’m not dismissing the talent behind the comic, because the illustrations are well done, and the writing is along the lines of what was popular at the time. Despite that when this came out is just about the time I abandoned superheroes I had grown up with, as they became comics that looked like this.

 (This sort of cliché, the talking-through-clenched-teeth panel, makes me think of superhero as rage-filled psychotic doing damage to dentition.)

According to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (the latest edition I have is #39), the new version of Turok had a fairly decent run until the late '90s, at which time it was gone again. I hope if someone else picks up the character they won’t do what Valiant did to the original concept, and that is to take the Turok who was a wise and strong hero in a strange world of prehistoric monsters, and turn him into a steroidal freak, looking like another type of monster.

Number 1245: Turok kicks out Kong

In its original 1950’s version, Turok, Son of Stone, had a simple premise: Turok and Andar, two pre-Columbian Indians in what is now New Mexico, found themselves in a lost world full of dinosaurs and other anachronistic creatures and people, and couldn’t find their way out. I loved this title as a kid and ape fan that I am, I for sure bought this issue with its King Kong-like cover.

In reading it so many years after its publication it I’m struck by symbolism I didn't see as a kid. The giant ape is living on its mesa minding its own business when Turok and Andar lead a tribe there. They displace the ape, which is what will happen to Turok and Andar’s people once the Europeans land on their “lost world” of the American continent.

The Grand Comics Database lists the cover artist as Giusto, the writer as Gaylord Dubois, and the artist, pencils and inks, as Bob Correa. From Turok, Son of Stone #6, 1957.

The ending seems Comics Code-style, even though Dell had an internal code and did not knuckle under to the Comics Code Authority like other publishers. Perhaps before the Code was implemented the ape would have been killed, not “asleep” as Turok describes his condition after a big fall.