KEY VALUES

Across the Atlantic, Gold Key brought the screen to the spinner rack

Successful US publisher Dell had been in partnership with Western Publishing since 1938, producing many successful comics including Walt Disney titles. Western decided to go it alone in 1962, taking their media licences with them to forge new comics line Gold Key.

Dell enjoyed some success with a long-running comic based on SF anthology The Outer Limits (1964-9), and even adapted the 1965 movie version of Dr Who & the Daleks, but eventually folded in 1974.

US newsstands were soon groaning under the weight of Gold Key’s cheap and cheerful pulp fare, grottily printed behind those glossy, dynamic cover paintings.

Having briefly run twist-in-the-tale comics based on The Twilight Zone for Dell in 1961, Western went on to produce a colossal 91 Gold Key issues between 1962-79.

There were publications for movie and TV mogul Irwin Allen; subsea adventures in Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (1964-70), time-hopping tales from The Time Tunnel (1966-7) and minuscules

series Land Of The Giants (1968-9). Politics stymied any Lost In Space comic; having previously published their strangely similar Space Family Robinson comics since 1962, Gold Key declined to sue Allen, wary of upsetting the applecart. The Man From UNCLE (1964-9) ran 22 issues, though The Girl From UNCLE proved less popular. Quinn Martin’s paranoid aliens-among-us fantasy The Invaders spawned four comics (1967-8), while ABC’s daytime supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows proved a surprise success, 35 issues appearing from 1969-76. Star Trek meanwhile ran a staggering 61 issues from 1967-79.