Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and fifty-fourth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends, which are all about the Punisher! Click here for Part 2 of this week's legends.

COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel has a completed graphic novel starring the Punisher in the Savage Land.

STATUS:

True

In 1990, longtime collaborators Chuck Dixon, Tim Truman and Gary Kwapisz tried to revamp Ka-Zar for the 1990s with the graphic novel, Ka-Zar: Guns of the Savage Land.

It did not do particularly well. However, Kwapisz and Dixon then did a SECOND Savage Land graphic novel, this time starring the Punisher. This was during a period in the early 1990s when Marvel was really pushing for new graphic novels. However, the side effect from pushing for so many graphic novels meant that sometimes you ended up with a glut of them and therefore, some of them never got published, not necessarily for any problem with the story, but just because there never seemed to be a point on the schedule for the book and then too much time has passed and then it's just done.

Kwapisz, though, amazingly posted the ENTIRE GRAPHIC NOVEL on his website here!

It even comes with a description of the book, "When the criminal organization, Hydra discover the prehistoric Savage Land hidden in Antartica, the criminal masterminds decide the pristine tropical paradise will make the perfect place to grow cocoa which they can turn into cocaine and sell to fund their felonious operations. To deal with the hostile natives and dinosaurs that object to their vicious invasion, Hydra starts kidnapping mercenaries to form an army to protect their operations. Unfortunately for them, they unknowingly snatch Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher for this new army. A mistake they will soon regret."

Here are some sample pages...

Go check out Gary's website for the whole kit and caboodle!

Kwapisz would then have a run on Punisher War Journal with Chuck Dixon that lasted for over a year.

Thanks to longtime reader Jonathan N. for this suggestion (he actually suggested this one almost TEN years ago)!


Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed - Why did Cheers' classic Thanksgiving episode get protested when it came out?


OK, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!

Here's my most recent book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine's armor).

batshark

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Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).

The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...

If you'd like to order it, you can use the following code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee...

Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you all next week!