I started building towards this topic a little over two years ago. Regular readers know the struggle, but we've finally wrangled the beast back around this way...
One of Jack Kirby's many great concepts was the inception of the Inhumans (and similarly the Eternals & Deviants). Highly advanced alien races experimenting on emerging Humanity to see what they can make from the raw clay of Man. (the species, not the sex)
In 1975, over at Gold Key Comics, a new caveman comic crawled up on the shore - Don Glut and Jesse Santos teamed up like peanut butter & chocolate and brought us Tragg and the Sky Gods. Engaging the same basic concepts, they didn't jump ahead thousands of years to see the results. Instead, they told the tale of the new Humans resulting from their experiments, and their interactions with the primitive world of cavemen and dinosaurs. (It's comics, not science)
After two issues, they switched to painted covers. Still Jesse Santos and still looking mighty fine, but i really prefer the psychedelia infused feel of his inks. Here's the other drawn-not-painted cover -
Tragg only had 8 issues, plus a Gold Key Spotlight comic. Some will tell you that there's also that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor, but that's a single panel lacking even name designations, so it's a cameo at most. That's not a whole lot of comics, but they were fairly densely packed. The first issue has 25 pages of story - let's ago ahead and dive in rather than have me try to break things down for you...
Let me pause to say how much i enjoy the way Don & Jesse play together. Beyond Tragg, they also teamed for the aforementioned Dr. Spektor, and for Dagar The Invincible, too, along with a smattering of Mystery tales.
I rather thought that we'd have covered some of them by now, but we'll get there.
Meanwhile, let's cover the rest of this series, shall we?
Here are Jesse's painted covers for the run of Tragg -
...and, what the heck - here's the cover to that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor that has the single panel in it. Just because...
I expect we'll be back to check on Tragg and Lorn's progress. But i also expected we'd be here two years ago...
One of Jack Kirby's many great concepts was the inception of the Inhumans (and similarly the Eternals & Deviants). Highly advanced alien races experimenting on emerging Humanity to see what they can make from the raw clay of Man. (the species, not the sex)
In 1975, over at Gold Key Comics, a new caveman comic crawled up on the shore - Don Glut and Jesse Santos teamed up like peanut butter & chocolate and brought us Tragg and the Sky Gods. Engaging the same basic concepts, they didn't jump ahead thousands of years to see the results. Instead, they told the tale of the new Humans resulting from their experiments, and their interactions with the primitive world of cavemen and dinosaurs. (It's comics, not science)
After two issues, they switched to painted covers. Still Jesse Santos and still looking mighty fine, but i really prefer the psychedelia infused feel of his inks. Here's the other drawn-not-painted cover -
Tragg only had 8 issues, plus a Gold Key Spotlight comic. Some will tell you that there's also that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor, but that's a single panel lacking even name designations, so it's a cameo at most. That's not a whole lot of comics, but they were fairly densely packed. The first issue has 25 pages of story - let's ago ahead and dive in rather than have me try to break things down for you...
Let me pause to say how much i enjoy the way Don & Jesse play together. Beyond Tragg, they also teamed for the aforementioned Dr. Spektor, and for Dagar The Invincible, too, along with a smattering of Mystery tales.
I rather thought that we'd have covered some of them by now, but we'll get there.
Meanwhile, let's cover the rest of this series, shall we?
Here are Jesse's painted covers for the run of Tragg -
...and, what the heck - here's the cover to that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor that has the single panel in it. Just because...
I expect we'll be back to check on Tragg and Lorn's progress. But i also expected we'd be here two years ago...
page art by Jesse Santos for Tragg And The Sky Gods #1 (plus covers) (1975)
Fantastic stuff! I don't why, but at some point in the 80's I traded off much of my Gold Key stuff (Turok was the exception) and Tragg was prominent. I still remember seeing it on the stands for the first time when stuff like this from Gold Key was relatively rare. I was into Chariots of the Gods back when I was a younger man and Tragg was right in that wheelhouse obviously. Jesse Santos is much overlooked! Thanks for the memories.
ReplyDeleteI meant to mention Von Daniken and the culture of the times. Thanks for pointing at the Chariots.
ReplyDeleteJesse Santos is WAY underlooked for my money. And i can't believe it's taken this long to start running his stuff. Granted, i meant to do so two years ago when i started the caveman series, but still...
We'll be seeing more, hopefully soon. I pulled out a bunch of the old Mystery Comics Digests and Dagar The Invincible to mine for his works.