Turok Son of Stone

I remember collecting Turok comics as a young child in the seventies. It was a bit of a surprise to discover that the run extended clear back into the fifties, during an age when both dinosaurs and American Indians were popular topics, and the writers decided to combine the two. One reason dinosaurs became a hot topic at this particular time was largely thanks to Life magazine’s "World We Live In" series, which among much else, featured Rudolph Zallinger’s mural, “Life Through the Age”, from the beginning of life to the end of the Cenozoic. I remember pouring over the gorgeous mural, and finding the different dinosaur and mammal species, in the huge book version my parents owned when I was about four or five. I noticed, of course, that some of the pictures in the small Turok digest (I later found out it reprinted the first four issues from the fifties) were taken directly from the World We Live In, that is, Zalinger’s mural. The monthly issues of TSOS sometimes had swipes as well, often from the Color book of prehistoric animals, and I enjoyed finding them, and pointing these out.

                  It's easy to see the swipes of Rudolph Zalinger's Life Through the Ages mural

When Turok began back in the fifties, the story had two Plains Indians (later incarnations of Turok established them as Kiowa braves), Turok and the young teenage Andar, investigate a vast cavern system. They have a run-in with a huge cave bear (not a short-face, as would have been the case in North America), and discover “Lost Valley”, a mammoth cavern whose roof as fallen in containing prehistoric fauna. The eager Andar wants to explore the strange new realm, of course, and first spies a small comsognathus then a dimetrodon and a brontosaurus, followed by a tyrannosaurus. The entire valley is dominated by Mesozoic and Permian fauna, with a smattering of mammalian species from later eras, such as giant panthers, dire wolves, antelope, and cave-dwelling humans. Turok and Andar are able to show the cave people more efficient ways to hunt game, and trap the large “honkers”, as the dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles are called. They discover poison berries with which they soak their arrows. This proves fatal to even the largest honkers. The story arc of the second issue, “Mystery Mountain” has lookouts of a cave tribe, stationed on a cliff, mysteriously vanishing during the night. The two braves discover the culprit to be a huge Pteranodon. They follow the winged beast into a cavern swarming with the pterosaurs, and emerge into a second prehistoric valley, this one dominated by mammals.

Now our heroes encounter a diatryma, a giant bird of the Eocene that gobbles down a raccoon and is in turn slain by a female Smilodon to feed her cubs. Note: diatryma, now called gastornis, is now known to have been herbivorous. They encounter a long-horned bison, a diodicerus glyptodont, mastodons, dinohyus, another huge panther that proves extremely hard to kill with the poison arrows, and of course more cave people who may well be Paleo-Indians

              A swipe of Charles R. Knight's American mastodon

                              A Zalinger swipe of the entelodont Dinohyus

• . These early Turoks also included an educational series called “Young Earth”, about evolving life our planet. When Turok and Andar discover the valley containing ancient reptiles, “Young Earth” covered life in the Mesozoic. For the adventure in the valley of mammals, it educated readers about life during the ice age. “Young Earth” continued up until the seventies. Some of the info wasn’t accurate though, as in the case where they explained that the modern Asian elephant was descended from the mammoth, which lost its hair once the ice-age ended; actually the wooly mammoth was a northern species of elephant.
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The "Young Earth" series was a feature of fifties and sixties issues

• Zalinger swipes were a feature of early issues

This early issue even featured a Kong-like giant gorilla, seen here crashing through some siligaria trees of the bygone Permian 

Subsquent Turok adventures had our heroes venturing into other regions of Lost Valley, in some of which Mesozoic and Cenozoic life forms mixed and mingled. A short article on the inside cover of one issue depicted a T-rex battling a mammoth, and explained that later forms of prehistory life had entered the valley a different times than earlier species. However, at some point prior to the seventies, it was decided, for unknown reasons, that only prehistoric reptiles, and their contemporary fauna be featured in the Turok stories, save for the cavemen. Thus, all of the braves’ adventures took place in Lost Valley regions where Mesozoic fauna predominated.

My dad once remarked that Turok was relatively free of fantastic elements, and Turok depicted the world pretty much as it was seventy million years ago, IF there had been two Indians there. But there were a few more fantastic elements that would turn up occasionally. For instance, lost valley was home to species of man-eating, (and occasionally dinosaur-eating!) plants. There was also the occasional giant insect, arachnid, or crustation, including a four-pinchered giant desert-swelling monstrosity called a “sand crawler”.

