CAPTAIN AFRICA,THE COMIC BOOK by Dave Goode

 

I often think of the one-shot Republic serial heroes like the Masked Marvel , the Copperhead and the Tiger Woman starring in their own comic books. Likewise I can see Columbia serial heroes starring in spin-off comic books. Especially Captain Africa if he was illustrated by Glenn Cravath. Born in 1897 and dying in 1964 Cravath started as an illustrator for the New York Journal in the 1920s including working on a Sunday Frank " Bring 'Em Back Alive " Buck comic strip for that publication. This strip was based on the adventures of the famed real-life jungle adventurer. Gravath would also work as an illustrator for the King Features Syndicate. In 1928 he started freelancing for movie studios. Most notably Columbia and RKO. It was for RKO that Cravath created some memorable poster art for the classic adventure movie KING KONG. He also did comic strip ads for King Kong , The Song of Kong and Africa Screams , an Abbott & Costello jungle comedy that featured Frank Buck.

 

 

Cravath would create posters for Columbia serials like The Flying G-Men and B programmers like the Jungle Jim / Johnny Weissmuller series. And of course he did the poster art for Columbia's 1955 serial The Adventures of Captain Africa. If you're a fan-boy you already know that this was originally supposed to have been a Phantom serial , a sequel of sorts to Columbia's 1943 serial starring Lee Falk's classic comic strip hero. Well after production on the film started it was found that the studio had let their movie rights lapse. And King Features was asking for more money than Columbia was willing to pay to use the character. So the movie studio created a knock-off hero and gave him a similar costume to match the Phantom's costume in long shots.

 

 

The best thing about the Captain Africa serial was Cravath's poster work. Captain Africa's costume looked ridiculous on actor John Hart. But looked great illustrated by Cravath. Truthfully a lot of super-hero costumes that look great on the pages of a comic book look awful on actors. But this one looked especially stupid. So it's easy enough to imagine a Captain Africa comic book drawn by Cravath. But not a sequel to the serial.

 Greetings, blog fans! Dave Goode has written an article about Konga (1965) for Monster Magazine #1. You can read more about Dave's article and the magazine >>>HERE<<<

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