King Kong (Gold Key)

    (Gold Key, 1968)
™ and ©1968 Merian C. Cooper

Perhaps the seminal monstrous creature film, the 1933 movie of Merian Cooper’s book, King Kong, remains a timeless example of the public’s need to be frightened. Thirty-five years later in 1968, Gold Key published a 64-page adaptation of the classic movie. Gold Key, (the comic printing arm of Western Publishing Company), was well known for adapting popular television shows like Star Trek and Man from U.N.C.L.E. for comics.

The artist, Alberto Giolitti, lived in Rome and mailed his pages back to the United States at a time when living in New York was considered a prerequisite for working in comics. He illustrated Gold Key’s Star Trek series without actually having seen the show, but presumably he had seen King Kong. His depictions of Skull Island and its fantastic denizens are balanced by his equally impressive representation of 1930s New York in this tragic tale of a monster and his impossible love.

— George Haberberger

		Notes	Writer	Artist
	#1 Date:  9/1/1968 Cover Price:  $0.25 NM Guide:  $58.00 No copies available	Adapts 1932 film		Alberto Giolitti
	#1 Variation A Date:  12/1/1976 Cover Price:  $1.00 NM Guide:  $1.00 No copies available	Whitman Variant; Treasury size		Alberto Giolitti