The cover of issue featuring a monstrous hybrid theropod was reused for a Dark Horse omnibus volume

Once thing I disliked were the inaccuracies that would crop up, especially when herbivorous dinosaurs were depicted as carnivores. The most notorious of these was flesh-eating ankylosaur. In facr, ankylosaurs were depicted as carnivores from the earliest issues, when an ankylosaurus devours a rabbit from their cookfire. A later issue has ankylosaur as a guardian to the deserted city, whose inhabitants were apparently highly civilized, perhaps Phoenican or Greek, indicting that these people once attempted colonization of the Americas! Another issue falsely referred to an ankylosaurus as a gorgosaurus! Still another (one of the weirder ones) featured a huge dinosaur hybrid, which Turok remarks looks like combination of different types of fierce honker. It appears to be a large tyrannosaurus with ankylosaur armor. Another frequent error was the carnivorous iguanodon, referred to as a ‘savage iguanodon”. Since at the time, iguanodon was depicted in an upright posture, it was easy to mistake it for a large theropod, rather than an ornithopod. Then there is the matter of hysiphalodon, an iguanodont relative that was falsely believed to have been a dinosaurian tree-dweller. Turok and Andar would often encounter tree-dwelling honkers that seemed to be based upon hysiphalodon (at leasr tnce referred to as such), but were always carnivorous.

                                 

                                     Cover of the issue featuring "The Honker that was Human"

       Another thing that bugged me as a young reader of Turok is that many of the stories talked down to kids, in my opinion, as Andar, still a young teenager, was very often getting himself and Turok into trouble because his foolishness and  naivety. Turok was always right. You might say that Andar was sometimes clever, but seldom wise. There was the time he used his brains to get Turok out of danger, like the issue where he impersonates a honker-headed god (by wearing the head of a slain dinosaur) when Turok his held captive by a cave tribe. But these issues were exceptions. One issue that stands out in particular in regard to this had a story called "The Honker that was Human." This was sometime near the end of Turok's reign, when the book expanded into forty-eight pages, with three new Turok stories, plus a "Young Earth" educational feature (this was a reprint from the fifties-sixties , but I didn't know it at the time). The new format only lasted two issues, however. 

    The story went like this: Turok and Andar are searching for a way out of Lost Valley, when they are disturbed by the cries of a theropod dinosaur (a gorgosaurus, according to the script, but it is too large), Turok opts to shoot the honker with a poison arrow, but Andar stops him, observing (correctly) that they need no food, and honker isn't threatening them. They soon discover that the honker's cries save them from some danger (can't recall what). Andar believes the honker was trying to warn them. Later, when they make camp on top of a huge cliff, Andar shoves off some boulders for the same honker (whom he names 'White-Patch', because of the white patch on its throat) to play with below. When White-Patch is suddenly threatened by a pair of attacking monoclonius (why two herbivores would attack a predator is anyone's guess), Andar shoots the horned honkers with his poison arrows, while White Patch hold one of them by the horn. A bit later, White Patch lifts Andar up so the boy can gather fruit from a tree. This understandably alarms Turok, who attempts to kill the honker with an arrow, but Andar swats the arrow away.. Later, after they break camp and move off, White Patch undergoes a change of personality when he pushing a branch down on them, pinning both braves beneath. "Your honker did this!" yells Turok, and also observes that "your honker has summoned others for the kill" as a pack of other gorgogsaurs appears. Turok manages to finish them off with his arrow, but not before White Patch seizes Andar and very nearly swallows him, before Turok's arrow finishes off the dinosaur at the last minute. After this brush with death, Turok says,"it was strange how your White Patch seemed so human, but if we meet another honker like that--" "we will slay it," Andar finishes, lesson learned. The End. 

     What was the point of the story anyway? It seems to be that animals, at least wild ones, are unpredictable, and should never be trusted. Now that might have some merit, but there are holes in logic here. First, Andar, not Turok is the most sensible one at the start, when Turok intends to slay the honker simply because it's annoying him. Also, why would White-Patch summon other predators to its kill? Carnivores typically do not share kills, even among their own kind. And what is there to share when the only prey is two measly, bite-sized humans? The story's logic makes no sense here, and the only purpose seems to be that young people are foolish. It is quite a shame that Gold Key, unlike other companies, did not feature letter pages in comics wherein readers could write in and voice their opinions. It would have been interesting to receive, especially on stories like this one. 

