THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN NEMO
Episode 4 / "DR. NEPTUNE'S SEA MONSTERS"
Walt Disney's WORLD OF ADVENTURE ended with the 3rd quarterly issue. Apparently, a 4th episode of The Adventures Of CAPTAIN NEMO had been produced at the time, and right on schedule (3 months later), it turned up as
a back-up feature in-- of all things-- a one-shot adaptation of "THE HORSE WITHOUT A HEAD", a TV-movie made for Walt Disney's WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR series.
2 minor changes set this one off from the previous episodes. The word balloons have changed from rectangular to having rounded edges (like most "normal" word balloons), and, Dan Spiegle used no less than 4 "vertical" panels, something he'd only done once before (in episode 2).
Interestingly enough, the plot element about a scientist creating giant animals was also used in the 1961 Charles H. Schneer / Ray Harryhausen adaptation of Jules Verne's "THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND". It was most definitely NOT part of the original Verne novel!
Walt Disney's THE HORSE WITHOUT A HEAD [1] /
Cover by GEORGE WILSON (??) (January 1964)
story by Gaylord DuBois (??) / art by DAN SPIEGLE
Copyright (C) Walt Disney Productions
Cover scan from the GCD site
Raw scans of the story from the Nemo Nautilus site
Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa
Special thanks to Cory Gross for his blog article,
Jonathan Leslie for the scans of the story
& Patrick Ford for possible writer & cover artist identification.
For More:
Read about Dan Spiegle at Wikipedia
Read about Dan Spiegle at Comic Book Resources
Read an interview with Dan Spiegle at the Dan Gheno site
See the 20,000 LEAGUES overview!
Read the Jesse Marsh 20,000 LEAGUES adaptation!
Read the Frank Thorne 20,000 LEAGUES adaptation!
Read the Wally Wood 20,000 LEAGUES parody!
Read the Jack Kirby 20,000 LEAGUES parody!
Read the Dan Spiegle CAPTAIN NEMO series!
Read the Jim Fair CAPTAIN NEMO series!
Read the Bill Baker 20,000 LEAGUES adaptation!
Read the Gary Gianni 20,000 LEAGUES adaptation!
Read the Ernie Colon 20,000 LEAGUES adaptation!
See the JOURNEY overview!
See the MYSTERIOUS ISLAND overview!
Thank you so much for posting the Dan Spiegle "The Adventures of Captain Nemo"comic book series.I'm a huge fan of Dan's work as well as the Walt Disney film of "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea."
ReplyDelete"Dr.Neptune's Sea Monsters"would have made a terrific prequel to the Disney film.Naturally more material would have to be added in order to produce a 2 hour film.
I would have loved to have seen all of the creatures(as well as the plants)done via stop~motion animation by Willis O'Brien and/or Ray Harryhausen.I can only imagine that with O'Bie & Ray working with Walt that this could have been a awesome live action adventure film in the hands of these legendary gentlemen.
Dr.Neptune's giant creatures certainly put me in mind of the marvelous Charles Schneer/Ray Harryhausen film "Mysterious Island."In that film Captain Nemo attempts to solve the challenge of starvation by performing experiments on common creatures and vastly increasing their size. Ray wanted to animate a carnivorous plant for that movie but time and budget would not allow for it.
Dr.Neptune's living guard plants in this comic would have allowed Ray to finally do a stop~motion plant which is something he never was able to get around to for any of his films.