Last October, we took a look at the first issue of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction — Marvel Comics’ latest (as of 1974), and, as things turned out, last (as of 2025) attempt to produce an SF anthology comic adapting well-known short stories and novels in the genre. As I related in that earlier post, my younger self definitely enjoyed that premiere offering, but still somehow ended up not buying another issue until the August, 1975 release of the subject of today’s post. Whether the magazine had been having distribution problems in my area in the ten-month interval between UWoSF #1 and #6, or I simply passed on #2 through #5 for reasons now forgotten, I’m glad that the stars aligned for me to buy this one.
Whatever my reservations might have been regarding the four preceding issues (assuming I ever even saw them), I feel certain that my picking up Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #6 was virtually a no-brainer, given that its cover promoted Marvel’s adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s novella “Behold the Man”. Originally published in the September, 1966 issue of New Worlds (a British SF magazine edited by Moorcock himself), the story had gone on to win the 1967 Nebula Award for Best Novella; my younger self had encountered it a few years later in the anthology Nebula Award Stories Three, and had been completely knocked out by it. (For the record, Moorcock later expanded the original story into a full-length novel, published in 1969, which to this day I still haven’t read; given that the author himself reportedly considers the shorter version to be the superior one, I probably never will.)
If you’re already familiar with the story, you’ll recognize that Frank Brunner’s painted cover for UWoSF #6 is, shall we say, somewhat misleading, as it suggests that the main character is a space traveler of some sort. That’s not at all accurate as regards Moorcock’s narrative; still, in terms of getting across the basic idea of a science-fictional take on the Passion of Christ, it gets the job done — and, of course, it’s a fine illustration, all on its own.
Before getting into the adaptation itself, however, we have some other content to review first — beginning with the inside front cover, which offers yet another familiar subject given a new, SF-themed context — though in this instance, the subject is drawn from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, rather than from the New Testament:
The artist of this frontispiece, Pat Broderick, was at this time twenty-one years of age, and had been in the business for roughly a year and a half, having started out doing spot illustrations and short filler strips for DC Comics (mostly for their “100-Page Super-Spectacular” titles) as well as serving as one of the otherwise anonymous “Crusty Bunkers” operating out of Neal Adams and Dick Giordano’s Continuity Associates studio. More recently, he’d drawn some stories for the short-lived publisher Atlas/Seaboard, working on such titles as Planet of Vampires and Phoenix, prior to landing his first major Marvel assignments, a pair of “Iron Fist” stories for Marvel Premiere. In the next few years, he’d move on to regular, extended gigs on Captain Marvel and Micronauts for the publisher.
Following the issue’s table of contents is an editorial by Roy Thomas that, perhaps wisely, attempts to get out ahead of any criticism of “Behold the Man” on religious grounds by suggesting that if a prospective reader suspects that a speculative treatment of the subject of Jesus Christ is likely to offend them, they should just skip it, and save themselves an unpleasant experience; it’s worth reading in full, I think:
One point made above by Thomas in regards to “Behold the Man” is that it appears here as part of an issue of UWoSF whose overall theme is “alternate worlds and futures, not necessarily our own”. That theme is also made explicit in the issue’s framing sequence, written by Thomas and illustrated by Gene Colan and Dan Adkins, which begins immediately following the editorial:
As you may recall, every issue of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction is “hosted” by Mr. Tyme — a shopkeeper trading in “slow glass” (a concept adapted from the fiction of SF author Bob Shaw). All of Tyme’s previous appearances seemed to have been set in the present day (there wee no indications otherwise, at least), but this one takes place some six years prior to UWoSF #6’s publication date. As things will turn out, that fact is not at all incidental to this issue’s theme… though we won’t learn just how or why until much later, in the “Epilogue” that concludes both the framing sequence and the issue.
Marvel’s adaptation of Moorcock’s novella — scripted by Doug Moench and illustrated by Alex Niño — is on the whole very faithful to the original text. One notable point of departure, however, is the story’s actual beginning, where the adaptation skips the first three paragraphs to lead instead with the fourth. I suspect the reason for this omission is that those introductory paragraphs are in a sense a giant spoiler regarding the main thing that “happens” in the story; clearly, Moorcock didn’t consider that factor to be a bug, and may have even thought of it as a feature. Since this is a presentation and discussion of Marvel’s version of the narrative, rather than of the author’s original, I’m going to defer to the adapters’ creative choices and not quote those three paragraphs in the blog post itself; however, if you’d like to read them, either now or later, you can find them at this link.
The narrative structure we see established in these opening pages, with regular shifts between the “present” of the story’s protagonist Karl Glogauer (which is actually the remote historical past) and his “past” (the modern era), regularly punctuated by quoted passages from the Bible (or, in one instance, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung) will be maintained throughout the adaptation’s twenty-three pages.
I’m going to dock Moorcock a couple of plausibility points here, as it’s just about impossible to believe that Karl Glogauer, even as addled by the after-effects of his time trip as he seems to be in this scene, wouldn’t be well aware that his dad’s first name has been closely associated with Jesus of Nazareth ever since the composition of the Gospel of Matthew (see chapter 1, verses 18-23). As we’ll see more clearly as the narrative progresses, Glogauer has been obsessed with the story of Christ for years, and should be readily familiar with such details.
Returning to the “present”, the narrative now tells how John the Baptist left the Essenes for a month, during which time Karl became acclimated to their community’s lifestyle, earning his place by helping to tend goats, and participating in their religious rituals, which included prayer, fasting, and mortification of the flesh. But unlike the others, “who were undoubtedly insane“, he generally didn’t share their hallucinations. “He rarely heard God, and only once thought he saw an archangel with wings of fire.”