    During the seventies, the dinosaur renaissance was just starting to come into vogue, with new theories regarding warm-blooded, feathered and cunning dinos staring to displacing to displace the old fifties notion of them as stupid and sluggish behemoths, doomed to extinction. To its credit, Turok incorporated some new discoveries and theories into some stories. For example, there was the story "Flying Beasts of Prey", in which Turok and Andar encounter a pair of flying honkers that are twice the size of the largest flying honker they had ever seen. Though the creatures are not named, these are obviously based on the newly discovered Quetzalcoatylus Northopi, then merely called the "Texas Pterosaur", though both beasts were incorrectly adorned with pteranodon-like headcrests. That the time of its discovery, Quetzalcoatylus was thought to have a fifty-foot wingspan, twice that of pteranodon, though that estimate has since shrunk to somewhere around 35. 

Turok rides of phorohacas to save Andar from an evil shaman

   Then there was the story "The Honker with Two Feet," about a cave tribe who worshiped an previously unknown type of honker with two legs and feathers. When the braves rescue a man from a plesiosaur, the latter assumes that the braves have slain one of his tribe's sacred honkers, because of the feathers of their headbands and arrows. They contemplate they have never seen such a honker (this is slightly incorrect, as dino-birds like archeopteryx and ichthyornis had shown up previously in the pages of Turok). Anyway, they are soon captured, and Turok is thrown to the sacred honkers. These turn out to be none other than Phorohacas, the South-American terror-bird of the Miocene, the only Cenozoic species to show up in the pages of Turok since the early sixties! Turok watches the giant birds peck an edaphosaurus (an herbivorous relative of dimetrodon) to death. he slays a few with his arrows, then escapes on one that is still alive but woozy from the poison. The tribe takes him for a god, and he and Andar are able to escape. This issue is notable for showing a clear link between dinosaurs and birds. 

     By the early 1980s Turok was finally running out of steam. Gold Key itself folded sometime around then. But they had well over 100 issues to their credit, unlike all too many other dinosaur-themed comic series. There was a fairly respectable revival in the ninties, with more sci-fi themed plots, video games, and a number of failed revivals. Sadly, none of these ever lived up to the original. There was also one animated DVD movie, that changed the story, but intentionally harked back to the original Turok series.

Above: Some of the educational features to be found in early issues of Turok

 

The Weird World of Mexican Turoks

                                       

                          The battle between T-rex and tetrabelodon could only take place in a lost land

       Encounter with a stegosaurus in the 1st issue of Mexican Turok

An all-new (at the time) "Young Earth" educational feature in the 1st issue that was not ever in any American issue. it shows nautilids, sea-scorpions, and a creature with a sail, that looks very like a platyhytrix, a sail-back amphibian, rather than the more commonly shown dimetrodon.

Styracosaurus herd

 It was only relatively recently that I even knew that Mexican Turoks even existed. Now Turok: Son of Stone was, as you know, an American comic published by Gold Key (formerly Dell), with painted covers, about two American Indian braves, young adult Turok and teenage Andar getting lost in a vast cavern system, and discovering a lost world of dinosaurs and primitive men. To recap, the first valley they enter is inhabited primarily by Mesozoic and Permian fauna and flora, with a few caveman tribes and just a few mammals including giant panthers, dire wolves, and antelope. A few issues later, they discover a second valley dominated by ancient mammals and other Cenozoic fauna. Later, they wonder through regions where the fauna of both ages mixes and overlaps, as is the case with most lost world adventure stories. However, it seems that least from the late sixties on, the adventures of Turok and Ander take place in the regions of Lost Valley inhabited only by Mesozoic and Permian animals, save for the cavemen (who may in fact have been Paleo-Indians). I've read that there was some inexplicable rule at the time, that they would only encounter dinosaurs and other ancient reptiles. Why, is anyone's guess. 

A herd of dinonhyus, entelodonts, from an early issue

That's the first obvious difference between American and Mexican Turok comics: Mexican issues had the two braves encountering wildlife from all prehistoric eras. While some of the Mexican issues merely reprinted the covers and interiors of the American comics, most others were brand-new stories with brand new cover art. Yes, they are all in Spanish, which I can't read that well, so be prepared.

