Secret Origins

The Lost World of Cave Girl!
Part 3 Continued from Part 2, here
by Terence E. Hanley

In February 1913, fresh from the success of "Under the Moons of Mars" and "Tarzan of the Apes," both published in magazine form in the previous year, Edgar Rice Burroughs began work on a new novel, again to take place in a lost world. Entitled "The Cave Girl," it was serialized in The All-Story in July through September 1913. Like most of Burroughs' novel-length stories, it was reprinted in hardback, in this case as The Cave Girl in 1925. A sequel, "The Cave Man," appeared in All-Story Weekly in March and April 1917, but it doesn't seem to have been reprinted until recent years, and then only digitally.

The Cave Girl is the story of a contemporary man, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, and his adventures on an unexplored island in the South Pacific. There he finds and is rescued by a cave girl named Nadara, who returns him to her village. Along the way, she dubs him Thandar--"The Brave One." In actuality, he is a weak, fearful, and bookish scion of Back Bay, Boston, but over the course of several months' training, Smith-Jones--now Thandar--strengthens his body and learns to survive in his new home. He falls in love with Nadara and becomes a leader of her people. After further operatic adventures, Thandar--now Smith-Jones--is reunited with his parents. It is revealed then that Nadara's parents came from the outside world and that she is actually an aristocrat by the name of de la Valois. Thus the way is cleared for her to marry her champion. Very convenient.

The Cave Girl went through seven hardbound editions from 1925 to 1940. In 1949, Dell issued a paperback version as part of its famous "map back" series. Many more paperback versions followed over the years. The story of the cave girl Nadara and her almost anagrammatic lover Thandar is now in the public domain. Consequently, it has proliferated in our digital age. In 1985, that golden age of teen movies, Crown International Pictures released Cavegirl, in which a boy from the twentieth century travels back to prehistoric times, there to find the girl of his dreams. It's unlikely that Cavegirl has anything to do with The Cave Girl, although the conventions of the lost-world story seem evident in its plot.

Many years before, in January 1952, a new comic book appeared on the newsstand. Called Thun'da, it was the work of writer Gardner Fox (1911-1986) and artist Frank Frazetta (1928-2010). Frazetta was then only twenty-three years old, but he had already been in the comic book business for seven years. Thun'da #1 would prove to be the only comic book that was entirely his work. In that inaugural issue, Roger Drum, an American airman, crash lands in a lost valley in Africa. Like Smith-Jones before him, Drum spends months conditioning himself for his new life. He also finds in Pha, a beautiful native of the valley, the love of his life. Also like Smith-Jones, he becomes the leader of her people. And like him, Drum earns a new name, the Thun'da of the title. Thun'da ran for six issues in all in 1952-1953. Bob Powell (1916-1967) took over for Frazetta in Thun'da #2.

Gardner Fox and Bob Powell introduced a new character in that second issue. Called Cave Girl, she is Carol Mantomer, the daughter of two Americans killed by African natives. Like Mowgli, Cave Girl is reared by animals and lives among them as their friend. Thun'da guest-starred in the first Cave Girl story. She had a backup feature in Thun'da #2 through #6, then got her own title for four issues (#11-#14) published in 1953-1954. As for Thun'da, he became the backup feature in Cave Girl. In 1952, his story was adapted to the silver screen in King of the Congo, a serial starring Buster Crabbe.

Gardner Fox was a prolific author and a voracious reader in every field. "Knowledge," he said, "is a kind of hobby with me." His library was vast, and he kept filing cabinets full of story ideas. Like so many writers of his generation, he grew up reading the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. There can be little doubt that he encountered The Cave Girl somewhere along the line, and certainly no later than the Dell paperback edition of 1949, for it's clear that Thun'da and Cave Girl are drawn from Burroughs' story. The names alone--Thandar vs. Thun'da--are the first bit of evidence. Beyond that, the plots are more or less the same, as are the origins of the cave girl character in each. None of that matters now, for Burroughs' version and the Fox/Powell version of Cave Girl are in the public domain, and that's how she came to be in Five Star Comics as well.

"The Cave Girl" was a serial in The All-Story before it was a book and long before it was a comic book. It appeared in the magazine in three parts, July through September 1913, and made the cover in July. The artist was Clinton Pettee (1872-1937).

The Cave Girl was issued in hardback in 1925 with a dust jacket by J. Allen St. John . . .

And in paperback in 1949 with cover art by Jean des Vignes (which may be a pseudonym).

