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TUROK, SON OF STONE 52
Painted cover: ??? |
| The story opens with a bang, with Turok and Andar hanging by fingertips on a cliff wall while “dread flying honkers turned into burning brands of instant death” soar and flames gush just above. “Has their bold journey, begun in hope, come to its end in an impossible trap?” |
| Backstory: Turok and Andar are Navajo Indians who, in pre-Columbian times, stumbled into Lost Valley, AKA the Grand Canyon, still populated by dinosaurs (“honkers”) and cave people. The two Indians have spent years trying to scale the sheer walls to get home. They have three advantages: poisoned arrows that can kill any honker; fire, which the cavemen lack; and native intelligence and courage. |
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Now “hope was running high” as the two Indians spot a cliff wall with a
strange hole. It might be a way out of Lost Valley. They’ll
try it tomorrow. But a bad omen looms. A “savage shadow” crosses the moon, yet there are not clouds in the sky.  |
| Andar isn’t the only one
troubled. Honkers – ankylosaurs, dimetrodons, small raptors -
flee as if from a forest fire. But the two Indians see or hear
nothing to frighten them. As the shadow grows, covering the moon,
shrieks come from the fled honkers. “As if honkers were being
killed!” The cries stop and the moon comes out. Turok urges they sleep and figure it out in the morning. “But keep your bow in your hand.” Come morning, the Indians push on their mission: to find that hole through the cliff wall. They discover “what we heard last night were death cries!” In a clearing lie the skeletons of dozens of dinosaurs picked clean. |
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| All day they pass “honker bones”.
They search for the killer’s tracks. “It must have been a huge
beast!” They find nothing. “How could such a savage
attacker… leave no footprints?” They stop to drink at a pool. And for a swim “before it gets cold and dark.” They wonder what great beast killed those honkers. |
| Danger is never far off in Lost Valley. A T-Rex catches them in
the water. With their poisoned arrows and bows on the
shore! “Swim for the opposite shore! Hurry!” The T-Rex wades after them. The shore is sheer rock with “no place to hide! We cannot escape!” But Turok points. “Look there!” “Suddenly, the dusk sky is filled with the swooshing sound of flapping wings and raucous cries! The darkening sky turns ever darker…” Andar is stunned. “There cannot be so many flying honkers! The sky is black with them!” Turok guesses, “They may save us from this flesh-eater!” The flying honkers do save the Indians, but it’s a dodgy rescue. They swarm over the T-Rex, tearing with cruel beaks. |
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| “A minute later, the deadliest honker in Lost Valley has been reduced to silent,
bare bones…” So these flying piranha “are what blocked the moon…
and left no tracks!” Luckily, they seemed gorged and leave the
Indians alive. “But where did they come from?” Where else? “The hole in the cliff wall – our goal!” So, says Andar, they can’t go there. “Wrong. The flying honkers hunt at night. If we can reach the cave now, we have until dawn to explore it!” They hurry on. |
| “At last! Perhaps, this time, we can turn our backs on Lost
Valley forever!” If they can reach the cave. The stone is
sheer without a single handhold. So, as always, they search. And find a rougher surface. “There are handgrips and toeholds,” says Andar, “but how far up will they continue?” Turok tells him, “Climb and find out.” |
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They climb, but the cliff becomes smooth as glass. Turok strains
for a bush in a crevice, grabs it and pulls higher – and it rips loose! Desperate, Turok swings snags a ledge with one hand. Climbs and pulls up Andar with his bow. Gaining a shelf, they look around. Another vine leads into the cave mouth, but it’s out of reach. What else? Turok anchors Andar so he can stretch for the vine, leaning over the abyss. Snagging the vine, they climb. “After the cliff wall, this is easy,” laughs Andar. Turok shushes. They can hear flying honkers. Returning. If they see them... |
| The honkers don’t, for they’ve spotted new prey and pounce on an unlucky triceratops. While they feast, the two Indians gain the cave. Nesting material makes torches. They explore. Andar notes, “There seems to be no end to this cave!” Turok agrees. “If only the end opens out the cliff’s other side, we will be beyond Lost Valley’s last barrier!” More nests and more. “No wonder… the flying honkers fill the sky!” But the floor is slick, and Andar slips, heading for a crevice. Turok snags him, but warns to go come up slow or they’ll both tumble in. The torch keeps falling out of sight. Probing deeper, the air becomes still. “Have we reached the cave’s end?” They circle a stone pillar to find out. |
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| No good. It’s a “blank stone wall”, a dead end. Andar
insists. “There has to be a way out beyond here!” But a
search dashes their hopes. “No way out!” (One theme that ran through Turok was how very much Nature was larger than Man. Many shots such as this, two tiny Indians dwarfed by an immense cave, perhaps inspired by Carlsbad Caverns, were common. Heroes in Gold Key comics weren’t masters of their environment, they were part of it.) (In the same way, it’s sometimes hard to crop shots from a Turok comic. Time and again the Indians, dwarfed by their surroundings, are in the foreground of the shot looking away from the camera at a menace behind them.) |
| Now they’ve got a new problem, and retrace their steps. “We have
only till dawn to get out of the cave and down to the cliff
bottom! There is no time to lose!” Or they’ll be Purina
Honker Chow. Too fast in a dark dusty cave. Turok slips and sprains an ankle. He can walk, slowly. They reach the cave mouth just at dawn. And hear an ominous noise. “Outside, the sound of flapping wings echoes over the valley floor, mingling with the rasping call of the returning hunting flock…” The Indians are trapped!
END PART 1
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| Central pieces include an educational piece on “Dinosaur Eggs”. And a Rocky and Bullwinkle ad for Cheerios, which ran
for years. Longer than the TV show, which we kids missed
terribly.