“The actuality — if it matters,” Monica had replied. “Jesus was a Jewish troublemaker organizing a revolt against the Romans. He was crucified for his pains. That’s all we know.” When Karl had responded by objecting that a great religion couldn’t have begun that simply, Monica had retorted, “When people need one, they’ll make a great religion out of anything… It’s all a lie. Just a lie, Karl.” The next day, we’re told, she’d sent him a letter which “ripped the Christ myth to shreds. He’d crumpled it until his knuckles turned white.”
(UPDATE, 8/13/25: The following page was inadvertently left out of the original version of this post. My thanks to reader patr100 for bringing my attention to this matter.)
This seems to be a good place to pause and talk a little about Alex Niño’s contribution to this adaptation. To my mind, the artist’s idiosyncratic, impressionistic style is perfectly suited to this material. Nothing is glamorized or otherwise idealized, but nothing is especially naturalistic looking, either. This approach allows Niño’s visualization of all the story’s varied settings — past and present, real and hallucinatory — to be equally convincing.
Returning to the narrative, we’re informed that “the madman” — i.e., Karl Glogauer — wandered out of the wilderness and into an unnamed town, where he asked everyone (mostly using words they couldn’t understand) where he could find “Jesus” or “Nazareth”. Eventually, some Roman soldiers pointed him in the proper direction…
The brief, almost perfunctory explanation of how Karl Glogauer came to take a trip to the first century C.E. that’s given above is as detailed an account as we ever get, either in Moorcock’s original story or in Marvel’s adaptation. (I can’t speak to how the novel handles the same material, not having read it). This is pretty much in keeping with the approach to familiar SF tropes often taken by many of the “New Wave” science-fiction authors of the 1960s and 1970s (a group that, in addition to Moorcock, included Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. LeGuin), who tended not to be quite as interested in the “science” part of “science fiction” as many authors of an earlier generation had been.
Reading the above sequence about a Christ-themed “rock-opera” back in 1975, it was just about impossible not to have Jesus Christ Superstar come to mind (a fact I suspect still holds true for readers in 2025, as well). So it’s worth noting that Moorcock’s novella first came out in 1966, four years prior to the release of the original JCS concept album — and, for that matter, five years before the release of the Who’s Tommy, which is often cited as the first full-fledged rock opera. Which isn’t to say that Moorcock necessarily invented the term out of his own head (for the record, the actual phrase he used in the novella was “pop-opera”) — according to Wikipedia, Frank Zappa was talking about writing a rock or “teenage” opera as early as 1963 — but the author does appear to have been at least somewhat prescient, especially about the use of this new musical form to present the story of Jesus.
This would have been a natural place for Moorcock to have dropped in the Biblical passage that’s the source of the story’s title, which is nowhere else explained. But he didn’t, and Moench’s script follows in its footsteps; so, you either get the reference, or you don’t.
As longtime regular readers know, your humble blogger was raised as a conservative Southern Baptist; and so, some of you may wonder whether my younger self was offended by this story, either in its original prose form (which I probably read a couple of years prior to picking up UWoSF #6) or in Marvel’s exceptionally well-crafted, as well as faithful, adaptation. In a word: no. In my personal understanding of my faith tradition (one which I admit wasn’t, and still isn’t, shared by all of its adherents), fiction writers and other creators who didn’t themselves believe that Jesus was divine couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be expected to portray him as such. I thought they were wrong in their non-belief, of course, but that didn’t mean they were to be seen as enemies, or that a story such as this one represented an “attack” on my faith, let alone on my God. (Lest anyone worry that I’m going to strain my arm here patting myself on the back for how enlightened I was, I should acknowledge that I also thought that all non-believers were almost certainly damned to eternal perdition if they didn’t change their ways — not because they were inherently any more wicked than I was, but simply because they hadn’t [yet] acquired the necessary Get Out of Hell Free card in the same way I had, by accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. My present-day self may shudder at the sheer presumption of such an attitude, but fifty years ago — freshly graduated from my Baptist high school, and about to begin my four-year sojourn at the local Baptist college — that’s what I sincerely believed.)
And so, while I couldn’t credit the premise of the story as being the least bit plausible — not even on its own fantastic terms — I could still enjoy it for the brilliant time-travel paradox story that it was, as well as be moved by the tragic fate of Karl Glogauer. In later years, naturally, I’d be better able to appreciate what what Moorcock had to say about how the psychological needs of a would-be leader can converge with those of a mass of people ready and willing to be led, with the result being the rise of a messiah… or a demagogue.
In any event, regardless of one’s religious perspective, “Behold the Man” — in whatever version — is a hard act to follow. Which may be one reason why UWoSF editor Roy Thomas drops in an illustrated text article immediately after it, rather than proceeding directly to the next of the magazine’s three remaining comics stories. “Thru a Glass Slowly” is a piece by none other than the creator of the “slow glass” concept himself, Bob Shaw, who (after a brief biographical note) goes on to explore the speculative physics of how such a substance might actually be made to work in the real world. Accompanied by technical illustrations by Gary Brodsky and Brian Moore (see example at right), it represents an approach to the “science” of science fiction which (probably unintentionally on editor Thomas’ part) comes across as being a full 180° away from Michael Moorcock’s evident lack of interest in the mechanics of Sir James Headington’s time machine in “Behold the Man”.
Next up is “Old Soldier”, a story both written and illustrated by Bruce Jones:
Bruce Jones had first broken into the comics business in 1969, where his work appeared in the third and last issue of the short-lived black-and-white comic magazine Web of Horror alongside stories by Bernie Wrightson, Frank Brunner, and others; more recently, he’d placed a few stories with B&W comics publishers Warren and Skywald. “Old Soldier” was the fifth story of his to appear in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction; as with this current entry, he’d drawn as well as scripted all but one of those earlier strips.
