COVER STORIES for 03/18/2007
COVER STORIES INSTALLMENT #97
Welcome, faithful readers (and those of you joining us for the first time) to the 97th installment of Cover Stories, the weekly column in which I, Jon B. Knutson, present a group of covers with a common theme (unless I'm doing an installment of one of the sub-series of Cover Stories, 1-10 or this week's installment)!
This time around, it's time once again for...
And once again we return to another quartet of issues of the other-reality Charlton title, "Drive-In Movie Classics!"
Not much on background for these this time...
King Dinosaur (adapted in issue 25) is one of those movies that's so bad, you can't really realize how bad it is unless you've seen it. It was one of the many cheesy movies that was mocked on "Mystery Science Theater 3000," and that should let you know how bad it was.
Here, watch the trailer for this movie, and see for yourself:
Fortunately, the budgetary restrictions weren't there in the comics adaptation, and the dinosaurs definitely looked better! The basic plot here involves a spaceship landing on another world, on which dinosaurs still live, if I recall correctly (I'm a bit disorganized here right now, so I don't have the issue handy to refer to).
Issue 26 is another one of the classics... Tarantula! Hey, how can you go wrong with a giant bug? And guess what? I have the trailer for this one, too!
The basic premise of this movie was one of those mad scientist types whose experiments caused an ordinary tarantula to grow to immense size, and the square-cube laws be damned! (not that the square-cube law ever bothers us fans of giant monster movies, eh?).
Ah, issue 27's adaptation of "This Island Earth" - which left on the cover the whole "2 1/2 years in the making" blurb from the poster! I wonder if anyone bought the comic thinking it took 2 1/2 years to do this adaptation?
And finally (at least, for this time around), here's issue 28:
Yes, I started this week's column with a dinosaur movie, and I end with one... "The Beast of Hollow Mountain!" This mixes cowboys with dinosaurs (as was also done with "Valley of the Gwangi"), and that's always fun, isn't it?
If you don't want to be spoiled, here's the final 10 minutes of this movie:
Unfortunately, I can't provide the trailer for you... but I hope that'll do! I am struck at how similar the dinosaur effects look to the later Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday AM program, "Land of the Lost"!
So that's the four issues of this title for this edition of "Comics They Never Made," so let's shut down the Kurtzberg Alternate Reality device, and get ready to look at comics you can actually find at a local convention... next time around!
And speaking of conventions, I hope you readers in the Seattle, Washington area are planning to attend the Emerald City Comic-Con, March 31 and April 1! I'll be there myself, and the first day of the convention, I'll be hosting the second fans vs. pros trivia contest, which will feature Tom Peyer, Kurt Busiek, and Mark Waid as the pro team, taking on four teams of fans for glory! If you're a comics trivia guru, I invite you to sign up (and here's a tip: Reading this column will give you a bit of an advantage if the timing is right!).
Join me next time for another installment of "Cover Stories," in which I'll present some covers that revisit a previous topic, and in the meantime, you can check out my blog at http://waffyjon.blogspot.com for other musings and ramblings by me, or email me with comments about this column at !
Anything Goes Trivia
