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Blackmark by Archie Goodwin and Gil Kane (Bantam Books, January 1971). Cover by Gil Kane
As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t grow up with comics. They weren’t available in my small, rural town of Charleston, Arkansas in the 1960s and 70s. The first store to carry them appeared around ’74 and had a small spinner rack with a dozen or so titles. By then I was already reading regular books and the comics, while they had interesting art, had much less story than books. I bought a few but never got hooked and knew virtually nothing about any comics creator.
As an adult in my fifties, I watched a movie called The Watchmen, which was very good, and I bought the original graphic novel by Alan Moore. I was blown away by the complex storytelling and started buying other graphic novels. I finally started to learn about some of the great comic book creators over the years. I still don’t consider myself a comic book reader but I keep an eye out for items that might interest me. That’s how, in 2019, I found a cool little book called Blackmark, “by Gil Kane.”
Gil Kane (1926 – 2000) was born in Latvia as Eli Katz but immigrated with his family to the US at about 3. He lived in Brooklyn and started working in comics at an early age. By 16, he’d found full-time employment and quit high school.
He’s best known for helping create Green Lantern and Iron Fist, none of which I’ve ever read. In 1971, working with a scripter named Archie Goodwin, he created Blackmark (from Bantam), one of the earliest graphic novels. It’s set on a post-apocalyptic Earth and is more sword & sorcery than sword & planet, but it has that exotic S&P feel I crave.
From what I understand, Kane created the setting and characters and did all the art. He provided an outline for the script to Goodwin, who then did the writing. Each page has an illustration or two with squares of story around them. There’s a lot of story, which I appreciated.
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Interiors from the Marvel Preview #17. Art by Gil Kane
The art is great but the script is just wonderful. It’s way over the top sword and sorcery prose and I enjoyed it tremendously. Here’s a taste:
Blackmark awoke to shrill, inhuman cries. Dawn had brought new horror on flapping wings.
I highly recommend Blackmark to readers of S&P fiction.
Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was The Sword & Planet Tales of Ralph Milne Farley.