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Logan's Run 1 |
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Logan's Run 1 Modern |
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CGC |
| Cert #: |
3922900013
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Owner Comments
Logan's Run hit the theaters in June of 1976, and the first issue of the comic book adaptation hit the newsstands less than four months later (despite the 1977 publication date, this issue went on sale in mid-October of the previous year). If all of this had happened a year later, it's likely the mini-series would have been preceded by an issue of Marvel Super Special, but Marvel wasn't quite ready for such things.
Like the rest of the original five issues that adapt the film, the art here is courtesy of the late, inimitable George Pérez, who said that he tried to reflect the film's aesthetic in his style. Sometimes that works better than others, although the paper quality -- and overall print quality -- of late-70s Marvels doesn't provide many favors. Logan's Run, the film, was briefly viewed as near the pinnacle of special effects, until Star Wars came out and instantly made it look as dated as something out of the late 1950s. So perhaps it's only fitting that this book suffers in places from blurred lines and blotchy color that would have been unthinkable in a book published not all that many years later.
Gerry Conway was the writer for this issue. There's a sort of letter from him to the readers in here, where he talks about his love for Nolan's work and how he's pleased and honored to be able to write for the adaptation. Nevertheless, this would be the only issue of the run he would work on.
The back cover offers an advertisement for Ideal's Evel Knieval Stunt Cycle toy line. These were some of the most iconic toys of the 1970s and one of the most successful toy lines in history. Ideal claims to have sold over $125 million of these toys, produced between 1972 and 1977. The basic idea behind these toys was that the vehicles contained a little gyro motor. You set the vehicle -- the Stunt Bike, for example -- in the plastic Energizer and powered up the gyro with the Energizer's hand crack, and the bike would zoom off to face whatever death-defying stunts awaited it (or fall over unceremoniously, but that's how things go in toy land). Ideal's real stroke of genius was that all the toys in the line were compatible with the same Energizers.
They were genuinely exciting toys, and better quality sculpts than you'd expect from 1970s plastic (although Ideal did cheapen production quality with each generation of retooling, naturally). This advertisement, on the other hand, is really boring, and makes them look like they're just static miniatures. It was a very strange design decision on the part of Ideal. I wonder if they reconsidered it later...
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Logan's Run 2 |
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Logan's Run 2 Modern |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0137764011
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Owner Comments
David Kraft took over writing here, and would remain in that role for the remainder of the film adaptation issues.
There's not a lot to say about these issues, which follow the screenplay pretty successfully. That works better in some places than in others. After all, Logan's Run -- the film -- has its share of padding, and the faithful adaptation doesn't really do anything to disguise that. In the coming years, Marvel would largely settle on adapting feature films into three-volume mini-series rather than five, and I think that worked out for the best all around. But it does mean we get more George Pérez artwork this way, I suppose.
On the back cover, we're revisiting those Evel Knievel toys from Ideal from last issue, but with an entirely new approach to advertising them. It seems that Ideal did reconsider taking such a boring, anodyne approach to their toys. It also serves to highlight the Super Jet Cycle, 1976's addition to the toy line. The ad shows the large red pods mounted to the back of that motorcycle model; these contained a flint striker and a spinning wheel powered by the gyro. Through the magic of this technology, when the Super Jet Cycle launched out of the Energizer, it left trails of sparks in its wake! Unlike a lot of sparking toys (Transformers, I'm looking at you here), it was even possible to replace the flints on these once they wore down.
Eventually, Evel Knievel-mania died down, and Ideal wrapped things up for this toy line in 1977, although boxes were likely available in stores for some time afterward. These days, mint-in-box or otherwise high grade examples of the line do pretty well in the collectible toy circuit.
Old case.
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Logan's Run 3 |
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Logan's Run 3 Modern |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0140238001
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Owner Comments
The back cover for this issue and the following is an advertisement for the American Seed Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. American Seed ran an operation where they mailed seed packets to aspiring child entrepreneurs, who were then supposed to sell those seeds to their friends and neighbors, and send their proceeds back to the company in exchange for various prizes (or pass on the prizes and just keep one-third of their gross sales). Although this business model evidently lasted for over 60 years, eventually what Time described as "childhood corruption" doomed the company -- kids simply took the money and ran. By 1981, they were losing $600,000 a year to financially untrustworthy children!
Although there is a later American Seed Company in Spring Grove, about 40 miles down US 30 from Lancaster, it is apparently unrelated. The mail-order American Seed didn't make it out of 1981 and closed its doors, and its seed packets, forever.
Old case.
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Logan's Run 4 |
| Item: |
Logan's Run 4 Modern |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0140238002
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Owner Comments
Old case.
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Logan's Run 5 |
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Logan's Run 5 Modern |
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CGC |
| Cert #: |
1228421016
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Owner Comments
This was the last of the 7 books to join my collection. And so I'd like to give a special shout-out to forum member Rob C., who was kind enough to part with this copy from his personal collection to complete this run.