That paperback version is a Dell map back. Here's the map. Note the "Caves of Bad Men," which look about how Frank Frazetta drew them three years later:

The Cave Girl also appeared in foreign editions. Here's one, I think from Japan. The artist may not have seen the Dell map back, as his island has a different configuration.

Ace issued many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books beginning in the early 1960s. Here is Roy G. Krenkel's cover for the 1964 edition . . .

A reprise of his role for Canaveral Press two years before. He and Frazetta were of course friends and sometime collaborators.

Frank Frazetta didn't draw the adventures of Cave Girl in the comic books. That was Bob Powell. But he did draw the heroine Pha, who was no doubt based on Burroughs' original character. Here is Cave Girl again on the cover of the later Ace edition, from 1973, in Frazetta's unmistakable manner.

Here is a British edition issued by Tandem. The artist is uncredited. It's interesting that depictions of the Cave Girl alternate between fearful or submisive and courageous or dominant.

Frank Frazetta had many great qualities as an artist. His unimaginative reliance on racial stereotypes was not one of them. This is his cover illustration for Thun'da #1 from January 1952. It was the only comic book that was all his. Gardner Fox wrote the script.

A page of Frazetta's art from that first issue. Note the sequence of training and conditioning as in Burroughs' story from nearly forty years before. Note, too, the Wally Wood-like figure in the bottom left panel and the Tarzan-like pose in the bottom right. Frazetta was a great admirer of Hal Foster. (Who isn't.) You can see that, especially in his early work.

In 1952, Thun'da was adapted to a movie serial starring Buster Crabbe. If you look closely, you'll see Frazetta's cover from above in the lower right. Movie posters weren't often signed in those days, but this one is. It was the work of Glenn Cravath (1897-1964). (The poster calls Thun'da a "Cartoon Magazine.")

In her journey from pulp magazines of the 1910s to the public domain of today, Cave Girl made a stopover in the comics. If it weren't for Gardner Fox, Frank Frazetta, and Bob Powell, she may well have been forgotten except by Burroughs fans. Now she is in our very own Five Star Comics . . . but that's a story for another time.

Note: Not long ago, I read Dian of the Lost Land by Edison Marshall, from 1935. It is very much like The Cave Girl and other stories of lost worlds in that a visitor from the effete or decadent outside world finds in himself courage, strength, hope, and fortitude in a place out of time. In Dian of the Lost Land, the protagonist also finds his true love in the queen of the people of that world. As it turns out, she, like Nadara, is the daughter of an outsider, thus is avoided any distasteful intermixing of peoples. Sometime between then and the movie Planet of the Apes (1968), the idea that a modern man can not and should not love a savage or primitive woman disappeared.

Edison Marshall (1894-1967) turned eighteen in the year that Edgar Rice Burroughs' first two fantasies went to print. A budding writer, he could hardly have been less impressed by Burroughs than others of his generation. He had his own first story published in The Argosy in 1915. In "Og, The Dawn Man" (1928, reprinted in hardback as Ogden's Strange Story in 1934), Marshall wrote about a man who crash lands in the Canadian wilderness and reverts to being a caveman. In Horrors Unknown (1972), Sam Moskowitz compared him favorably to Burroughs and to Rudyard Kipling. Dian of the Lost Land seems to have been Marshall writing in the mold of Burroughs. One difference is that Marshall was superior as a stylist.

Text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley

Bad-Luck Bats

Art imitates life, but sometimes it goes the other way. A scene from Five Star Comics #2:

Now, from Cerros de Amotape National Park in Peru:

Photograph by Yufani Olaya

No, that's not a mutant. It's a cane toad that has just attempted to swallow a bat. What appear to be purple appendages on either side of the toad's mouth are actually the bat's wings. What appears to be a tongue is the bat's tail. Luckily for the bat, he made an unpalatable dish: the toad spat him out, he picked himself up, brushed himself off, then flew away.

You can read the whole story, "Alien-Like Creature Actually a Toad with a Big Appetite" by Pete Thomas, at the website GrindTV (Sept. 23, 2013), here.

Art copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

Text copyright 2013 Five Star Comics

Secret Origins

The Lost World of Cave Girl!
Part 2

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of a banner year in the literature of fantasy and adventure. Nineteen twelve was particularly significant in the development of the little genre of lost worlds, a genre inhabited by Cave Girl and countless other fictional characters.

