the incarnations of captain kronos

[daniel1976]

caroline munro mentioned in a three-part documentary, titled "the legend of hammer vampires" which can be found on youtube, that captain kronos found further adventures in a comics series, in which it was revealed that he was a time traveller, hence his chosen nickname.
is anyone familiar with it?

[cromagnonman]

I do know that Kronos featured in original comic strip adventures in early issues of Dez Skinn's House of Hammer magazine. Unfortunately I don't have the requisite issues so can't provide much more info on it than that. I don't know if they reveal Kronos and Grost as time travellers but as I understand it Brian Clemens did hope to continue the character's adventures on tv and alter the setting each episode accordingly to reflect the particular menace. Sadly nothing ever came of it.

The character's brief cinematic afterlife as a comic strip is quite appropriate as it happens. When I spoke to Clemens at a London memorabilia fair - held shortly before he died - he told me that he had created the character of Kronos to cash in on the popularity of early 70s Marvel comics. Not that there were any Marvel characters quite like Kronos at that time. The character he most resembles is Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane, and he didn't make it into Marvel comics until Monsters Unleashed # 1 in 1973.

[cromagnonman]

Haunted by a nagging suspicion I've had a rummage at the back of the cave and it turns out I do have the first issue of House of Hammer after all. And it contains a five page Kronos vampire staking strip drawn by future 2000AD stalwart Ian Gibson. There's some enigmatic dialogue in the last panel which could be interprepted as a capacity to time travel. Or not, as the case may be. The strip definitely continued in the second issue with an installment called "The Terror of Walpurgis Night".

[helrunar]

This is fascinating to read about.  I've always loved Capt. Kronos.  It is so different not just from any other Hammer film, but from any other British horror film of the period.  I suppose in some ways it is an early example of sword and sorcery with some horror woven in.

It seems as if Brian Clemens felt quite personally fond of Kronos--in interviews, he always spoke of the character and the stories with a degree of affection I did not really notice in how he recalled other projects, even ones that had been huge successes, such as THE AVENGERS.

H.

[daniel1976]

thanks. as for house of hammer, i learned about it first here, and apparently it was the place for all those "best hammer movies never made. by the way, did they adapt king kong? it was considered for a remake by hammer and i'd love to see if the comics version was theversion they intended to make. is there a contents list or an omnibus edition of this magazine?

[ropardoe]

Jun 27, 2016 12:17:13 GMT daniel1976 said:

thanks. as for house of hammer, i learned about it first here, and apparently it was the place for all those "best hammer movies never made. by the way, did they adapt king kong? it was considered for a remake by hammer and i'd love to see if the comics version was theversion they intended to make. is there a contents list or an omnibus edition of this magazine?

I love Captain Kronos too and have always greatly regretted that the plans for a whole sequence of his adventures never came to anything.  And of course the film features Benedict Cumberbatch's mum!

[cromagnonman]

Jun 27, 2016 15:03:27 GMT ropardoe said:

Jun 27, 2016 12:17:13 GMT daniel1976 said:

thanks. as for house of hammer, i learned about it first here, and apparently it was the place for all those "best hammer movies never made. by the way, did they adapt king kong? it was considered for a remake by hammer and i'd love to see if the comics version was theversion they intended to make. is there a contents list or an omnibus edition of this magazine?

I love Captain Kronos too and have always greatly regretted that the plans for a whole sequence of his adventures never came to anything.  And of course the film features Benedict Cumberbatch's mum!



Or Colonel Virginia Lake as I always like to think of her.

I wrote to Wanda Ventham a while back, telling her how much I enjoyed Captain Kronos and mentioning the coincidence of her and Ian Hendry both appearing in it at the same time as they were both starring in The Lotus Eaters. Got a lovely handwritten note back in which she made the point that she worked with Hendry both before and after that time and that they had in fact been at drama school together.
A wonderful lady.

[helrunar]

Wanda Ventham is lovely and apparently has a great sense of humor.  She did something on the radio a year or two back with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley.  I can't recall the details now but it sounded like a bit of fun.

Wanda also did a couple of Doctor Who stories.  She's a well known figure in the world of cult television.

H.

[cromagnonman]

Jun 27, 2016 12:17:13 GMT daniel1976 said:

Jun 27, 2016 at 1:17pm daniel1976 said:
thanks. as for house of hammer, i learned about it first here, and apparently it was the place for all those "best hammer movies never made. by the way, did they adapt king kong? it was considered for a remake by hammer and i'd love to see if the comics version was theversion they intended to make. is there a contents list or an omnibus edition of this magazine?

