In 1977 Marvel Comics gave us the notorious blood and ink KISS comic magazine. In 1978, Marvel offered a colorful but rather simplified BEATLES bio-comic mag. Did you know, however, that in 1979 Marvel was going to offer a similar SUPER-SPECIAL history of THE ROLLING STONES? To the best of my knowledge it never appeared in either the US or foreign markets. To be drawn (or lightboxed from the look of it) by Tom Yeates (who went on to, amongst other things, an unjustly forgotten run on the pre-Alan Moore SWAMP THING), the announcement and this art appeared in the mid-1979 issue of Jim Steranko's MEDIASCENE tabloid. The brief mention of the upcoming book indicated that former Kubert school student Yeates had originally been signed for a 12 page back-up but that his art was so good he was given the whole book.
The announcement of the Stones comic is followed by an announcement that Marvel was planning something even bigger the following year--developing--in conjunction with Casablanca records-- a REAL rock group that would actually be on the charts and appearing in the comics at the same time. This project eventually coalesced into not a GROUP but...THE DAZZLER! To quote Wikipedia's entry on that character: Dazzler was originally developed as a cross-promotional, multi-media creation between Casablanca Records, Filmworks, and Marvel Comics until the tie-ins were dropped in 1980.
That's interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy buddy, John Beatty was set to do an AC/DC comic for of all publishers AC Comics. They met with the band and he did some preliminary art but it never made it past that stage.
My personal grail for a comic that was ALMOST made would be the Joe Kubert Rocky newspaper strip. Joe was at an OrlandoCon in the early 80s and said that he did several strips but it never made it past that stage. I would LOVE to see the work that he did.
There must be tons of stories of comics that almost made it!
I went to the Kubert School with
ReplyDeleteTom Yeates and he was good right out of the box. You knew he was
destined for a long career in the
pros.
He's done fine work on a lot of projects over the decades, but no
defining work, like Bissette and
Totleben's storytelling over Alan
Moore's scripts on Swamp Thing.
You could do a long article on all
the newspaper comic strips that Joe
Kubert/The Joe Kubert School were
involved in since the school's inception.
Besides the proposed Rocky feature,
Kubert picked up assignments on
some long-running strips that had
lost their artists. He would assign
layout/penciling duties to some of
his better students, and then go
over the work with the usual Kubert
flourish! I myself assisted Joe,
very briefly, on the Big Ben Bolt
comic strip in the 1970's. Hmmm,
never did see the printed work,
though you can be sure it looked
more like Kubert art and very little like Kujava art!