The lost world genre is no doubt named for Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, The Lost World, serialized in The Strand Magazine between April and November 1912 and published in hardback before the year was out. The Lost World set the pattern for all lost worlds to come: intrepid explorers (led in this case by Professor Challenger) mount an expedition to a hidden and almost inaccessible land where they find prehistoric creatures and strange races of men. We have all enjoyed books, movies, and TV shows that fit the pattern: King Kong (film, 1933), Robert Moore Williams' Jongor series (fiction, 1940-1951), The Valley of Gwangi (film, 1969) and Land of the Lost (television, 1974-1977) are just a few examples. Works as varied as Herland (1915), At the Mountains of Madness (1931), Lost Horizon (1933), The Island at the Top of the World (1974), Jurassic Park (1993), Lost (2004-2010), and Ka-Zar and the Savage Land (Marvel Comics) draw on the conventions of a genre pioneered in the original Lost World.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) may have been pioneer, but no writer exploited the lost worlds genre to a greater extent than Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), nor in more ways. A restless jack-of-all-trades, Burroughs set off his writing career with a bang in 1912, first with John Carter of Mars, then with an even greater success, Tarzan of the Apes. The saga of John Carter began in February 1912 in the pages of The All-Story with a serial entitled "Under the Moons of Mars," later published in hardback as A Princess of Mars (1917). Although it's considered a work of planetary romance or science fantasy, the collected John Carter can be interpreted as another variation on the lost worlds genre, complete with strange creatures, varied races of men, and decaying civilizations. By Burroughs' time, of course, few options remained for locating lost worlds on Earth, a world that was mostly found. Whether he intended to or not, Burroughs expanded the possibilities of lost worlds by locating them in outer space. His Barsoom was a forerunner to the myriad lost worlds of science fiction.

Edgar Rice Burroughs completed his annus mirabilis with "Tarzan of the Apes," published in The All-Story in October 1912 and in a hardbound edition two years later. Eventually running to twenty-two volumes published in Burroughs' lifetime, the story of Tarzan brought together all the elements of the lost worlds genre: the modern man thrust into a primitive environment; conversely, the primitive man introduced into the modern world; preternaturally intelligent animals; races of men of every size, shape, color, description, and culture; lost cities; hidden valleys; forgotten civilizations; dinosaurs and other strange creatures; a hollow earth; and on and on. Tarzan remains one of the most recognizable characters the world over. The influence of Tarzan and his creator are incalculable, even today.

Three works--The Lost World, "Under the Moons of Mars," and "Tarzan of the Apes," all from 1912--brought together the pieces of the lost world genre. Everything that followed--including the comic book stories of Cave Girl--has been a variation on a theme composed a century ago by two authors, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

To be continued . . .

Published in 1912, The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle has been adapted to the movies many times, and why not? After all, it brings together people and dinosaurs in a way the real world has never seen fit to do. Here's a paperback tie-in to the 1960 version, directed by Irwin Allen.

Before Frazetta, there was J. Allen St. John, and before him, Frank Schoonover. Great American illustrators have been drawn to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and for good reason. Whatever he may have lacked in literary ability, Burroughs possessed a powerful and fertile imagination. 

Two covers with similar themes: From a distance, Tarzan looks upon a lost city. I don't know the artist for the first of these two covers, but Frank Frazetta, in his watercolor period, created the second. Frazetta will figure pretty prominently in the continued secret origin of Cave Girl.

Text copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Secret Origins

The Lost World of Cave Girl!
Part 1

Of the public domain characters to appear so far in Five Star Comics, one of the most popular has been Cave Girl. That's a pleasant surprise considering she was a last minute addition to our lineup. So how did this denizen of the Dawn Lands make the jump from the Golden Age to the Five Star Age? Thereby hangs a tale that begins decades before Cave Girl's comic book debut.

Long before comic books, before science fiction and pulp magazines, writers told stories of lost worlds. Until the Age of Exploration began, much of the world was terra incognita. Named in Roman times, Africa lay largely unexplored until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Americas were undiscovered by Europeans until the late 1400s and the North American frontier didn't close until 1890. Australia was unknown until 1606, while Antarctica wasn't discovered until 1820. For centuries, the map of the globe was mostly blank or based on spotty exploration or mere conjecture. As late as the nineteenth century, lost worlds--lands where strange creatures and unknown peoples might still live--were a possibility rather than just works of the imagination.