This issue and #6 share the same back cover advertisement for fishing equipment from Niresk Discount Sales. Niresk (under several names) was run by Robert and Bernice Stone Kahn, who had previously operated a radio advertising agency back in the 1940s. Niresk's business model was pretty straightforward. They bought low-budget stuff -- everything from fishing rods to dolls to small kitchen appliances -- from knock-off-quality manufacturers, then sold them at a markup via mail-order advertisements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they weren't always entirely ethical about this process, and were the subjects of at least a handful of FTC lawsuits for deceptive trade practices, especially throughout the 1960s (vastly inflating the "retail price" of their goods, hawking chrome-plated forks as silver, and so forth).
In any case, these 1977 ads were likely near the end of the run for Niresk, although I can't find any conclusive information about when they went out of business.
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Logan's Run 6 |
| Item: |
Logan's Run 6 Modern |
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CGC |
| Cert #: |
2000073016
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Owner Comments
What a strange book.
Issue #5 concluded the comic adaptation of the film adaptation of William F. Nolan's novel (whew!), but Marvel decided they had a hot thing on their hands, and wanted to continue the story beyond the movie's conclusion. However, that reach exceeded their grasp. As the book's editorial statement says, "...tight deadlines -- brought on by further contractual negotiations with Hollywood -- made us limit ourselves this issue to a twelve-page epilogue..."
John Warner takes over writing duties for these post-film issues, and it quickly becomes clear that he's familiar with the original novel, and willing to introduce elements that were discarded from the film adaptation. More on that with issue #7. In the meantime, the Logan's Run story here isn't exactly bad, and largely serves as setup for storylines that would presumably have been explored in an ongoing series. The people lack any leadership; can they turn to the Sandmen, who are now symbols of death and oppression? The broken domes are allowing rain to begin to flood parts of the City. An army of feral children is beginning to assemble. Can Logan 5 get a backup computer working to fix everything? Not everything works quite as well as I think Warner would have liked, and the entire bit about reversing the polarity of Carousel to levitate into the undercity is definitely not the book's (nor the series') finest hour.
In order to pad that twelve-page story out to the length of a standard comic book, they arbitrarily inserted a story about Thanos and Drax (here, called only the Destroyer). In this backup feature, Thanos decided to be arbitrarily mean to an already set-upon planet, by crushing its Final Flower beneath his boot to cause planetary-scale despair. On the way to his flower stomping, he throws a couple of pilgrims off a cliff. Drax, overcome with memories of his own family, saves them instead of the flower. They are... not particularly grateful.
It's a pretty good story, especially for early on in Thanos's character development. But Drax is sort of a mess here. His origins in this story don't match up well with his origin stories elsewhere; not even his original name! I suppose there's an argument to be made that this Destroyer -- Art Sampson -- is a different character than Drax -- originally Arthur Douglas. But no one really seems to entertain that possibility. It's just another bit of "early installment weirdness". If you want to read it in a more accessible source, "The Final Flower!" was reprinted in 2013's Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos TPB, the 2013 FCBD Infinity book, and True Believers: Thanos the First #1 (2018). "The Final Flower!" has been deemed by collectors to be the "first solo Thanos story". Regardless, people seem to care about that designation, including CGC. Mostly, that just serves to push the market value up.
Also, unfortunately for these last two books, Tom Sutton -- perhaps best known for Vampirella and Planet of the Apes -- replaced George Pérez for interior art. There's nothing at all wrong with Sutton's work; he was a skilled artist with a developed style and a large, well-deserved body of work. But in my opinion, at least, it doesn't quite fit here. It certainly doesn't hew as closely to the film as Pérez's pencils did. But since this issue sees the story moving beyond the film, maybe that was intended.
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Logan's Run 7 |
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Logan's Run 7 Modern |
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CGC |
| Cert #: |
4112890015
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Owner Comments
This wasn't supposed to be the end.
Logan discovers hints that the basement computer may have been sabotaged, a plot element that was never able to be revisited. But for now, there are more pressing concerns. The Cubs -- the army of feral children we were warned of in issue #6 -- make a largely successful assault on the remains of the City in this issue. Fellow ex-Sandmen Modar-9 and Priest-7 are obviously being worked up into ongoing antagonists as well.
In order to move beyond the film, Warner starts to lean more heavily on elements from the novels here. The novel is very tonally different from the film, and so some of these introductions feel very strange. I wonder how far this might have gone had Warner been given enough time to continue. Would we have eventually visited a space station at Mars? For now, though, we see the youth-only super-drug Muscle, along with a re-introduction of the novel's Guns -- sidearms loaded with a collection of weird bullets that each did something different. To explain their absence from the film, they're presented here as having been retired from use on account of being horribly impractical. Awesome, but impractical. Still, Logan had one stashed away. The book ends on a cliffhanger related to the fate of that Gun. Will Priest turn it against our hero?
We'll never know. The editorial in #6 may have talked about a full-length story being delayed by "contractual negotiations with Hollywood", but they probably should have been delayed longer. As it turns out, Marvel's deal with MGM was only valid for an adaptation of the film itself, not for any continued stories or other elements of Nolan's books. And so, the ongoing story of Logan forever ends here, defeated not by the Cubs, nor traitorous fellow Sandmen, nor the computer's unknown saboteur...
...but by intellectual property lawyers.
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