Original Art Friday 11/8/19 RUSS MANNING

So it's been a week of rampaging and rollicking and raising heck, which means it's also time of ORIGINAL ART FRIDAY, the one day of the week when I share a page of "pretty" excised from the well-tended MV archives...

Today is a page by one of my all time favorite artists, Russ Manning, from one of my all time favorite titles, MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER. Manning was an exceptionally talented fellow who was perhaps best known for drawing Tarzan in various configurations. His clean style and beautiful figure work is classy and elegant, and his Magnus world benefits from his eye. Sadly, Manning died at the much too young age of 52 in 1981, but his work lives on...

Here's a little rundown on the book from our good friends at Wikipedia: "The original series, titled Magnus, Robot Fighter, 4000 AD, premiered in 1963. It was written and drawn by Russ Manning, and as a nod to its influences, included Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics as a quote in the beginning of the first issue. For the duration of the title's original run, Magnus battled rogue robots, aliens, space pirates and other threats. He fell in love with Leeja Clane, the daughter of one of North Am's senators. Leeja developed limited telepathic abilities after training by M'Ree and other humans who had acquired them as a result of their minds being linked together while imprisoned in suspended animation by H8."

Yes indeed! Published by Gold Key, Magnus ran for 20 plus issues, with Manning drawing the bulk of them. His impeccable draftsman and the design of Magnus and the future world absolutely enthralled me as a kid, and still today.

Magnus had metal implants in his arms and legs so he could literally karate chop into metallic bad guy robots, usually decapitating them as the machines made a strangely satisfying SQUEEEEEEE. Despite all the excitement, the future of 4000 AD didn't look all that bad, though as this page suggests, the "youth" didn't care for all the regimentation and wanted to do more stuff for themselves. In some ways Magnus was almost the flip side of The Jetsons, where people kind of liked having robots cater to their needs. Magnus would have lopped off Rosie the Robot's head and demanded George Jetson hit the deck and give him twenty...

And what I wouldn't give for metal implants when my computer starts fritzing. Though I'm not sure the SQUEEEE would have the same glorious resonance...