Scott’s job was in fact quite dangerous, as we’ll learn on the next page… though it wasn’t the more obvious kind of physical dangers that would prove his undoing in the end…
Poor “old” Scott attempted to go back to his old job of planet-clearing for the Federation, only to be told it was completely out of the question. Not having trained for any other field of endeavor, and unable to find other work, he reluctantly took a job as a custodian. Life went on…
Yes, it’s a twist ending — one seemingly right out of the 1950s E.C. comics which seem to have been one of Jones’ strongest influences, both as a writer and as an artist. In later years, along with contributing his writing talents to such color comics series as Ka-Zar the Savage, Conan the Barbarian, and Incredible Hulk, Jones would carry on the E.C. tradition not only through his standalone short-story work for Warren’s black-and-white titles, but by writing two color anthology titles in the same vein, Alien Worlds and Twisted Tales.
We come now to our third story, “Mind Games” — which, like its immediate predecessor, was written and drawn by a single creator, John Allison:
Allison (whom, we should note, shouldn’t be confused with another comics creator of the same name who wasn’t yet born when this story was published) had one prior credit in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction — issue #5’s “Half Life”, which, like “Mind Games”, he’d both written and drawn, but which, unlike it, had previously appeared in the third issue of the Canadian black-and-white comic Orb Magazine, where it ran next to early work by Allison’s fellow Canucks Ken Steacy and Gene Day, among others.
Sgt. McKee tells Norm how their outfit ultimately managed to scrape through thanks to the arrival of air power — though not before Norm had broken cover, standing up and screaming about repentance, and drawing laser fire that cut through his shoulder…
Another twist ending — although, appropriate to the story’s antiwar theme, it’s a much more downbeat one.
Per remarks made by Allison for a UWoSF retrospective published in Back Issue #20 (Jan., 2006), Roy Thomas had given him the go-ahead to do another story; unfortunately, he was only half-way done with it when the news came that the magazine had been cancelled. Following one more job — the script for an adaptation of James Tiptree Jr.’s SF short story “The Man Who Walked Home” for the first issue of another Canadian anthology comic, Andromeda — John Allison would leave comics for a career in the visual effects industry, where his credits would range from the 1980 TV series Cosmos to the 1999 film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Based just on the little work of his I’ve actually seen, I’d say that SFX’s gain was comics’ loss. (I’m especially impressed by some of his lighting effects, which I’m guessing were achieved with an airbrush [though I could easily be wrong about that].)
We come now to the last of our stories, “Visitation” by Don Glut and Ruben Yandoc (the latter of whose first name is unfortunately misspelled in the opening page’s credits line):
The professional backgrounds of this story’s writer and artist may be seen to parallel those of the creative team whose adaptation of “Behold the Man” led off this issue. Like Doug Moench, Don Glut had gotten his start writing multiple one-off stories for Warren’s black-and-white horror line; like Alex Niño, Ruben Yandoc had established himself in his native Philippines well before breaking into the American market via DC Comics’ “mystery” anthology titles. But while Glut would also follow Moench in eventually doing quite a bit of work for Marvel (including on such titles as Kull the Destroyer, Captain America, and Invaders), Yandoc’s non-DC output would prove to be minimal in comparison with Niño’s; in fact, of the 153 credits listed under his name at the Mike’s Amazing World of Comics web site, only six are for publishers other than DC.
It’s not hard to understand the thinking behind the decision to emphasize the buxom, raggedly-clad young woman in the splash panel above — still, it’s a creative choice that doesn’t really serve the storytelling very well, as it makes it more than likely that at least some readers will miss the much smaller-seeming spider-like flying object in the background — a story element which will prove to be a good bit more important to the narrative as it develops…
The three shepherds may have seen the mysterious object descend form the heavens, but they’re in no doubt that its origins must lie “in the damnable pits of Hell!!”
The strange visitor raises one hand “in the universal gesture of friendship”, but the men, fearing that the stranger intends to wield demonic powers against them, turn and go running back to their village. The visitor follows after them..
The visitor from beyond, moving at the slow pace dictated by the restrictions of their protective suit, takes some time to arrive at the village — naturally, by then the inhabitants have prepared a “welcome”…
Once the visitor is securely captured in the net, the townspeople proceed to club them into unconsciousness…
The wood piled around the stake is lit, and the flames begin to climb into the night…
Yet another twist ending, but one I suspect most readers could see coming, despite the modest misdirection offered by the visitors two extra “arms”.
Like the two stories preceding it, “Visitation” is a perfectly serviceable SF comic-book short story, professionally written and illustrated. But, also like them, it’s nowhere near being in the same weight class as “Behold the Man”, and can’t help but suffer in comparison with it. More than any other issue of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, this one feels heavily front-loaded.
Of course, we’re not quite done with the book yet, as we’re expected back at Mr. Tyme’s slow glass shop for the wrap-up of the Thomas-Colan-Adkins framing sequence. And just as the last panel of the “Prologue” previewed the first panel of “Behold the Man”, we find the last image of “Visitation” echoed in the first one of the “Epilogue”…
Commenting on our UWoSF #1 post last October, reader tomboughan suggested that by framing “Behold the Man” as taking place in an alternate timeline, Marvel had in a sense “changed the ending” of Moorcock’s story. I can certainly see where tom is coming from, and I’ll allow that such a framing might have been a conscious choice on the part of Roy Thomas — one made to put a little extra distance between the implications of Moorcock’s narrative and the belief systems of Marvel’s more conservative Christian readers. After all, in the end there’s nothing really “alternate” about any of the timelines portrayed in this issue’s stories; they’re all speculative in regards to what might have happened in the past or will happen in the future, but that’s not at all the same thing.
