Saturday, November 21, 2009

Warriors and Wizards Week! Science Fiction Theater: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

Sinbad the Sailor, star of an ancient Middle Eastern cycle of tales made famous in Sir Richard Burton's 1885 The Book of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Volume 6, could possibly be considered one of the grandfathers of the Sword and Sorcery genre. Throughout the 1970s, Marvel Comics proved quite skillful at adapting popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) flicks into comicbook form. So in honor of our
Warriors and Wizards Week
celebration, Ol' Groove thought it'd be kinda cool to share Len Wein, George Tuska, and Vinnie Colletta's adaptation of Columbia Pictures' Golden Voyage of Sinbad. "Freely adapted from Brian Clemens' screenplay", this adaptation by writer Wein and artists Tuska and Colletta does a nice job of capturing the spirit of the movie (which was a hit with the kids at Fairfield West Elementary and eventually reached cult-status, especially since it featured such geek-cult stars as John Phillip Law, Tom Baker, and Caroline Munro--not to mention the far-out stop-motion wizardry of the immortal Ray Harryhausen) in the mere 38 pages Marvel allowed. While it's not "...in the miracle of Dynarama" it is "...In the Epic Tradition of Conan!", so what more d'ya want? From Worlds Unknown #s 7-8 (March-May, 1974), here's "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad!"

6 comments:

  1. GREAT art! Thanks. Nice to see Tuska and Colletta together. Probably one of those rush-rush jobs but nicely done.

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  2. The splash page of that first issue appears to be by Romita (Sr. of course).

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  3. And doesn't the cover look a lot like Tuska inked by Romita, Sr.? I wonder if it's another case of R.T. thinking, "That splash page would make a great cover", a la Giant-Size Invaders #1?

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  4. Good call - you may be right about that!

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  5. I have seen the film in the Cinema but have never read the Comic adaptation. The artwork is really superb.

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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