Art Adams' Creature Features (1996)

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Art Adams' Creature Features
Art Adams' Creature Features
Written by
Art by
  • Arthur Adams
  • Gracine Tanaka & Steve Moncuse (Godzilla... assists)
Colors by
  • Rachelle Menashe (Godzilla...)
  • Laura Allred ("Trampling...")
Cover by Arthur Adams
Design by
  • Teena Gores
  • Brian Gogolin (manager)
Edits by Lynn Adair
Letters by Lois Buhalis (Godzilla...)
Publisher Dark Horse
Publish date August 1996
Pages 104[1]
Genre Graphic novel, science fiction
ISBN ISBN-10: 1-56971-214-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-56971-214-6

Art Adams' Creature Features is a graphic novel published by Dark Horse in August 1996, collecting select monster-related comics illustrated by Arthur "Art" Adams. It includes the one-shot Creature from the Black Lagoon, two disconnected Godzilla stories, and two Monkeyman and O'Brien stories. All of these were previously published by Dark Horse with the exception of one of the Godzilla stories, "Trampling Tokyo," which was originally included in Caliber Press' Negative Burn #18. Though Godzilla's use in that story was likely unlicensed, as the Negative Burn issue included no accreditation to Toho, its republishing here by Dark Horse (who held the comic rights to Godzilla at the time) would seem to make it official retroactively.

Description

Godzilla may be King of Monsters, but Art Adams is the king of that giant lizard, and he proves it in this collection of Creature Features! Including such monster hits as Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Godzilla Color Special, a rare Monkeyman and O'Brien story titled "Trapped in the Lair of the Shrewmanoid," and "Trampling Tokyo" from the Alan Moore Songbook, Art Adams' Creature Features features all of your favorite creatures as seen through the eyes of one of your favorite comics artists! Though some of these stories originally appeared in black and white, every page of this 104-page collection is fully colored!

Contents

  • Table of contents (p. 2)
  • Introduction (p. 3) by Geofrey Darrow
  • Creature from the Black Lagoon (p. 4)
  • Godzilla Color Special (p. 53)
  • "The Shocking Case of the Brief Journey" (p. 93)
  • "Trapped in the Lair of the Shrewmanoid" (p. 97)
  • "Trampling Tokyo" (p. 101)

Gallery

Trivia

  • An unnamed dinosaur from "The Shocking Case of the Brief Journey" appears near-identical to Art Adams' depiction of Godzilla in "Trampling Tokyo."
  • "Trapped in the Lair of the Shrewmanoid" features the titular Shrewmanoid, who was first mentioned in the Godzilla Color Special (albeit rendered "Shrew-Manoid").
  • The first half of Geofrey Darrow's foreword relays a supposed conversation with Adams, over the course of which Darrow realizes that all of Adams' favorite people contain variations of "Adams" in their names. However, Adams makes several absurd claims, likely indicating that the conversation has been editorialized, is outright fictional, or was a joke played on Darrow. Adams claims that his sole reason for liking Godzilla is Nick Adams' role in Invasion of Astro-Monster; that the United Kingdom version of the film "contained three extra minutes of Nick Adams footage not contained in either the Japanese or American versions" that were preserved by the "H.M.S. Royal Nick Adams Society"; that it was rumored "a scene in which Nick Adams fights the controller of Planet X and wins in the western version and loses in the Japanese version has been recently restored and will be shown in a soon-to-be-released, road show edition" of the film; and that in the penciling stage of the Godzilla Color Special the role of Dr. Kazushi Kagaku was filled by a Nick Adams lookalike named "Glen", but Toho blocked this because it was planning a Sonny Chiba-directed Nick Adams biopic titled Screen Fighter.
    • The statement about the Controller of Planet X winning or losing in different-region versions of Invasion of Astro-Monster is a play on the infamous rumor which posits that Godzilla wins in the Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla, and King Kong wins in the U.S. version. Adams previously illustrated a portion of Dark Horse's 1993 comic Urban Legends #1 debunking this rumor. "Screen Fighter," meanwhile, is likely a reference to Street Fighter, as Sonny Chiba was a famed martial artist.
    • Perhaps unintentionally, Adams also misreports Invasion of Astro-Monster's release year as 1966, and the name of Nick Adams' character is transcribed as "Glen" instead of "Glenn."

References

This is a list of references for Art Adams' Creature Features. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

  1. "Art Adams' Creature Features". Dark Horse Comics. Retrieved 18 July 2024.

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