On the other hand, the world of Mr. Tyme itself clearly isn’t our world, given that in it, Neil Armstrong wasn’t the first man on the moon. So the fact that the events of “Behold the Man” represent an “alternate” timeline in that world doesn’t really imply anything about their status in our reality; rather, what’s just “some other continuum” to Mr. Tyme and his unnamed friend could be the very world all we readers live in. As far as I’m concerned, then, the alternate-worlds framing doesn’t dull the impact of “Behold the Man” very much, if it does at all. In the end, it’s probably best to remember what Roy Thomas wrote in his opening editorial: “…the name of the game is, after all, science fiction, not science fact.”
And speaking of Roy Thomas editorials — he had a second one in this issue. The following piece ran at the top of the letters column, “The Shape of Things That Came”, which itself closed out Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #6:
Cover art by Don Newton.
As I suspect will not be news to most of you reading this, the month of October, 1975 came and went with no sign of a seventh issue of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction… as did the next month, and the month after that. I’m sure that by the time 1976 rolled around, if not before, I’d given up the magazine for dead. And, in fact, I’d assumed that there had been no more issues of the magazine after that — a notion I only became disabused of a few years ago, when it came to my attention that Marvel had released a giant-sized “Special” issue of UWoKF in November of 1976, well over a year after the publication of the last “regular” issue of the magazine. This followed a pattern set by Marvel in regard to several of its earlier cancelled black-and-white titles — Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed, and so on — which had seen “Annual” editions released after their last regular issues.
Unlike those magazines, however, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction Special #1 wasn’t comprised of reprint material — at least, not entirely. Other than a black-and-white remix of an adaptation of Fredric Brown’s “Arena” that had initially appeared in UWoSF‘s color comic-book predecessor, Worlds Unknown, and a 4-page strip drawn as well as written by Archie Goodwin that had first run in Wally Wood’s prozine witzend back in 1966, the stories in the magazine hadn’t been seen before. Rather, they seemed to be drawn from those strips already “on the shelf” that Roy Thomas had mentioned back in his issue #6 letters-column piece — and, alas, they made for something of a hodgepodge. I suppose it was nice that the completed strips — which featured the talents of Alex Niño, Bruce Jones, and Ruben Yandoc, among others — finally did get published; but frankly, it’s small wonder that the magazine slipped back under the surface of the 1976 comics market having made barely a ripple — despite Roy Thomas still holding out hope in his opening editorial (you just knew there’d be one, didn’t you?), that maybe — just maybe — this last time would be different. “If enough of [you] UWOSF-philes come crawling out of the woodwork (no offense intended) to make this seventh and very special issue a success,” wrote the ever-optimistic Thomas, “the mag may just be back on regular bimonthly or quarterly frequency at some time in the near future.”
That didn’t happen, of course — though, somewhat ironically, if Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction had continued, it would probably have been without Roy Thomas’ direct involvement. As the editor himself went on to explain:
No, Marvel Comics was hardly done with trying to put out a successful science-fiction comic book — though, perversely, when it did finally hit the jackpot, it would do so with a property that owed a great deal to the “space opera” subgenre of SF that Roy Thomas been somewhat disparaging towards in his initial editorial for the magazine, way back in UWoSF #1. By most accounts, the Star Wars license wouldn’t have come to Marvel without the diligent efforts of Roy Thomas — so it’s pretty wild to consider that he might not have even been involved with the process if a magazine named Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction had never existed in the first place. But, while there’s much more to say about Roy Thomas, Marvel, and the road to Star Wars, we’ll have to set the topic aside for another post, coming a couple of years from now.
Moorcock’s story was written from a place of utter disbelief in Jesus Christ, and yet, ironically, the Bible verses and the crucixion imagery remain the most powerful aspects of the story.
On another note, on the last page of Bruce Jones’ story I see a standing figure in panel 5 which was swiped from Frank Frazetta’s Thun’da (reprinted a few years earlier by Russ Cochran) which Wally Wood also swiped in one of his Tower of Shadows stories.
Fantagraphics has indicated interest in publishing a collection of stories from UWoSF, so the missing issues 2-5 might be in your future. However, given copyright, I suspect the adaptions, such as in this issue, will be mostly absent.
Moorcock’s interaction with comics is fascinating. From writing them at the beginning and towards the end of his career, to being a major literary influence on many (mainly British) creators, through to lending his characters for others to use and adapt.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/97258-strange-bedfellows-marvel-and-fantagraphics-team-up-for-new-archival-line.html
Alan, recounting your own Southern Baptism upbringing in this post added more depth to this post. Thank you.
Plus: Alex Niño and the unlikely Star Wars adaptation that “saved” Marvel.
Strangely, though I doubt I could have expressed my reasons why nearly as well as you did, Alan, I was also not offended when I first read “Behold the Man.” I believe the only version I’ve ever read is the novel-length one, but I could be wrong about that. Honestly, despite the fact that I was definitely one of those people who got offended when others disrespected my faith, I think the only reason I gave Behold the Man a pass was because it was written by Michael Moorcock, of whom I was already a huge fan. I didn’t let Moorcock completely off the hook; I had more than a little trouble with the idea of the “real” Jesus as a drooling idiot, but otherwise, I seemed willing to him slide. I got a lot more upset a few years earlier when National Lampoon first published Neal Adams’ Son O’ God comics in 1972. Regardless, I read this when it came out in 75 and thought Moench and Nino did a beautiful job bringing the story to life in comic-form. I was always an Alex Nino fan and his work here is gorgeous.
As to the rest of the book, while I found the artwork of the other three stories to be excellent and above-par for the medium, I thought the stories too wordy and too confusing to follow. Ironic, considering that, as a writer myself, I’ve always been of the “why use one word when three or four will do” school of thought, but there you are. I do agree with you, Alan, that John Allison’s depiction of God was impressive.
