Currently I'm reading the book
Bunk: The True Story of Hoaxes, Hucksters, Humbug, Plagiarists, Forgeries, and Phonies by Kevin Young and it is quite a fascinating read as the author attempts to connect the various kinds of frauds people perpetuate. I thought of this book when I recently bought an issue of Marvel UK's
Planet of the Apes magazine featuring Apeslayer.
You know, Apeslayer! That great Marvel science fiction hero Apeslayer! Surely every
Planet of the Apes fan remembers Apeslayer?
Marvel's weekly comics in the UK always had a conundrum - how to fill their pages every week when the US comics they were publishing only came out once a month? You might be able to divide a monthly comic into four issues (filling up the rest of the book with text features or installments of other Marvel characters with a similar audience), but it would take just one month with five shipping weeks to throw you off your schedule. Therefore, the closer the UK's first issue release date was to that of the original US first issue, the quicker they'd exhaust their supply.
In the late 1970s when Marvel UK faced this issue on
Star Wars they simply published original material. The audience for
Star Wars was so vast - and so instrumental in Marvel staving off the market implosion of the late 70s - that they could justify the expense. But two years earlier in 1975 when
Planet of the Apes ran low on US material there was just one thing to do: hoax their way out.
The editors of
Planet of the Apes took Marvel's hero Killraven and edited his name into 'Apeslayer' then darkened his hair and modified all Martians/Martian slavers into apes. Frankly, they spent so much time touching up the art and text they might almost just as well have printed new stories! But at least it meant they didn't have to plot any new stories.
"...The War of the Worlds-- I mean, Apes!"
This hoax was a pretty flimsy one and I have to assume a number of UK readers didn't fall for it. I mean, the kind of Martian technology seen in Killraven was a lot more advanced than what the
Planet of the Apes apes were utilizing. Also, if they were an astute Marvel Comics fan, they'd already read those Killraven stories on first publication and would have put two and two together pretty fast.
Apeslayer! When your comic must be delivered in 30 minutes or less!
