In case you haven't noticed, I've already featured Captain Blood as a Forgotten Book twice (HERE and HERE). There's a good reason for that. It's one of my top five favorite books. (Red Harvest, of course, is No. 1, with Shogun, Tai-Pan, Breakast of Champions and this one rounding out the five in fluctuating order.)
But this is a Captain Blood I'd never seen before. Fast Fiction, making it's debut in 1949, was comic book competitor of Classics Illustrated, which started two years earlier. Fast Fiction #2 featured this 45-page adaptation of Captain Blood, and was reprinted in 1950 under the new title of Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated. What follows is a scanned copy of the reprint, posted to comicbookplus by a jolly buccaneer called "staunton." The art is by Henry Kiefer, who also did many of the early Classic Illustrateds.
I'll admit it's no substitute for the novel, or the Errol Flynn flick, but it's still Captain Blood, and deserves to be looked at. NOTE: Though the covers and title page say "Raphael," it should read "Rafael." Must have irked Sabatini. He kicked the bucket not long after it was published.
2 comments:
My goodness. Not a bad adaptation, but as you say not as good as the book (if I remember rightly, it's been many decades since I read it the one and only time).
I wonder why all these old comics had poor color registration. Too bad, because it's well drawn and the story is fine.
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