It’s a shame that the timing of this book was so bad. Two years from then, when Star Wars had exploded all over our movie screens, a magazine like this might have found more of an audience. If only we had a time machine….or some slow glass…thanks, Alan!
I have known the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ personally and profoundly since childhood. From my perspective it is tragic for someone to be a churchgoer and to hear about Jesus, but to never have a genuine, life changing encounter with Him. Sadly, that is the experience of many, especially here in the western world where so many churches have deviated so severely from the 1st century Biblical model.
Neal Adams grew up Catholic, and his National Lampoon satire comics were a reaction against the religious experience of his childhood years. I personally find his Son-o-God strips to be intentionally offensive (which Lampoon tried to be in general), and do not have any of them in my collection. Neal never claimed to have had any supernatural experience of God. That would leave him with merely religious rhetoric and stories that appeared as fables to him, in regards to his formative years. Ironically, some of his earliest comics work appeared in Sunday Pix (Sunday school weekly), published by David C. Cook.
Alex Nino likewise grew up Catholic, the predominant religion in the Philippines. However, there are others, such as Nestor Redondo, who left the Catholic denomination when he became a born again believer in Jesus Christ. His conversion took place around 1983, and he produced some evangelical Christian comics material in the years that followed, until his passing in 1995.
In his later life Adams (at least) identified as Jewish. (I don’t know if he formally converted.) His second wife was Jewish and he was close to her family; particularly her mother, who got him involved in the cause of Jewish artists whose works had been stolen by the Reich.
Adams seemed to be a lifelong practitioner of what is known in Yiddish as Menschkeit: the theory and practice if trying to be a decent human being. In addition to that issue, he had been in the forefront of efforts to get DC to do right by Siegal & Shuster and to get Marvel to return Kirby’s original art.
(Perhaps Adams was also what Sam Warner said of James Cagney, a “professional againster.” The two conditions are strongly correlated, it seems, particularly in the Irish.)
That doesn’t always work out well as people end up being against something harmless/positive. Adams was an exception.
Neal Adams wasn’t Jewish. This is a common misconception. I have read interviews where he spoke of growing up Catholic (see the Neal Adams sketchbook, published by Vanguard circa 20 years ago).
https://www.jta.org/2022/05/02/obituaries/remembering-neal-adams-a-comic-book-legend-who-championed-holocaust-awareness
Son O’ God was written by, let me see, Sean Kelly, although Adams seems to have been cooperative enough. There was a piece where the writer (Kelly) recalls having to pitch his Catholic-bashing strips to a guy who looked like a big Irish cop…. (BTW, Adams also did a neat minicomic for a rock album, Who Will Save the World, by the Groundhogs.)
I used to own that Groundhogs album. It folded out at the bottom so the Neal Adams comics pages were even larger. I also had the Grand Funk album “All the Girls of the World Beware” with the Adams double page spread. All of these were in full color. He was working on one with Eric Burden & the Animals which fell through, though some of it was published in Marvel’s Epic Illustrated magazine in the early ’80s.
First time I’ve encountered any of these stories and art but very intriguing. Moorcock’s Elric novels were the only sword & sorcery books I ever purchased, back in the mid-80s. I wonder if his references to “pop-opera” were influenced by the Who’s song, “A Quick One (While He’s Away)” released on their 1966 album A Quick One, and which concluded with the repeated refrain “you are forgiven”. I first heard that when I saw their documentary film The Kids Are Alright in 1978 or so, and which made me a manic Who fan (I was already a latter-day Beatlemaniac and also much into the Rolling Stones, thus completing my conversion to the “Holy Trinity” of British Rock.
Anyhow, yeah, “Behold the Man” is the standout of this mag, but I also loved Bruce Jones’ art, notwithstanding his resorting to a swipe. Moorcock’s tale having the “real” Jesus turn out to be a hunchbacked developmentally disabled man-child did seem the very sort of thing to get the pitchforks and torches brigade to go on a rampage and I wonder if Marvel did get much vitriolic response from some readers despite his editorial exhortations to the exceedingly pious. In 1975, I hadn’t yet given much deep thought to religious beliefs. I wouldn’t have yet regarded myself as an atheist but I neither did I regard myself as a Christian, and so more agnostic in outlook, although I wasn’t yet aware of the term. A couple of years later, going through my dad’s collection of Playboy magazines, I found a 1965 issue that contained an interview with the Beatles in which they made reference to their own agnostic beliefs, which made sense to me at the time. I had read the bible, entirely on my own, but I’d also read Darwin’s Origin of Species and many other books on natural history, as well as Greek & Norse mythology. I’d also seen the film Chariots of the Gods, which seemed fascinating at the time, raising possibilities that aliens from other planets made significant contributions to our history and art, but which I’ve long since recognized as racist claptrap, based on the presumption that ancient non-white peoples could not possibly have built pyramids or other large-scale structures. It was a good touch that in this time-travel tale, our hero could go back in time but couldn’t return to his present. Of course, it is an old trope to have the protagonist go back in search of someone whom he happens to become over the course of the story, as with Ben Grimm becoming Blackbeard the Pirate in FF #5. The variation in Moorcock’s tale is that the person he was searching for didn’t live up to his expectations, so he “became” what he did expect to find.
As you mentioned, Nino’s art was very suitable to this story, with touches of Adams’ style “realism” along with more fanciful aspects. All the artists produced some fine work in this mag.
I own all of the Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction mags, and this was the last one (no. 6), though the one-off special came out the following year. The cover was promo-ed months earlier. I suspect Roy Thomas pushed it back from running in an earlier issue, so as the series closer it wouldn’t matter if there were any vitriolic response from readers or not, as the series had come to a close.
