As the name suggests, Marvel Movie Preview #1 was the first Marvel magazine of its kind. This one-shot publication adapted Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot (1918), which had just been released in theaters starring Doug McClure in the first of three films he would do for Amicus Productions (The others were At the Earth’s Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). The only movie adaptations that preceded MMP#1 was the Planet of the Apes magazine that adapted all five films from 1974 to 1977. Unlike MMP#1 the films were spread out over many issues and were accompanied by other comics based on the franchise.
The film that the magazine was meant to promote is featured in a photo spread at the back of the magazine. Along with pictures was an illustrated essay by Lin Carter on Lost World stories. The script for the Amicus film was written by Michael Moorcock and long-time friend, James Cawthorn. This will surprise people who know these two best for the Elric saga, but Moorcock got his start editing Tarzan comics in the UK (as a teenager!) Despite this, the adaptation for the comic was done by long-time veteran writer and editor, Marv Wolfman, who worked from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original novel, not the screenplay.
There are two wonderful surprises (three if you count the Lin Carter article) within the pages of MMP#1. The first is there are no ads as the cover boldly declares. This gives the magazine a true graphic novel feel. The second is the artwork by Sonny Trinidad, which he pencilled and inked. His work is exciting, solid and consistent. Again, the feel is a graphic novel done by an artist and not a hodge-podge compilation.
The story that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote at the end of World War, according to Lin Carter in his essay, is a Science Fiction tale that is also a Lost World story and a jungle yarn. He thinks it was this three part novel that cemented ERB firmly in the ranks of SF writers along with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. And he may be right (though I think his Mars novels may have done this earlier). The plot follows a group of
American and British prisoners who are taken by a German U-Boat into the lost world of Caspak. On this primitive island, evolution does pass through generation after generation but during an individual’s life. You start off as protoplasm and by the end you evolve into an evil, winged human known as a Wieroo. The first part, which the film and comic cover, doesn’t feature these evil beings, only the cavemen and dinosaurs of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World(1913). Sadly, the sequel The People That Time Forgot (1977) compressed the last two portions into a rather weak film than garnered no further trips to Caspak. It also did not get adapted by Marvel, so no wonderful Marv Wolfman/Sonny Trinidad version exists.
I suspect Trinidad may have had a few publicity stills of Doug McClure but not much else to work with. His characters are not copied from the film, nor is the pacing of the movie and comic the same. This is actually a good thing as Marv Wolfman’s version of Burroughs is much more entertaining than a slavish version of Moorcock’s film. In the end, we get two different interpretations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ grand tale.
