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Robotmen of the Lost Planet?

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Kevin Yong:

--- Quote from: darkmark on August 23, 2010, 07:40:54 PM ---What I'd like to know is if "Robotmen" was adapted from a prose science fiction novel.  Several of Avon's sf one-shots were, and I'd be surprised if this one wasn't as well.

--- End quote ---

I'd be curious too to know what comics were adapted from sci-fi prose -- and especially if they were adapted with permission. (I once heard Ray Bradbury share some anecdotes at a comic convention about how many of his short stories were being adapted into comics without his knowledge. I've heard conflicting versions of his conversation with the publisher, but the gist of it is that Bradbury politely pointed out the plagiarism in a way to let the publisher save face and pay for the stories without having to bring in lawyers to play hardball.)

Sigh... So many classic comics and novels to read, so little time.

-- Kevin Yong

darkmark (RIP):
At least two of Ray's stories were stolen, including "Kaleidoscope" (which, iirc, became "Home to Stay").  Bradbury was just the first one to catch EC in the act.  They copped stories from other sources, including Hasse's "He Who Shrank" which became a Kurtzman story for WEIRD SCIENCE (I think).  Bill Woolfolk, God bless him, stole one of Raymond Chandler's stories for a Spirit story, which was considerable chutzpah in that the Spirit Section was a newspaper feature, not an obscure comic book.  "The Monkey's Paw" was ripped off for a Charlton horror story in the Sixties.  Archie Goodwin filched the premise for his Warren story about a building that enbalms its designer from Bradbury's "The Coffin", which was also adapted by EC.  I guess when you're up against a deadline, a lot of ethics go in the wastecan.

JVJ (RIP):
Darkmark, do you ever feel like the old shaman sitting around the campfire telling the next generation the same old stories? I guess somebody has to do it to keep the oral history alive, since nobody seems to read all that much any more.

Keep up the history lessons.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

JVJ (RIP):

--- Quote from: Kevin Yong on August 27, 2010, 08:18:13 PM ---
--- Quote from: darkmark on August 23, 2010, 07:40:54 PM ---What I'd like to know is if "Robotmen" was adapted from a prose science fiction novel.  Several of Avon's sf one-shots were, and I'd be surprised if this one wasn't as well.

--- End quote ---

I'd be curious too to know what comics were adapted from sci-fi prose -- and especially if they were adapted with permission. (I once heard Ray Bradbury share some anecdotes at a comic convention about how many of his short stories were being adapted into comics without his knowledge. I've heard conflicting versions of his conversation with the publisher, but the gist of it is that Bradbury politely pointed out the plagiarism in a way to let the publisher save face and pay for the stories without having to bring in lawyers to play hardball.)

Sigh... So many classic comics and novels to read, so little time.

-- Kevin Yong

--- End quote ---

Kevin (and anyone else who has "once heard" something,
Just put Ray Bradbury and EC Comics into Google and you'll get the story - generally from a more primary source (though not always, and it's good to find a secondary source to reinforce the first one you find). So MUCH of this info is out there that we don't really have to be unsure of our own history any more. As "historians" comic fans, frankly, have sucked for most of the existence of fandom. Now we just need to refer to the reference material more often.

my 2¢

Or we can simply ask one of us old-timers to "tell you a story"...

(|:{>

John C:
To be fair, when it comes to accusations of plagiarism, the primary sources aren't necessarily those you want to follow.  It's often hard for a dispassionate court to distinguish between an adaptation of their work and a new work inspired by the same, let alone the creator of the original.  And even the most competant artist might not realize that their contract gives the publisher the rights to license the work to others without compensation.

That's not to say that it isn't worth hunting those sources down, of course, if one has an interest.  But once you have Bradbury's version of events as he interprets them, there's potentially another rabbit hole just behind it.

As an unrelated example, up until just a couple of months ago, Eisner's word was always seemingly taken as gospel on events in the comic industry, and now Ken Quattro's articles on the DC/Fox suit would cast a fair amount of doubt on some of the most critical assertions.

The reference material is also, as we've discussed, very poorly organized, in the grand scheme.  But then, I spent most of this afternoon haggling with Google over a (non-comic-related) topic, wherein dozens of searches and following links turned up one mildly interesting item, so I'm a bit bitter...

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