I'm not aware of any contents listing for House of Hammer/Halls of Horror apart from the indexes to be found inside the magazines themselves. I have noticed though that there are dvds available on ebay which reproduce all the issues in pdf format.

I can't ever remember hearing that Hammer planned to remake King Kong. But then Hammer did have an irritating habit of announcing plans often based on nothing more substantial than a well received concept poster so I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised.

Incidentally, all this talk of HoH has succeeded in putting me in a nostalgic mood and so I went out and treated myself to a few old issues today. And its now clear that the adaptations were limited to films that Hammer had actually made rather than any that they proposed to. (You might be interested to know though that there is a feature on the 1976 Kong remake in # 8).
These adaptations were generally based on the original scripts rather than the final cuts and so sometimes deviated from what ended up on the screen. Lots of impressive art to be found in them from what were then burgeoning talents of the British comics scene.

[cromagnonman]

Thanks to the generosity of a fellow troglydyte and collector of my acquaintance (who just happens to possess a full run of House of Hammer and kindly scanned in for me the strips I didn't possess) I am now in a position to categorically refute the suggestion that Kronos and Grost are time travellers. And I've really no idea where the delectable Ms Munro garnered that peculiar notion from. Its a pretty rotten concept to be honest and I, for one, am delighted to find that its a wholly eroneous one.

The Kronos serial ran in the first three issues of House of Hammer only, neatly divided up into three equal five page installments. The story sees Kronos, Grost and Carla up against one Count Balderstein who is intent on unleashing the Lords of Chaos by opening up the Gates of Hell. Its a fun romp and one as furiously paced as Laurie Johnson's original score. It generally runs along similar lines to the film. Its one imaginative flourish comes in the form of a convent infested with vampiric nuns. Whilst Grost gleefully goes about his business dispatching them Kronos engages Balderstein in a duel to the death.

Its clear even from such modest beginnings that these terrific characters had ample scope to be developed further. Mores the pity then that the chance was passed over and the opportunity allocated to Father Shandor instead whose own strip commenced soon after.

One final point; the film wasn't given a comic strip adaptation until HoH # 20. It was scripted by Steve Moore and drawn by Steve Parkhouse, both of whom were then on the cusp of becoming very familiar names on the British comics scene.    

[cromagnonman]

I don't know if this is of use or interest to anyone; but I now have scans available of all fifteen pages of the Kronos House of Hammer strip. If anyone would like to pm me with their email address I'd be only too happy to forward copies to them.

[helrunar]

That's excellent, Cromagnonman!  I sent you a PM.

Best, Helrunar

[helrunar]

Posting here to thank Cro-Magnonman for sharing the scans, which I just read and enjoyed very much.  The artwork and dialogue reminded me of the kind of thing I used to read in CREEPY magazine back in the early 1970s.  It was a bit of fun and a chance to see further adventures of Grost and the good Captain.

The only further comment I would make is that one thing that really set KRONOS apart from other vampire films of the time was the rather bizarre lore that figured in the plot, such as the burial of the toads.  You don't really get any of that here.  But it's still a ripping yarn in the style of the old school.  The vampire nuns are particularly cool.

H.

[daniel1976]

thanks for your reply. as for caroline munro, check the documentary i mentioned. they even have a neat scene that could have been the begining of the unmade film logically to have been set between "taste the blood of dracula" and "scars of dracula".

as for the hammer version of king kong, the year 1976 started for kong in a long and complex legal battle between universal studios and dino de laurentiis, which the latter won, tpo the chagrin of fans of the original, myself among them. however, kong remakes and proposals for them have a history as long and elaborate from as early on as 1933, when films such as king kong vs. frankenstein (you can see sketches for it on the web) were proposed but not made. hammer wanted to recruit ray harryhausen, but he ewas doing the last sinbad movie, so he was'nt available. a volkswagen commercial featuring kong has that model of kong which was supposed to feature in the hammer version. it too is on youtube.

[cromagnonman]

Jul 2, 2016 23:58:28 GMT helrunar said:

Posting here to thank Cro-Magnonman for sharing the scans, which I just read and enjoyed very much.  The artwork and dialogue reminded me of the kind of thing I used to read in CREEPY magazine back in the early 1970s.  It was a bit of fun and a chance to see further adventures of Grost and the good Captain.

The only further comment I would make is that one thing that really set KRONOS apart from other vampire films of the time was the rather bizarre lore that figured in the plot, such as the burial of the toads.  You don't really get any of that here.  But it's still a ripping yarn in the style of the old school.  The vampire nuns are particularly cool.

H.


Glad to be of service Mr H.
Always pleased to afford assistance to a fellow Kronos fan.