Of course, if there were a man named Joshua ben Josef, who, say, was a rabbi and carpenter, who was perceived as a political threat in this story, it wouldn’t work, the protagonist could not become the historic Jesus (because there already was one).
Now, if that were the case, it could become another story: “How I accidently turned the Historic Jesus into the Biblical Jesus by the act of observation,”
That might be even more conceptually interesting, but more difficult to write as effective fiction.
HI, Alan,
Remember this comic VERY well. Those black-and-white Marvel magazines, as you’ve noted in the past, had some terrific material.
Moench was hit or miss for me back then, but this time around I thought he delivered a terrific adaptation. I had enjoyed Alex Nino’s art on the “Captain Fear” feature in ADVENTURE, and his quirky style fit well with this is.
I am still a practicing Catholic (and maybe after enough practice I’ll get it right!), but I like to think that God knows what is REALLY in people’s art, and if appreciating this story for art is going to damn me – oh well. I found the concepts fascinating, and the presentation was stunning.
Oh, and I HAVE read the expanded version of BEHOLD THE MAN. From my perspective, it was awful. If you like the novella, best not to deal with the novel. (Among the added scenes: Karl has sex with Mary. Yeah, no.)
The other stories in this issue all paled in comparison – except for the last page of the Thomas-Colan framing sequence. THAT I remembered and that I found pretty cool, as it essentially turned the whole run on its head. Thomas’ patented brand of dramatic irony comes to the fore! (You can tell he was an English teacher.)
Thanks for revisiting this issue!
When I became a godfather in the early 2000s, I had to get a document from my pastor that I was a practicing Catholic. When the receptionist asked him about it, the Pastor replied, “Of course he is. He still hasn’t gotten it right yet.”
I skipped most of the Marvel magazines because I just never have gotten into black and white comic art, with Colleen Doran’s earliest A Distant Soil the only exception I can think of. I’ve also never read anything (this included) written by Moorcock and can’t identify anything he ever wrote even if threatened at gunpoint. Why am I responding then? Part of it is guaranteeing others’ comments showing up in m email since y’all are among the most erudite commenters out there. The other reason is Alan’s comments about his faith and how it didn’t really affect his enjoyment of fiction. I had a similar approach. I realized some years ago why I still read comics fifty years after starting is that I love heroic fiction. It’s also why I primarily have stayed with the Big Two almost exclusively. Image and the others have too many protagonists that are as much villains as their opponents. My faith also was about me and what I did and thought. A writer could explore something that was antithetical to that and it was just a story to me.
On the “rock opera” point and it’s influence. Jesus Christ Superstar album was released in 1970 and the stage play first opened in late 1971. Among those undoubtedly influenced was David Bowie, a keen reader of Sci-fi reflected in his music at the time and later on, with numerous sources including Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius (and also Heinlein)
Anyway, the JC Superstar /Moorcock influence was partly in the character of Ziggy Stardust, appearing around 72, a messiah like figure who eventually is killed by his own people (the kids) . The lyrics :
“The kids were just crass, he was the Nazz”
“The nazz” being a reference to The Nazarene”.
I read once that “the Nazz” was possibly early 70s slang for any charismatic/popular figure but not found any use of it, outside of that song.
The comedian Lord Buckley has a wonderful routine called “The Nazz.” Here’s a sample:
Well I’m gonna put a cat on you was the sweetest, gonest, wailingest cat that ever stomped on this sweet swingin’ sphere.
And they called this here cat…The Nazz. That was the cat’s name. He was a carpenter-kiddie.
Now The Nazz was the kind of a cat that come on so wild and so sweet and so strong and so with it that, when he laid it – wham! – it stayed the re. Naturally all the rest of the cats looked to see what he puttin’ down. They said “Man, look at the cat blow…let the cat go…the man lookit…get out the way…let the…” He said “Man, don’t bug me. Get off my back – I’m tryin’ to dig what the cat’s saying’, Jack …” He say,” cool.” They pushin’ The Nazz, because they want to dig his lick, you see – dig his miracle lick.
So The Nazz say “Wait a minute, babies. Tell you what I’m a-goin’ to do. I ain’t goin’ to take two, four, six, eight of you cats – But, I’m goin’ to take twelve of you studs and straighten you all at the same time. You cats look like you pretty hip boys. You buddy wit’ me.”
So The Nazz and his buddies was goofin’ off down the boulevard one day and they run into a little cat wit’ a bent frame. So The Nazz look at this little cat with the bent frame and he say “What’s the matter wit’ you, baby?” And the little cat with the bent frame, he say “Well, my frame is bent, Nazz- it’s been bent from in front.”
So The Nazz look at the little cat with the bent frame and he put the golden eyes of love on this here little kiddie and he looked right down into the windows of his soul and he say to the little cat, he say “Straighten!” The cat went up straighter’n an arrow and everyone jumpin’ up and down and sayin’ “Look what The Nazz put on that boy! You dug him before – dig him now!”
Buckley died in 1960. The routine, I believe, comes from 1952.
David Bowie wrote “All the Young Dudes” for Mott the Hoople. A year later, on their *Mott* album, the band sang “Hymn for the Dudes,” which offers this lyric:
‘Cos if you think you are a star
For so long they’ll come from near and far
But you’ll forget just who you are (yes you will)
You ain’t the Naz
You’re just a buzz
Some kinda temporary…
Ian Hunter, the leader of Mott the Hoople, is still with us at eighty-six. May the daylight not come for him for a long time, allowing him to enjoy royalties from Barry Manilow’s cover of his song “Ships.”