According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, tales of lost worlds began when the world was still geographically "open." Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726), though satirical, is an example of lost worlds from a time when it was still possible for the earth to contain strange and unknown places. "The lost-world story," as the encyclopedia explains, "belonged to a cartographically 'closed' world." By the late 1800s, few options remained for locating a lost world story on a plausibly "real" earth. Jules Verne solved the problem with a journey to the center of the earth in 1863. Stories of subterranean civilizations or of a hollow earth continued into the twentieth century, as late as Mike Grell's comic book fantasy The Warlord (1975) or Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop's story "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole" (1977). H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925) took a different path, locating his lost worlds in an African continent that was still largely unexplored at the publication of King Solomon's Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887), and She (1886). Two writers from a generation later would pick up on the theme. Other men may have written lost world adventures before and after them, but no one is more closely identified with the genre (besides Haggard) than Edgar Rice Burroughs and Arthur Conan Doyle.

To be continued . . .

Before the map of the world was finally drawn, before terra incognita became an archaic term, the unknown earth was a place of unimagined possibilities, of strange beasts, fierce monsters, unknown races of men, and lost civilizations.

Here terra incognita is in Asia . . .

Here at the bottom of the world.

Writing in the late nineteenth century, H. Rider Haggard placed his tales of lost worlds in darkest Africa, a place as yet largely unexplored by Europeans. With its hidden valley, lost city, and isolated cultures, King Solomon's Mines, published in 1885, would set the pattern for the lost worlds genre of adventure and science fiction. 

Haggard's novel has been committed to film several times. Here's a paperback tie-in with the 1950 version starring Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr. This edition is one of Dell's renowned "map-backs." Without intending to, the book hearkens back to the age of exploration and its maps of new discoveries and terra incognita. If you have read the book and know the name of the "twin mountains," you might recognize an unintentional visual pun repeated on the front cover of the book.

King Solomon's Mines was wildly successful and demanded a sequel. The first was Allan Quatermain, from 1887. This scan is from the collection of Robert Weinberg.

Of all Haggard's books, only King Solomon's Mines exceeds the fame of She (1886) and then perhaps only for its chronological primacy. One of the bestselling books of all time, She has never gone out of print. 

Like King Solomon's Mines, She has been adapted to the movies many times. Here's the paperback tie-in for the 1965 version starring Ursula Andress. 

She-who-must-be-obeyed lives on in fiction by Haggard's successors. Here's a novel from 1978, written by the British author Peter Tremayne (Peter Berresford Ellis). 

She was the first of Haggard's books to be adapted to film. There have been at least eleven versions of the story. Here's a poster for the 1925 version starring Betty Blythe. 

Here's the 1935 version with Helen Gahagan as the title character. Just two years before, producer Merian C. Cooper had been responsible for one of the most famous of lost world movies. Entitled King Kong, it is still--nearly eighty years after its premiere--a powerful film.  

Finally, here's the poster for the 1965 She, featuring Hammer regulars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I could go on all day showing images from H. Rider Haggard's imagination. I think a scrapbook compilation of images like these is long past due.

Text copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Five Star Comments

Here at Five Star Comics we welcome your letters! And we will print selections from your letters on our letters page, "Five Star Comments." It used to be that comic books printed letters. Reading what others had to say about prior issues was part of the fun of reading comic books. Now the letters page is back in our very own Five Star Comics! So how do you reach us? Well, unless you hand deliver one of the scrawled missives over which you have labored for endless days, you can reach us in three ways:

One, you can write to us by Golden Age mail at:

Five Star Comics

c/o Larry Blake

69306 State Route 124

Reedsville, OH 45772

Two, you can write to us by email at:

comicbookmastermind@gmail.com

Three, you can leave a comment on this very blog.

If we had the means, we would also accept messages by carrier pigeon, tom-tom, smoke signal, and Morse code. It's safer just to use one of the three methods described above. In any case, please write to us and tell us how we're doing, what you like, what you don't like, how we can improve--whatever you have to say, we'd like to hear from you. Write today!

Art copyright 2012 by Gary Gibeaut

Text copyright 2012 by Five Star Comics

Five Star Comics #2 Now in Print

For those eagerly awaiting the second issue of Five Star Comics--it has arrived! Five Star Comics #2, with a cover and a lead story by Black Bat artist Matt Marshall, is now in print. The newest issue of our comic book made its debut at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (S.P.A.C.E.) during the weekend of April 21-22, 2012, in Columbus, Ohio, and is now available to readers. Ordering information is below. In the meantime, have a look at a sampling from Five Star Comics #2.

In the lead story of Five Star Comics #2, Matt Marshall reveals the origin of The Black Bat--the NEW Black Bat, son of the original from the pulp magazines of the 1930s and '40s. Matt's artwork is like nothing you have seen before in the comics and unlike anything you're likely to see anytime soon. 