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| And the text article, “The Mystery Men of Hudson Bay” about a lost tribe of Eskimos, now called Inuits. And a four page educational article (Man, they just won’t let up!) about “Wonderful Hands”. |
| And now back to… The Savage Shadow – Part II
Trapped as the “savage horde swoops into the roost”, Turok and Andar douse their torches and lie flat under the eaves of a nest. No, the nesting bird spots them. “If he calls to the others…” (I suppose it’s too late to try the old, “Peep like a baby honker” trick.) |
| The pterosaur hops down for a closer look. The Indians are ready
with knives. “Quickly, Andar! Help me hold and slay this
honker!” The beast is big as a horse, and that clacking bill is deadly. But Andar pins the beak while Turok tries to kill it. (As seen on the cover.) “He must not cry out before I can use my knife!” It’s dead. (But there’s no blood or wound. This is a family comic.) Still, the other birds may see them, Andar objects. No, Turok always has a plan. “Spread its wings over us! That should hide us!” (Now THAT’s using local resources.) More honkers keep flying in. “Does the line never end?” Finally clawed feet grip the ceiling and honkers hang like bats to sleep. |
| As quiet settles, Turok and Andar start crawling for the
entrance. But there are too many honkers, and just one
stirs. “He cannot fail to see us!” No, the creature nods off. “We are safe! Move on!” But behind, their not-quite snuffed torches spark – and flare into flame. Fanned by the natural draught, “the blaze spreads to the tinder-dry nests.” The cave becomes an inferno! Screaming honkers wake and swirl. The Indians are caught between dooms. “The fire is coming this way! But if we run, the flock will strike us!” |
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| No choice. “Run for the entry!” Overhead, “darting flames
burn the flapping reptiles… living torches light other would-be
escapers in the wild confusion of the fiery roost…” But two whole honkers can still dive for the Indians. “Your knife! Use it quickly and well!” |
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More hacking, more killing. But the honkers go down. And “the others are too eager to escape to bother with us!” The Indians get outside, but are hardly safe. They’re looking at a sheer drop with no way down! And “a mass of flying reptiles bolts from the cave, striking them like a battering ram!” |
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Hanging, he flips the end to Andar. Above, flames eat up the cave – where the vine begins! “If they burn the vine, we have a long drop! Climb down quickly!” They slide heroically – until the vine weakens and breaks. They plunge, bouncing off the mountainside. |
| “It is not so far! Try to slow yourself! Use your hands and feet!” “D-Down!” They crash into a treetop. “And still alive!” As the Indians move away from the cliff, a shadow passes over. The circling honkers return to their roost now the fire is out. “Let them return to their towering home!” says Turok. “We have conquered it and learned all we need to know – that it is NOT the way out of Lost Valley! And we outwitted the flying honkers to discover that truth!” |
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Lastly,
there is (What else?) one last educational page about “Prehistoric
Americana”.  Early in the 60s, Gold Key comics had no ads (Imagine!),
so the filler was educational, even the inside covers. The back cover
was often a pinup: the gorgeous original covers without any words. But
even Gold Key suffered inflation, and ads crept in. The inside front
cover of this mag is an ad, but the inside back cover is educational.
Can it last? Can anything? |
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Comments TUROK, SON OF STONE was a study in frustration. Those two homesick Indians sweated and slaved to escape the deadly valley for 130 issues, but you always knew they wouldn’t make it. Still, they never quit trying, an inspiration in itself. Like many Gold Key comics, one of the strongest features was logic. Magnus, Turok, Mighty Samson (http://www.challengersoftheunknown.com/MS01.html), Doctor Solar, and the Space Family Robinson struggled and fought, but always sensibly. Unlike Marvel comics, where heroes did stupid things to keep the plot going, and always fought another hero before teaming up, Gold Key heroes used brains and brawn. |
Here we see Turok and Andar aim for a goal, get there, use their heads to escape danger, use resources at hand, think on their feet, and finally succeed, if only for a moment. |
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Gold Key comics also produced terrific stories without gore or
pandering. Dell Comics, then Gold Key, stated right on the inside
front cover - “Dell Comics are Good Comics!” - that they did not
submit comics to the Comics Code Authority. They didn’t regulate
objectionable material, they eliminated it entirely. And still
made cracking good adventures! The comic’s title always inspired mock-trivia to me. “And for 20 points, who was the father of Turok, Son of Stone?” We never saw any hint of Stone, Father of Turok. Or maybe “Stone” was just tacked on to suggest “Stone Age”. |
| A lot of the dinosaur lore is dated now, though note the pterosaurs have feathers, which at the time was not a popular depiction. Mostly the beasts are inspired by the work of Charles R. Knight, who painted huge murals in museums shortly after dinosaurs were first discovered. His murals and books made dinosaurs come alive for the first time in peoples’ minds. The same dinosaurs rampage through the 1933 movie KING KONG. |
In the Gold Key incarnation, Turok and Andar never escaped Lost
Valley. But they were resurrected and then deconstructed and
worse by Valiant and Acclaim comics in the 1980s. Lost Valley
became “the sewer of the universe”, a crossover point for many heroes
including Magnus and Solar. |
| By the end, Turok was in the modern world, speaking perfect English and riding a
motorcycle. He became “Turok, Dinosaur Hunter” and went on an
unbelievably bloody gore-fest. Andar disappeared somehow, to be
replaced by a hipper version, then even Turok was swapped out with some
descendent. Or something. It’s too painful to recall.
Though Turok did get his own video game and action figures, something
no one could have imagined in 1966. We like to think that the REAL Turok and Andar found a crack in the wall and got back to their Navajo families, safe and sound, with many wonderful tales to tell. |