Archive's Sunday Comics - Back with a bang

The adventure pulps of the first half of last century didn't lack for "cities of gold", usually surrounded by dense jungle in Africa, the Dark Continent, or South America, its western counterpart brimming with lost civilizations: Toltec, Aztec, Mayan, and Incan.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, created several lost cities and he was far from alone: Charles Beadle, A. Merritt, Edmond Hamilton, and a host of others over the decades, mined this rich vein of fantasy fiction. Some literary historians maintain it all began with H. Rider Haggard's classic novel She.

Later, the last of the pulpsters were obliged to turn their hands to other writing assignments – movies, television, paperback originals, and comics. The pulpsters, by the nature of their calling, had been experts at fiction recycling. Not surprisingly, the lost city, although it had almost died out as a theme in adult literature, tended to make an occasional appearance in the new media.

Our Sunday Comic this week is an adventure of The Legend Testers, Rollo Stones and Danny Charters, who have appeared in the Tainted Archive twice before. They were part of the lineup in the British weekly comic Smash!, which was perhaps more heavily under the US fantasy influence than other UK comics of its time, as we've recorded on earlier occasions. The story is complete in four lively pages from Smash! Annual 1968, scripted by Keith Chapman, better known today as the western novelist Chap O'Keefe.

Remember click on any image for a larger version and be sure to read the post prior to this for even more Chap O'Keefe.