 When I first saw Mexican covers of Turok I was really intrigued. Turok fighting a Roman Centurian? Turok and Andar facing a giant spider in what looked like a colony of ancient Egypt? Now the American Turoks had occasional fantastic elements, like giant insects or spiders that would occasionally turn up. And several issues featured man-eating plants. But it was the Mexican series that took the series in fantastic directions that the American series never dared venture. There was one American issue that featured a lost Meso-American civilization that had traveled northward and become trapped within lost valley, and another wherein the two braves discover the remains of civilization that might have been Phoenician. One Mexican issue did indeed have them discover a lost Roman colony here in the Americans, and another a lost colony of Egypt, who worshipped a giant spider that trapped pteranodons in its web! Only one American issue featured aliens invading Lost Valley; there were at least three in Mexico that did! Plus the covers very often showed giant insects, crab-like monsters, spiders and other things, not all of which were featured within. There was an issue with a race of frog-like beings, and another with winged humanoids. Now one thing lacking with many of these issues, in comparison with the American comics, is the art. 

The first ten or so issues of Mexican Turok had art nearly on par with Tomas Giorelo, the excellent artist on the American comics during the seventies (who also did the art for the Dell adaptation of the original King Kong). After that, though, too many issues had art that is comparatively crude. The frog-people, sad to say, looked more like Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows than a believable race of sentient batrachians --the sequel to the Frankenstein Underground, had a much better race beings descended from frogs. The issue with winged humans was similarly crude, and the cover was direct rip-off of an issue of Mighty Sampson. And speaking of the cover art, my one criticism, in general, is that far too many of them were swipes of other artists like Frazetta and Russ Manning. 

The Egyptian issue with the pterosaur-devouring spider

Still, there are plenty of gems to be found among these issues, and much of the art falls somewhere betweeen Giorelo, and the art found in earliest American issues.

 How do I know all this, by the way?

 I was able to purchase a CD a year or so ago, that showed the interiors of a large sampling of Mexican Turok issues. The first issue I actually found bought on ebay had a giant staghorn caterpillar on the cover. It has Turok and Andar discover a subterranean world where they witness a battle between plesiosaur and a giant crab, and witness other fantastic creatures, including the aforementioned caterpillar. Just this month I was able to purchase seven more issues, including four of the first ten. One of them has a trunked glyptodont, based on the speculation that glyptodonts may in fact have sported trunks based upon the position of their nostrils. Another has Turok and Andar teaching one of the cave tribes (in one of the mammal-dominated regions) how to build a more advanced village and agriculture system. 

The trunked glyptodont

Turok and Andar educate the natives

A Charles R. Knight swipe!

Among the issues I still lack (and there are many) is one that I know has a genuine tetrabelodon, a species of gomphothere, or four-tusked elephant. To my knowledge, this beast has never shown up in the comics other than in this issue. Another, set in an ice-age region of Lost Valley, is about the quest for an albino mammoth, and has quite a few other Pleistocene fauna. 

The lizard-like reptile shown here seems like the "Crystal Palace" depictions of iguanodon from the 19th century. And of course, a T-rex.

A huge pteranodon attacks a cave tribe

Such is the weird world of Mexican Turoks.

 Having said the aforementioned Spanish warning, if anyone is looking for some good old-fashioned prehistoric adventures or loves the Turok series, there's tons of them waiting discovery out there. There's been at least four, maybe five, Turok revival series. The one in the Nineties had a respectable run. The rest were very short-lived, and none of them had anything on the Turok series that started it all, possibly because no one now thinks that series format could possibly work in the modern world. The Jim Shooter series was possibly the best attempt, but that's a tale for another time. If you want all-new old-school Turok adventures in Lost Valley, these issues come closer than anything produced after 1990. 

Issue with a rhamphorynchus, a dimorphodon, and an Imperial mammoth(?) And yes, there were pterosaurs devouring hordes of giant ants in this one. 

Issue #160 of Turok Novaro featured a tetrabelodon, a four-tusked mastodont of the gomphothere family.

The albino mammoth from one of the final issues--a Zdenek Burian swipe from the Czech artist's painting of a steppe mammoth (below)

Bor'aque Sharaq: Michael Fleisher's Deathless Villain

The Bob Larkin painting of Conan facing off with Bor'aque Sharaq. Sharaq was a re-occuring villain during Micheal Fleisher's long run at Savage Sword. He was a Barachan pirate who was captured and tortured by the Argossan navy to find Conan's whereabouts, and they gouged out his left eye in the process. After that, the disfigured corsair became obsessed with killing Conan.

All this happened in a story called "Temple of the Twelve-Eyed Thing," which ended with the titular creature flinging Sharaq to his apparent death out a tower window. But Sharaq survived, and reappeared off and on throughout Fleisher's run, on his quest for vengeance. The issue below is one of a two-part story featuring Sharaq. illustrating the climax, in which a demon from the netherworld reaches out to claim a sacrifice, but it's Sharaq he grabs, not the girl on the alter. It is at this climax that Fleisher cheats a bit, refering to Sharaq's "death-shrieks", as we learn in a later tale that the pirate survived the incident by making a bargain with the demon. He is eventually is able to escape the fiend's dimension, and resumes his quest for revenge. This tale was illustrated by Alfredo Alcala, by the way.

