P. Craig Russell's Notes On 'The King's Ankus'

An excerpt from our 'Jungle Book and Other Stories' Fine Art Edition!

P. CRAIG RUSSELL: In the early 1970s, Marvel Comics planned a series of comic books adapting Rudyard Kiplingʼs Jungle Book stories. Gil Kane scripted and pencilled the first 18 page issue and pencilled the second. Together they comprised the first four (of eight) Mowgli stories. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to me, the project was cancelled. The pages languished in a drawer until the mid-80s when editor Al Milgrom dusted them off and asked me to ink them. He also invited Jo Duffy to write the script for the last eighteen pages. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to ink Gil Kaneʼs pencils—he was an artist I had revered since childhood. The stories subsequently ran in four nine page chapters in Marvel Fanfare, a magazine devoted to short and/or serialized stories that were slightly offbeat.

With the completion of Gilʼs stories, Jo approached me with the idea of doing one of the remaining stories ourselves (in particular, The Kingʼs Ankus). She was Associate Editor to Archie Goodwin on Marvelʼs Epic Magazine then, so she pitched it to Archie . . . who passed on the idea. By that time, I was getting deeply involved with Eclipse Comics, so I suggested it to publisher Dean Mullaney and editor Cat Yronwode. They immediately gave us the go-ahead. Unfortunately, Jo was under contract to Marvel at the time so her participation was as a ghostwriter—it was only years later that she was able to accept public credit for her contribution.

This would be the last time that I would work with another writer on an adaptation. After The Kingʼs Ankus, I was on my own.

PLEASE NOTE: Our 12 by 17 inch deluxe hardcovers of P. Craig Russell’s Jungle Book and Other Stories have long been sold out, but DRM-free digital downloads of the book are now available via Lurid.com.