Land of the Giants Complete Series

by Robert Greenberger

Imagine if you will television in the 1960s. Bright, prismatic programming was sought in order to sell these newfangled color television sets. What could be more colorful than science fiction and a canny producer named Irwin Allen capitalized on the interest in the space age with one program after another, becoming one of the most commercially successful producers during the decade. Beginning with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, he populated many hours of prime time with his shows. The fourth and final show during this stretch was Land of the Giants.

From 1968 through 1970, the show featured the crew of the Spindrift, a sub-orbital transport spaceship that goes off course between Los Angeles and London and winds up crash-landing on a world populated by humans twelve times their size. Throughout the 51 episodes, the humans fought to survive and repair their craft without becoming captives of the repressive society that may or may not have designs on Earth. The show was popular enough to spawn a variety of merchandise including a short-lived comic series from Gold Key.

This January, Hermes Press is collecting the run in a single hardcover volume as part of their series of titles collecting the Irwin Allen-related comics. Hermes’ publisher, Daniel Herman told me, “All these books were TV tie-ins but they held up well on their own. They were consistently well written and plotted and the storytelling in these books was first rate. I’m talking storytelling here, not illustration. As you know Western used very good storytellers, Alex Toth, Russ Manning, Dan Siegel, Don Heck, Mike Sekowsky, George Tuska, Alberto Giolitti (and his shop), and Tom Gill (among others).”

Credits for the Gold Key books tend to require sleuthing and Herman says the art was produced by Gill, best known today as the long-running artist on The Lone Ranger comic books. “We know Tom Gill did the art because as a fan of Gill’s I can tell just by looking at it. I have confirmed this as well. As far as the writing is concerned, it’s the usual suspects at Western Publishing,” Herman states. “Gill was a great storyteller with a simple, direct, fluid style of drawing. He could ‘shoot,’ pace, and tell a story as well as any of the talented artists in the Silver Age.”

The stable of Whitman/Gold Key writers was led by the incredibly prolific Paul S. Newman, who no doubt did at least some of this work.

The five books have been reconstructed with new colors that “pop and look better than the original books”. At 208 pages, the hardcover will have a 20-page section with supplementary material including “blueprints, set designs, behind-the-scenes photos, advertising art, paintings, toy designs, toys and other associated material. We also have all the covers and several essays about the show with a short bio of Tom Gill.

“You might say it’s a Land-of-the-Giants-a-thon in a book. Taken in a vacuum, without knowledge of the show (which is impossible if you grew up in the ’60s or watch re-run TV) the stories hold up as does the concept. We also designed a new cover using a publicity photo which shows all the characters.”

The imaginative concept translated well to comics and is most certainly recommended for your consideration.

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Land of the Giants Complete Series HC

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