One thing that always bugged me about Sharaq is that Fleisher always had him slaughtering without a hint of remorse any innocent person who happened to get in his way, apparently to demonstrate how evil and ruthless he was. It's fine that Sharaq was so evil. What bothered me was the fact that these innocent people got killed. Worse, Sharaq never got his comupance. Each time Conan thought he had destroyed the corsair for good, Sharaq would always bounce back.

That is, until after an adventure with Snow Raven, one of Conan's many love interests, at the climax of which Sharaq was frozen in mystic ice. It was clear that the ice would melt, and Sharaq would be free, once Conan and Snow-Raven were far away. But ironically, this time Sharaq never showed up again. Fleisher's reign was at end at SSOC, and he later took over as the writer for Warlord at DC. Letters often inquired if Sharaq would be back, but he never was, not during Chuck Dixon's reign, or Roy Thomas's return.

Then again, if SSOC is returning, might it be that Sharaq might return as well?

Conan's Prehistoric Adventure Featuring Homotherium

 

 In Savage Sword of Conan #151, the story, called "Fury of the Near-Men," writer Chuck Dixon takes Howard's barbarian hero into the lush savanna's south of the Black Kingdoms of Kush in what would now be sub-Saharan Africa. Though at this time, Africa is merged with what will later become Europe, and the Mediteranian Sea does not exist. James, Silke, author of Frazetta's Deathdealer series, may have borrowed that last idea from Howard's already-established Hyborian age. 

Anyway, Conan encounters a number of prehistoric survivors in Hyborian-age Africa. First he battles a pack of (extant in our time) painted wolves, also known as African Cape hunting dogs. 

Then he encounters a wagon-train, bearing a family of travelers from the north, including the obligatory pretty girl, from the European region of the Hyborian world-continent, with a few native guides (I forget if this was an acting troupe, or the Hyborian equivalent of a safari; I'll guess the latter). Anyway, a huge saber-tooth feline attacks them, killing a guide, before the girl manages to wound it with her bow. Its Conan, of course that attacks and manages to slay the beast, following a horrendous battle. That's all good and well---but note that this is NOT the conventional saber-tooth tiger that is almost always the species featured during any encounter with a saber-tooth. This creature is of the species homotherium, which did live in Africa during the late Plesticene, but also throughout Europe to (north) east Asia, and even into the northern part of North America, at the same time that the more infamous smilodon ruled the Americas south of there. The homotherium ("man-beast") is sometimes referred to as a "dirk-toothed" cat rather than saber-toothed. It was believed to have died out earlier around 300,000 years ago, but are now believed to have roamed Europe much more recently, though these survivors were evidently much rarer than the European cave lion. This is evidenced by a small statuette by a Cor-magnon artist dating from a mere 30, 000 years ago! 

Carving thought to represent homotherium latitdens, showing a short-tail, a possibly lightly spotted coat, and no visable fangs, as would be the case with a dirk-tooth. Source:

http://darrennaish.blogspot.com/2006/03/late-survival-of-homotherium-confirmed.html

Anyway, after slaying the beast, and sticking its head on a pike, Conan bonds with the travelers, sometime afterward, the party is attacked a band of strange ape-men, something like
surviving australopithicines which retained their simian appearance,  but seem to be of much higher intelligence than their ancestors. A separate evolutionary branch, in other words, than the one that led to ourselves.

The girl and her family get captured. Conan is injured, but is saved and nursed by a rival tribe of beast-men, who seem more feline than primate. Conan makes allies with them, and on their way to save the traveler, two huge mastodons are seen. The city of evolved ape-men is quite bizarre, a constructed labyrinth of wood tunnels, covered and interconnected. 

They raid the ape-men's fortress and save the family, Conan killing the huge bloated king of the pithicus tribe, and all ends well, with the suggestion that cat-like beast men will always remember Conan in their folklore. 

"Fury of the Near-Men" was drawn by the combo of Gary Kwapisz and Ernie Chan, two of the Old Master of barbarian comics, who'd been teaming up for Savage Sword since the mid-eighties. 

Chuck Dixon, who was in the middle of a long run on Savage Sword at the time, most might remember for creating the Batman villain Bane for DC comics, though his work on Marvel's Conan was extensive.