I’ve posted on comics inspired by pulps, but this time I’m posting on a comic strip series that ran in the pulps. It’s the short-lived Zarnack that ran through eight issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936 and ’37.
It’s recently been reprinted in a single volume called Project: Zarnack! from Blue Monkey Studio and Licorne Prints, who appear to be backed by some Italian SF fans.
In addition to the strips, we get an introductory article on both pulps and the comic strips that influenced Zarnack. And we get a set of model sheets that give a modern interpretation of the main characters in the strip.
So this strip is clearly influenced by Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, which is interesting when you consider that Buck Rogers was based on a pulp story. It was done by Max Plaisted (1902-56), but the article claims this was an alias for Otto (writer) and Jack Binder (art). Otto is probably best known as the creator of Supergirl, and Jack for Daredevil at Lev Gleason. But Max is a real person who did several comic strips in the pulps. But frankly, both writing and art are sub-par here. The early Buck Rogers artwork was a little crude, but Zarnack is worse.
So what’s it all about? Well, in the first story (each part is three to four pages long), we learn about the world of 2936 A.D. The Earth has reverted to a primitive state. We are told that in 2661 A.D., the Fifth World War had started (!!), caused by Asiatics attacking Europe (shades of Buck Rogers!). Europeans created a virus as a counter-agent, but it got out of control (they hadn’t created an antidote before releasing it — real smart!), and it devestated Asia, Africa, and Europe, and spread to America. Scientists died, and the world lapsed back to the level of the ninth century.
Thankfully, Zarnack‘s scientist ancestor had fled with his family to the Rocky Mountains. So Zarnack is the last son of the great scientist Mergo. He learns that in 2828, a scientist gathering a group of people to flee the Earth and establish a colony elsewhere. But the location is unknown. So Zarnack’s plan is to head to the planet Urgo, which is beyond Pluto, and work his way back in hopes of finding them and restoring the Earth.
But disaster strikes, and he insteads crashes on Mercury. He contends with the threat of various beings and creatures living there, including crazed giant-headed Mercurians, giant Roc birds, another race of short-lived Mercurians who want to dissect him, and more. Thankfully he is rescued by Varco, the self-appointed ruler of Mercury, who is really from Venus and has, like all of those from Venus, a giant-head. His daughter Etarre is a mutant, who looks like a beautiful Earth girl and will be the some what love interest to Zarnack in his quest. Though the strip was so short-lived, Zarnack never finished what he was doing on Mercury to even get to another planet.
Why did this strip end so soon? Apparently the readers of Thrilling Wonder Stories hated it. And certainly the crude artwork and poor storytelling didn’t help. You’d have whole blocks of text. Comics are a visual medium. Show, don’t tell. It would have been interesting where this could have gone had it continued.
As noted, this collection contains other materials. One is a nice article by C. Sesselego. It gives a history of SF pulps from Hugo Gernsback, the development of hero pulps, and the early SF comic strips that influenced this one. We get a good selection of color covers and artwork. Sadly, Sesselego has a bad tendency to give initials instead of first names for people in his article. We also get a selection of color covers of the issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories that the strips appeared in.
The other item is an article on an early Italian SF fan club, and shows the artwork they put together on the characters in Zarnack for a possible future work with the characters. Think of them as kind of model sheets, many in color.
Overall, it’s a very nice collection. It really could have used someone to do some proofreading and editing to clean things up, but if you’d like to learn more of this short-lived pulp comic strip, check it out. I know that Thrilling ran at least two other comic strips. There was Six Gun Sandy from Thrilling Western (16 stories) and Ace Jordan from Thrilling Adventure (58 stories). Ace was also done by Plaisted, but was much more successful. Did they do others? I’ve like to see a complete reprint of Ace, which I’ve only seen one story reprinted in Pulp Adventures #22.
