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| A brontosaurus makes mince meat of the visitors to Skull Island! |
Below are a selection of favorite panels and tiers from the classic tale. Created in a simple "newspaper style" vocabulary and originally published in black and white, Simpson's art made ample use of "black spotting," vigorous brush and pen and ink drawing (including raking the original art with a razor blade to achieve expressive, sweeping effects), hand lettering, and simple but effective dot screens (known in pre-digital days as Ben Day, Zipatone, and numerous other brand names).
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| Carl Denham, defeated by Skull Island, returns from his afternoon in Jurassic Park. |
Harkening back to the classic adventure strips of Noel Sickles (Scorchy Smith), Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs), and Leslie Turner (Cap'n Easy) - as much, if not more, than such obvious influences as Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, and EC Comics - Simpson successfully evokes the nostalgia of the period without directly quoting from the 1933 RKO Pictures movie
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| Kong reaches for Ann Darrow. |
"We only had rights to the book," Simpson notes, "which freed me from a literal adaptation of screen images and actors' likenesses." Another bonus were added scenes left out of the film, or cut by exhibitors and TV stations over the years; these included shots of lethal, giant spiders devouring the crew of the ship, and Kong's grisly rampage through a native village.
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| The secret map to Skull Island (in 3D)! |
Simpson also took liberties with Ann Darrow, love object and heroine of the piece, emphasizing her physicality and blatant sexuality. "She's a strong heroine," says the cartoonist, "and pretty confident, even while being pursued by a giant ape." The 1991 graphic novel taps into the underlying eroticism implicit in King Kong, perhaps more than any adaptation of the story before or since.
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| Jack Driscoll and Ann Darrow on board the tramp steamer. All men are basically monkeys of one sort or another! |
"But she always retains agency," notes the cartoonist. "In my version of the story, she doesn't end up in the arms of Jack Driscoll; she's alone on the pinnacle of the Empire State Building, along, weeping for her fallen would-be suitor, who in his childlike way never understood the modern world."
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| Tied to the altar, Ann awaits her fate! |
Simpson's distinct emphasis of the female figure is contrasted with almost cartoony renditions of the giant ape and other denizens of Skull Island, including the dinosaurs. "I was trying to evoke the artificiality of gorilla costumes and rubber suits, and model kits of dinosaurs, as much as 'real' dinosaurs," says the artist. "This isn't a Kong where verisimilitude is a high priority; it's a primal story, evoking childhood and immature conceptions of reality. I wasn't trying to hit readers over the head with paleontology, like Stephen R. Bissette's Tyrant. I was telling a 'rattling good' pulp story in the manner of Edgar Rice Burroughs, by way of Philip José Farmer."
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| Gas bombs take down the stegosaurus! |
The original six-issue series featured a variety of covers by noted fantasy illustrators, including Dave Stevens, Mark Shultz, Al Williamson, Ken Steacy, and two by William Stout. "Dave just swiped a movie still of Faye Wray," Simpson recalls, "which technically violated the contract with the Merian C. Cooper estate." Worse still, the cover amounted to the entirety of publicity by the publisher on behalf of the series.
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| Kong paws for Jack! |
Don Simpson, best known as the creator of the superhero parody Megaton Man, seemed an unlikely choice to adapt Kong. "I knew Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, of course, as well as Thom Powers, who was heading up the Monster Comics and Erox Comix imprints," recalls the cartoonist. "Gary always had nice things to say about my black-and-white science fiction saga Border Worlds, and maybe they also saw Pteranoman #1, which featured dinosaurs and Cowboy Gorilla. Also, as a reliable writer, artist, and letterer - who would work cheap - I was kind of one-stop shopping. But Kong is not something I would have sought out or begged to draw."
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| Seaman Jack Driscoll is no big-game hunter! |
"The marketing of King Kong was an enormous missed opportunity, in my view," says Simpson. "Fantagraphics [publisher of the industry-antagonist Comics Journal] seemed to think that achieving commercial success was as simple as lowering your standards and deigning to slum in a popular genre. They never sunk so low as to produce a superhero comic book, but for them, King Kong was selling out. Naturally, when a publisher is that ambivalent about a project, they're not going to be wholehearted in their promotion of it."
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| Ann takes charge of the relationship! |
Simpson recalls attending a San Diego Comicon during the period in which his Kong was appearing. "The publisher was happily promoting Love and Rockets, Eightball, and their other critically-acclaimed arthouse projects," notes the cartoonist. "But King Kong, they were hiding under a bushel. The only display I saw at the show at all concerning Kong was a vintage movie poster at a dealer's table. Here was a household word and I was busting my balls to write and draw the best adaptation I could manage, and the publisher was inexplicably taking a dive on the project. That's what I call a missed opportunity."
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| Stripped to her skivvies, Ann remains athletic! |
The six-issue serialization format also proved a mixed blessing. "On the one hand, I had ample room to explore the story graphically, using silent panels, tall panels, wide-screen panels, and so on," says Simpson. "I could essentially indulge my impulses to direct my own movie version. On the downside, however, it meant trying to hold an audience's attention for over a year, as six bi-monthly issues rolled out. And everyone already knew the ending of the story, so it wasn't as if I had suspense working in my favor."
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| The only escape from the cliff is a death-defying drop into the lake ... |
Don Simpson's adaptation of King Kong preceded the age of the graphic novel by several years. "At that time, in the early 1990s, single-issues were still what comics readers expected. The idea of packaging or repackaging a story into a trade paperback was not yet a 'thing' that was widely accepted, or done very often, believe it of not. A decade later, 'graphic novels' became the norm - fans wanted longer, self-contained reads. Fantagraphics could have taken the lead there - I even numbered the pages 1 through 135, so I always conceived of it as a single graphic novel. But they neglected that golden opportunity as well.
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| Jack brings Ann back from her harrowing adventure on Skull Island! |
Fans have been mystified that the series has not been collected in the quarter-century since its only printing, and the artist suspects collusion. "I have reason to believe - because insiders have told me - that a consortium of licensors, Hollywood producers, and comic book publishers have conspired to keep my 1991 King Kong out of print, because they didn't want competition or comparisons. I particularly believe this is true in the case of Dark Horse Comics, who put out an execrable adaptation of the 2005 Peter Jackson film. I believe someone there has it in for me, because they also sicked Charles Atlas, with whom they were creating some merchandise, on me for a parody advertisement I did around the same time."
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| Ann has just about enough of Carl Denham's ruthless exploitation ... |
Whatever the explanation, why anyone associated with the King Kong brand would want to suppress a venerable graphic novel adaptation of the story - anymore than one would want to suppress the 1977 Dino Di Laurentis film, or for that matter the original 1993 Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper Film - is a mystery to millions of fans of Kong. "This is an American institution," notes the cartoonist. "The fact that the story has been told and retold to generations of fans down through the decades should be a point of pride, not of embarrassment or censorship."
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| The photographers' flashbulbs confuse and anger Kong. |
While the cartoonist singles out a jealous rival publisher, other stakeholders in the King Kong brand seem just as, if not more, culpable. "You can tell the difference between a brand or a franchise that is strong, like James Bond or Batman or Star Trek, and can proudly embrace all of its myriad interpretations by various creators over the years -- from the dark and brooding to the campy and corny -- and franchises that are timid and weak, and afraid of its own shadow," notes Simpson. "It is a paradox that King Kong - perhaps the most macho American entertainment franchise imaginable - is run by such tepid, timid, ahistorical wimps."
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| Kong has Ann once again! Only this time, he's taking things downtown ... |
The cartoonist still holds out hope that his 1991 graphic novel will be collected and released as a true graphic novel. "In 2017, two of my past projects were gathered into 'squarebound' format," notes the artist. "Splitting Image, a two-issue series, was re-released along with the normalman vs. Megaton Man Special, under Jim Valentino's Shadowhawk imprint at Image Comics, as an '80-page Giant.' At the same time, Dover Publications gathered together my Border Worlds science fiction series series, and did a beautiful hardcover edition. Both of these are also available on Comixology. I still have all the original artwork for Kong; a single-volume edition would be a no-brainer."
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| Biplanes approach the Empire State Building! |
While Simpson steadfastly claims King Kong was never a dream project, it grew into a labor of love over the course of the year-long assignment. "I gave the publisher, and I hope the readers, their money's worth," says the artist. "It was obvious to me early on that Fantagraphics didn't know how to promote a comic book to fans, even when it was already a household word. But I wasn't drawing for the publisher; I was drawing for the readers, and fans of Kong of all ages. And in some abstract way, I was trying to put forward a notion of traditional, all-American cartooning - complete with drooling apes, nearly naked women, and big Zip-A-Tone dot screens - that I thought was beginning to become lost in the 1990s. Boy, did that prediction come true."
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| Kong cannot hold on as Ann helpless watches him plummet to his fate. |
While Simpson's "newspaper style" comic strip version of King Kong languishes in back-issue bins in comic shops all over the English-speaking world, there is still a strong following for the work. "Fans come up to me all the time with issued of King Kong to autograph, and they want sketches and so. Every convention, every personal appearance - and increasingly on social media - fans demand to see it in bookshelf format. It remains a golden opportunity, if the bean-counters could only unclench their sphincters."
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| "'Twas beauty killed the beast!" |
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Published by Monster Comics (an imprint of Fantagraphics Books) in 1991, Don Simpson's graphic novel adaptation of King Kong
was first full, complete, official and authorized adaptation of the
1932 story by Edgar Wallace, Merian C. Cooper, and Delos W. Lovelace. It
was in no way related to or derived from any of the motion picture
versions of the story.
See also: The Kong Process from Sketch to Finished Art!
See also: King Kong's Uncensored Scenes Featuring Incredible Shrinking Underwear!
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