{"id":27521,"date":"2021-03-27T11:10:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T15:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=27521"},"modified":"2021-03-27T11:11:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T15:11:07","slug":"a-planet-of-the-apes-magazine-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2021\/03\/27\/a-planet-of-the-apes-magazine-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Planet of the Apes<\/em> magazine mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1974, Marvel published Planet of the Apes<\/em> #1, which both told and continued the movie’s story. But even though this was a black-and-white magazine rather than a color comic, and therefore not subject to the Comics Code, there’s something you didn’t get to see \u2014 naked butts.<\/p>\n

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George Tuska’s artwork for the film adaptation clearly showed the crew of the crashed spaceship nude, both when they were bathing in a lake, and when they were chasing the humans who’d stolen their clothes. But in panel after panel, someone (I’m guessing not George) added pants.<\/p>\n

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Whose idea was it to eliminate this far from explicit nudity? Doug Moench, who wrote this adaptation? Tony Isabella, editor of the title? Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas? Stan “The Man” Lee? Or perhaps someone at the movie studio who reviewed photocopies and insisted on a cover-up?<\/p>\n

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After finding the unretouched images among my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s memorabilia, and sharing them on social media in December (which I’m finally getting around to sharing here to give some permanence to the matter), I heard from both Tony Isabella and Roy Thomas about this.<\/p>\n

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Here’s what Tony Isabella had to say over on Facebook —<\/p>\n

I don’t think I would have asked for changes unless their naughty bits were showing. But I don’t remember. If it wasn’t me, it could have been the POTA<\/em> people or Roy or Stan, though I don’t think Stan looked at all the comics and magazines we were producing. Another possibility is Sol Brodsky. Grey tones would have been added by any of a number of people who were hired to do just that on the magazines and on the British weeklies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here’s what Roy Thomas told me in an email —<\/p>\n

It was most probably Stan who wanted the nudity covered up, but I’ve no real evidence to back that up … let alone any memories. It doesn’t sound like something I’d have done on my own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I suppose the mystery will remain forever unsolved …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1974, Marvel published Planet of the Apes #1, which both told and continued the movie’s story. But even though this was a black-and-white magazine rather than a color comic, and therefore not subject to the Comics Code, there’s something you didn’t get to see \u2014 naked butts. George Tuska’s artwork for the film adaptation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[247,20,913,84,69],"class_list":["post-27521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-george-tuska","tag-marvel-comics","tag-planet-of-the-apes","tag-roy-thomas","tag-tony-isabella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27521"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27533,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521\/revisions\/27533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}