Number 1502: “So Captain Marvel zapped him right between the eyes...” — John Lennon

In reading and cleaning up the scans of this UK version of Captain Marvel Adventures #69 (US issue #124), John Lennon crossed my mind. In “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”* on the 1968 album, The Beatles, there is this lyric:

“Deep in the jungle where the mighty tiger lies
Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise
So Captain Marvel zapped him right between the eyes...”

One Beatles' song website believes the reference to Captain Marvel means John Lennon was spoofing Americans on superheroes. I think it is more likely that because Lennon was a kid when the British Captain Marvel comics were published (he was 11-years-old when this comic was published in 1951, for instance), he may well have seen or read comics featuring Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel was popular enough that in 1953 when his American adventures ended the British publisher, L. Miller, had Mick Anglo do a close version called Marvelman. Captain Marvel was known in England, so John Lennon using the name wouldn’t seem surprising.

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*You can read the story of the song’s origin in this Wikipedia page on “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”.

At the end of 2012 I scanned and posted the UK version of Fawcett's adaptation of the science fiction movie, The Man From Planet X, and last July I posted a UK edition of The Marvel Family Go to them by clicking on the thumbnails:

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Number 1067


John Lennon by Joe Sinnott


Counting back—holy cow!—can it really have been 31 years since John Lennon was murdered? I remember that day, December 8, 1980 because like many others of my generation I thought of the Beatles in a very personal way. By having his life cut short Lennon's image forevermore is of a young man, but I always think what might have been, what he would have been capable of musically had he lived.

In 1964 my brother and I were just the right age to become Beatles fans, just as caught up in Beatlemania as everyone else. When this Dell Giant Comic with the Beatles story came out we pounced on it, read every word. Even then I saw it as something of a whitewash; I'd seen the pictures of the Beatles in Germany wearing leather jackets and greasy pompadours, so they weren't as simon-pure as the comic book showed. I liked it anyway. After all, Joe Sinnott was one of my favorite Marvel Comics artists, who did such beautiful work with Jack Kirby's pencils. I'd seen many jobs by Joe as a solo artist, and thought he was perfect for this comic.

Joe's professionalism comes out in every panel, whether he traced publicity photos or not. I don't remember if pictures of John's wife, Cynthia, were available at the time, but in the comic book version she looks a bit generic.*








*I got a laugh out of the panel on page 3, "How about a flick tonight, Cynthia?" Comic books usually avoided the use of the word flick because the "L" and "I" could be run together to make a "U". Even in 1964 my mind provided that word in that panel. Ho-ho.

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