At IDW, we made an enthusiastic and energetic effort to publish this Beatles Yellow Submarine Graphic Novel. Gave it the “college try” as the old cliché goes. Or “full court press” to employ another common phrase.
But it wasn’t meant to be. Titan picked up the rights (Maybe it was the British connection) and ended up with a fun graphic novel, brilliantly and lovingly penciled by Bill Morrison and inked by Andrew Pepoy and Tone Rodriguez.
This page features all four Beatles, the sub itself (multiple times), and key protagonist “Old Fred.” Minus a blue meanie or two, what’s not to like?
Commission, based on artwork from The Yellow Submarine, (originally February 1969)
Coming up faster than I would like to acknowledge is the 55th anniversary of the (1968) release of the wild and wonderful Beatles’ Yellow Submarine animated feature film.
Gold Key (Western Publishing) published the adaptation of the film and charged 35 cents(!) for a copy, partly due to size (64 pages), and partly due (I assume) to steep licensing fees. It was the most I ever paid for a new issue of a comic book at the time. (Marvel and DC annuals were 25 cents.)
Jose Delbo nailed the film’s psychedelic aesthetic perfectly; I’ve never seen an actual original page from the adaptation, so I assume the pages were either destroyed or ended up in a Beatles archive somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered.
In the meantime, Jose’s great commission (undated, probably early 2000s) will do quite nicely.
When artists Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres were creating those amazing Mad movie parodies (especially the earlier ones) they often had trouble acquiring official photo references. The solution? Torres would sneak a camera into the movie theater and quietly snap some photos for himself or Drucker.
In other words, the Mad artists were the original film pirates.
You have no idea how much I love that.
This classic Drucker page from a parody of the film “The Hot Rock” comes with a personal anecdote as well:
I discovered my pal Stuart Ng had three original pages from this story for sale about six or seven years ago. I didn’t want all three, I only wanted one (they’re huge — about 18×24), but even if I did, we couldn’t agree on price. (Hot Rock is one of my favorite films, and it’s one of Stuart’s also, and besides, it’s not like Drucker pages are lying around.)
So of course, every so often, I would revisit the pages, and of course, following the rest of the original art market, the price would increase and I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.
(Insert emoji of me slapping myself here.)
Finally… A few months ago, we had a meeting of the minds. He sold me one, and he knows it’s going into a good home. I paid more than I wanted to, he sold it for less than he wanted to, and that seemed like the making of a decent compromise.
And I think he still has the remaining two available, in case other Hot Rock fans see this post. Tell him Greg sent you.
Although somewhat forgotten today, The Hot Rock is a classic caper film, written by the legendary screenwriter William Goldman and based on the first book in the “Dortmunder” series by (the also legendary) Donald Westlake. Filmed on location in New York, including some neighborhoods I was personally familiar with, I’ve loved it since it was released 50 years ago.
The first(?) of endless Abbey Road swipes and homages is featured in Hot Rock promo art. I love that George Segal copied George Harrison’s outfit entirely, right down to the footwear. I will bet that somewhere in that photographer’s archive is an even more exact mirror of the Abbey Road cover.