I encountered the short story version as a tween. The adult version suffers from expanding on the premise. Neither one troubled my faith — I classed them as fiction rather than Serious Religious Argument,
The twist endings of the next two stories didn’t work for me at all. But that was true of most EC twist endings — one reason I’ve never gotten into them.
As a whole, I might have looked at this issue — Behold the Man would have grabbed my attention if nothing else — but the art and the stories wouldn’t have been enough for me to buy it.
Long before E C., American writer O. Henry popularized the twist ending in short stories, and before him French author Guy de Maupassant did the same in his works.
True. O. Henry’s stuff had largely faded from pop-culture awareness by the 1970s I think — people still knew the name for “Gift of the Magi” if nothing else but not many people read him. Watching the film adaptation “O. Henry’s Full House” recently I don’t feel that’s a great loss.
I think the other one people remember the idea of is The Ransome of Red Chief, about a little boy who is kidnapped but is such a penance that the kidnappers give him back. It somewhat subtended the Home Alone movies . . . .
As a school kid I remember reading his story after 20 Years where a policeman walking a beat in 1890s NYC who meets a man who is looking to meet his old friend who he agreed to meet 20 years ago. It turns out that the man who meets the policeman is a wanted criminal and the policeman is the guy he was supposed to meet.
It was bot bad but since it was original in 1890, everyone has been imitating it for 139 years and it seems trite.
Also “The Cop and the Anthem” which is the only one I’ve read — a bum wants to be thrown in jail for Christmas so he’ll have a cushy place to stay, has a change of heart and tries to turn his life around and then winds up in jail anyway.
Watching the movie made me realize a flaw in Gift of the Magi — the hair the woman cut off will grow back but the guy probably won’t be able to afford to recover his watch. That makes it imbalanced.
It’s fascinating to read these various takes on how Behold the Man did or didn’t offend various the reader’s religious beliefs.
I picked up this issue when I was 13 and having grave doubts about the existence of any deities. Reading the Moorcock adaptation brought things into focus for me, helping me to realise that people create gods rather than vice versa. That gave me a focus for what became my lifelong atheism and helped me develop the critical thinking skills to see the folly of superstition and magical thinking.
Not a bad legacy for a comic book.
Yes, interesting how “offence” , particularly religious, occurs due to what is the prevailing culture and time. I’m sure there wasn’t the same implied offence when “fictional” comic book interpretations of the Norse Gods entered the public arena.
ah , because some will say , we are better than that now, ancient man worshipped “invented” gods while our culture was (but less so now) based on a single deity became the “right one”- or rather historically , monotheism replaced polytheism.
Anyway , a big issue. sc fi is often at the cutting edge of saying “what if?”
I do think the two editorials by Roy were pretty honest and upfront. Stan would have probably smothered it in his florid and sometimes slightly cryptic prose while Roy is more matter of fact. It was after all, a B & W publication for more adult readers.
Of all the ancient peoples that were conquered and displaced by another nation, none of them retained their cultural identity and language for more than 300 years…except one.
That one, by the way, has been monotheistic for more than 4,000 years, and traces its predecessors back an additional two millennia. This people group was conquered and displaced for not 300 years, but over 1900 years.
I am referring, of course, to Israel. As per the Tanakh (the Old Testament of the Bible), God gave to Israel the Law, the prophets, and the Messiah, and from there, salvation available to the rest of the world.
Old Testament prophecies even reference many Jews rejecting their own Messiah (“the Stone which the builders rejected has become the chief Cornerstone”). In Psalm 23 David prophesied of Messiah’s sufferings 1,000 years before Jesus Christ was crucified on Calvary’s cross (“My hands and My feet have they pierced”). Isaiah 53 is the most sustained Messianic prophecy in the entire Old Testament.
Yes, men over the millennia have created “gods” and “demi-gods,” and more recently there have arisen cults and other spurious groups that have, deliberately or not, twisted the Gospel almost beyond recognition….but they had to start with something.
Man has never had an original thought. Every word I have written has been written or spoken before. Yes, language has evolved, just like concepts evolve, but there is always a precedent.
Try to think of an original color. You can’t. Likewise, we can’t dream up deities (or super-heroes, if you prefer) if there weren’t a prototype or antecedent.
I can understand people following the religion of their cultural upbringing, or even being agnostic (some healthy skepticism is actually a good thing). Even genetic codes point to intelligent design, and one far beyond our grasp. Those scientists who are trying to “bring back” extinct species like the dire wolf, or the upcoming woolly mammoth are essentially “cutting and pasting” a code they didn’t write.
With entropy being the second law of thermodynamics, we nevertheless see a lot of order in the universe, and especially in our unique world, which runs counter to such decay.
To think that these complex systems just work themselves out “by chance” requires far more blind faith than the most esoteric religious adherence.
Comics are a lot of fun, and most of those from “the Big Two” in the silver and early bronze age had an undeniable Judeo-Christian ethic, due to their creators’ backgrounds. This began to change as a new generation of writers started coming in during the bronze age as some of the older ones (writers and/or editors who called the shots) retired or passed away. The same is true in other media of yesteryear, such as radio and television.
Even though the comics code loosened up a bit in the early ’70s, many of the moral restraints in those Big Two titles were imposed by the sensibilities of their own editors and publishers. Now that is largely gone. We have characters who behave wildly out of character, or countless iterations of the same character, at least in name only. I find it wearisome and not very creative—-confusing product.churned out by confused people, and with diminishing returns.
But I love the comics medium, and we have many rich examples of what can be accomplished in and through it.
I’ve never found the intelligent design/complexity argument compelling because it says “We don’t yet understand this, so let’s insert our deity of choice as an explanation”. Seems lazy and defeatist to me. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.
However, I’m fully on board with your point about the ‘countless iterations of the same character’ and the creative redundancy that mainstream comics currently demonstrate. We’ve been around long enough to have seen it all before and it’s becoming wearisome indeed.