Missile, great granddaughter of the Golden Age superhero Silver Streak, returns to face an old foe in "The Trojan Cuckoo." Larry Blake created Missile for the first issue of Five Star Comics and handled the penciling on this story. Tim Corrigan provided the inks. 

Next up: Gary Gibeaut wrote, penciled, and inked a tribute to Will Eisner's original Lady Luck. The story is called "The Return of Lady Luck" and features a new incarnation of the 1940s Lady Luck drawn by Klaus Nordling. 

The whole gang collaborated on "The Case of the Nutcase," a story featuring The Amalga-Mates, the first all-original characters to appear in Five Star Comics. In real life, The Amalga-Mates are Hemsworth V. Hemsworth and Semyon Hemsworth, millionaire philanthropists. Donning the trappings of their alter egos, they become the world's first and only Siamese twin superheroes! Tim Corrigan penciled a script by Terence Hanley. The inking came from Many Hands.

Cave Girl returns to Five Star Comics in a ten-page story, "Cave Girl and the Bat King," written and drawn by Terence Hanley.

So how do you order this 48-page extravaganza? Just send a check or money order for $5.00 to:

Larry Blake

69306 State Route 124

Reedsville, OH 45772

And what do you get for your five dollars? Five stories by five artists and featuring five (or six) protagonists, plus two pages of letters, a preview of Miss Masque, and a full-color photo-collage of Cave Girl by Larry Blake on the back cover. Order yours today.

Text copyright by 2012 by Five Star Comics

Art copyright 2012 by Matt Marshall, Larry Blake, Tim Corrigan, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley

Terence Hanley at Mysticon

Five Star Comics creator Terence Hanley will be at Mysticon, his first science fiction-fantasy-horror convention, this weekend, Friday, February 24, through Sunday, February 26, 2012, in Roanoke, Virginia. This is the second year for Mysticon. Guests of honor include author Sherrilyn Kenyon and actor Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica fame. Terence will be in the artists' alley part of the convention. Stop by for a Mothman or monsters and aliens coloring book, a copy of Lucky Girl or Five Star Comics, or a preview of the next Cave Girl story. Terence will also draw pictures made to order.

You can find out more about Mysticon at the show's website.

Coming soon in Five Star Comics #2:
Cave Girl meets the Bat-King!

Art copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Five Star Comics #1

Five Star Comics #1 is ready at last! After months of preparation, Five Star Comics is in print, featuring five stories, each with its own Golden Age hero.

Moth Man!

The book starts off with a tale in which Moth Man the Golden Age character meets Mothman the paranormal creature. Find out how Mothman gained entrance to our world by reading "Moth Man Meets Mothman" by Terence Hanley!

Silver Streak!

Next, Silver Streak returns to the comics where he crosses paths with his own great-granddaughter, a new heroine called Missile. Together they go up against King Chronos. Read "Yesterday and Today" by Larry Blake!

Marvel Maid!

Marvel Maid is up next in a story in which she must face a threat to our very own Earth. She's not alone, for two small boys and even Albert Einstein are on hand to help. Find out what happens in "Agent of Doom" by Terence Hanley!

Flip Falcon!

Flip Falcon makes his first appearance in the comics in almost seventy years in "Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension". In this timeless tale, written by Jordan Lowe and drawn by Gary Gibeaut, Flip runs into a mad scientist and his demonic minions from another dimension. Read the full story in Five Star Comics.

Cave Girl!

Finally, Cave Girl, inhabitant of the forgotten Dawn Lands, sets out on an odyssey to rescue a helpless baby from his kidnapper. On her journey, she must avoid all the perils of a land populated with dinosaurs and even more monstrous creatures. You'll discover how it all turns out by reading "Cave Girl" by Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley!

Five Star Comics #1!

Five stories filling 37 pages--and no ads--plus a full-color cover and a preview of The Black Bat by Matt Marshall, on sale beginning Saturday, September 17, 2011, at The Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia!

Five Star Comics cover art copyright 2011 Terence E. Hanley

Text copyright 2011 Five Star Comics

Cave Girl Comes to Five Star Comics!

Cave Girl, denizen of Gardner Fox and Frank Frazetta's Dawn Lands, is the newest addition to Five Star Comics #1! Our Cave Girl story arrived at the last minute, scripted, penciled, lettered, and inked just two weeks ago in a marathon artists' jam session spread out over two days. You'll find art by Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley in the story, called appropriately enough "Cave Girl!" Look for it this week in the first issue of Five Star Comics!

Text copyright 2011 Five Star Comics

Story copyright 2011 Terence E. Hanley

Art copyright 2011 Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley