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| King Kong 1933 |
DC Comics used to use loads of ape covers as the DC editors believed that sales increased whenever there was a giant ape on the cover of a comic. Twomorrows published "Comics gone ape!" in 2007 and featured comments by several DC creators such as Infantino, and Cardy who used the ape motif many times in their cover careers.
So what does this have to do with Bellamy? Well, by now you'll have learned my style is to not get straight to the point.
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| King Kong 1976 |
The excellent MagForum site, about magazines and magazine publishing, is written by Tony Quinn, founder of Magforum.com. he tells us:
19 magazine was published by IPC, monthly, from 1968 - May 2004
Young women’s glossy aimed at 16- to 19-year-olds. The established magazines in this sector all steadily lost sales after 1980. 19 was the last survivor of the three big IPC titles: Honey merged with 19 in 1986 after circulation almost halved in five years; a similar fate befell Look Now in 1988. These mergers helped 19, but its sales were still down by about a fifth in 1990 over the decade. When it finally closed, IPC said: 'Over the last few years, the face of the teenage market has changed. The boundaries between the teen market sub-sectors have become blurred and sales patterns suggest that readership at the older, young women’s end appears to have migrated to the fashion and celebrity markets.' Final editor was Helen Bazuaye. The publisher launched Teen Now, a spin-off from its celebrity weekly Now in spring that year and in March Emap had closed The Face and J-17 (Just 17) Taken from: MagForum.com and used with permission
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| King Kong 2005 |
The contents page of the February 1975 issue of 19 contained the black and white image from the main double page spread Bellamy drew. Keith Jones, was the Assistant Art Editor for IPC magazines at that time who paid Bellamy £86.40p for the colour spread commissioning it in May 1974. Bellamy's King Kong appears on the celluloid which is melting, and twisted strands of wire is shown in the background of the montage. A hand carefully pulls the 'i' from Kong's name. I've read the article and can't see what this represents so would love to generates some comments below
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| Cropped contents page |
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| 19 "King Kong", pp.66-67 |
Links:
To read about the history of the films - (I didn't realise Linda Hamilton did one!) see KiKn (Kong is King.net)
Bill Storie wrote to me and I thought I'd add his comment here.
ReplyDeleteHi buddy!! Lovely and much appreciated latest item about Kong - my interpretation of the piece suggests that it's the hand of (evil) mankind symbolically removing Kong from the island where he is king and thus he is from then on no longer the "King" and the twisted wires could be simply those used to tie him up after capture (altho one wonders if chains might have been more appropriate?) or perhaps a symbol of the "twisted minds" of the humans who used him for money-making ventures - ?
This therefore begs the question - hopefully Keith Jones might know - did Frank have free reign with the commission or did he have guidelines imposed? If he had free reign then it gives us (perhaps) an insight to the way Frank worked on a commission - he could have simply done a movie-style poster or an action shot but instead he chose to place a symbolic message in the piece, effectively telling the story of the movie in a similar way to his Radio Times war illo's and the eagle war strips where he used graphics and symbolic arrows pointing to illustrate events. Suggests Frank was not only a very intelligent man (as are most artists imho) but perhaps much more willing than many artists of the time to push the boundaries of graphic art - but kudos also to the editor who sought him out to create the piece for a magazine which one would normally not associate with such fantasy art.
Many thanks again!!!
Hi Norman,
ReplyDeleteMaybe the wire represents the "skeleton" of the stop motion figure of Kong himself. Also the hand could be his operator. Possibly not removing the I but actually putting it in after adjusting something? That's how I've always interpreted it.
Whatever was intended I think it's among the very best of his illustrations!
Tim.
It's certainly one of the busiest pages as far as visits to the blog goes Tim. Thanks for your thoughts
ReplyDeleteNorman