The book “Darwin’s Black Box” listed several evolutionary developments the author argued couldn’t have happened without intervention (though he does believe in unguided evolution in general). Pathways were found for most of them in subsequent years. As you say “we don’t know how this happened, therefore it must be god” is not a logical conclusion.
Plus the Discovery Institute, which is the main pusher of intelligent design, has stated that it’s goal is to put Christianity at the center of science.
Plus one intelligent design school book was a creationist textbook rewritten.
The best way to prove intelligent design has scientific value would be to do research: come up with a theory that says “if intelligent design is true, X is true and then prove X.” Like creationists before them, most intelligent design advocates want to win in the court of public opinion because it’s easier: pretend this is a point of scientific dispute, then whine “teach the controversy!”
I’ve never seen any controversy between my faith and the overwhelming evidence that evolution, sans God’s guiding hand, is real. Which is good, because it is real.
I agree with you, Fraser. I’ve spent many years examining and re-examining my faith and I’ve managed to make faith sit side-by-side with science without betraying either one of them.
Well, early on. more “Henotheistic” than “Monotheistic” but that was the end-point.
Yes, for much of the Old Testament the running issue is that the Israelites kept demanding lots of altars in high places and God smiting them for it.
Just to digress from the very interesting discussion going on – it looks to me that neither Moench, Nino, or indeed anyone at Marvel knew anything about Teddy Boys; the unsavoury lads the main character comes across. Teds were possibly England’s first home-grown teenage fashion trend, and consisted of (for fellows) Edwardian drape coats, stovepipe trousers and crepe sole “brothel creeper” shoes. Their hair was a carefully-managed quiff – they looked nothing like the scruffy urchins shown. Wouldn’t have made any difference to American readers, but it stood out a mile to me (understandable for the mid-70s, of course, in this day where visual reference can be had at a keystroke).
PS I didn’t get around to congratulating you for ten years of writing, Alan, so let me do so now and hope that it continues as long as you remain interested in doing so.
I think what you describe would have confused me in 1975. What was depicted said “mugger” or “someone up to no good” in the 1975 US.
Yes, that confused me back in 1975. My Dad had been a Teddy Boy back in the day, and those shown in UWoSF 6 looked nothing like the Teds my Dad showed me in photos of him and his mates. He took one look at Nino’s depiction and pronounced it ‘bloody rubbish’.
From the Uk, slightly confused at first as the sequence with the “Teddy Boys” isn’t above but found it at another online source.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall the Teds having any reputation of being particularly antisemitic – they were more out for culturally clashing with the Mods on a Bank Holiday.
Thanks so much for catching that, patr100! I had prepared and uploaded a scan of the “Teddy Boys” page but somehow failed to include it in the post. I’ve added it now, where it belongs in the story sequence, with an explanatory note.
And now, everyone else can see just what you Brits have been talking about! 🙂
While I know of the Teddy Boys, I don’t know enough that I’d have spotted the look was wrong. Interesting.
Prior to the Mods and Rockers clashes in the 60s, there was certainly a racist element among the Teds. They were notorious for attacks on West Indian immigrants in the 50s, such as happened during the Notting Hill Race Riots in 1958.
I have not read “Behold the Man” but I’m sure I’ve heard the concept explained to me at some point. It seems like a really interesting adaptation. It’s probably one of those things that would have only have been published by Marvel in the chaotic 1970s, when all manner of experimental material was being released. I don’t think Roy Thomas gets near enough credit for the amount of freedom he gave to creators during his short tenure as Marvel’s editor in chief, or subsequently on projects such as Unknown Worlds.
Actually, the only prose works by Michael Moorcock that I have read are the first two Elric novels, Elric of Melniboné and The Sailor on the Seas of Fate. I really enjoyed both of those, but for whatever reason I never did get around to reading anything else by Moorcock, unless you count his work on Alan Moore’s Tom Strong comic book, which, again, I enjoyed. Well, maybe your blog post will finally inspire me to get off my rear end and pick up some more books by Moorcock.
Off subject and theme, one of the things that was discussed in letter cols in both Unknown Worlds and Worlds Unknown is how “science fiction “does not sell.”
However, the success of the Star Wars comic tends to undermine that argument.
Would it be more correct to say “Science Fiction does not sell unless a lot of people know and like the IP?”
The one “Home Grown” property that sold fairly well were the Schiff and ((particularly) the Schwartz science fiction comics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. (Did the Lee/Lieber/Kirby “monster books have a higher “sell through” on a smaller press run like the early Marvel superheroes?)
Star Trek has a niche, but did not do as well as Star Wars and everything else also seems to be a niche player . . . .
Not as well perhaps but Trek’s had enough success (https://www.mikesamazingworld.com/main/features/search.php?searchtype=series&searchtxt=star%20trek) it’s hardly niche.
So ends the Unknown Worlds experiment.
I enjoyed every issue of the black and white, but not the colour.
I am too much that I can say about the main feature here, but had a smile and agree with Baden Smith re the teddy boys. Zero research from Moench and Nino on that one!! How much was Moench writing for Marvel at this stage??? Seems he never went to sleep!!!
The feature that stands out to me was Bruce Jones’ ‘Old Soldier’. I am now of an age that this type of story really resonates! I also enjoyed Mind Games by Allison. Wacky layouts and a finishing style not to different to the cover man.
Finally….two tales take place in the futures of 1979 and 1980….hope that these future does not look like that when we get there!
When I read the Ka-Zar story with Victorious the Super-Soldier, the story of him deciding to become a super-villain because he’d lived 50 dull years and wanted some excitement struck home. I doubt it would have had the same effect when it came out in my teen years.