Today in Comics History, January 29: Happy birthday, Tom Selleck!

This is an expanded and updated version of a post originally published February 13, 2006.

Born on this day: actor Tom Selleck from Magnum P.I., Three Men and a Baby, Quigley Down Under, the Jesse Stone TV movies, Blue Bloods, and all those (ugh!) NRA commercials. Look, I love 'im even though he's a Republican.

Let's look at Tom through my second favorite medium in which to see him: comic books!

Who's the Hawaiian private dick who's a love machine* to all the chicks?

Magnum!





I don't think it's any secret that one of my favorite TV shows of all time is Magnum, P.I. starring Tom Selleck. It ran for eight seasons on CBS in the 1980s, was a solid mix of drama and comedy, and had one of the greatest supporting casts of an action-detective show. What's that got to do with comics, you ask? (Go ahead, ask!) I've always said that Magnum would have made a great comic book. In the late seventies and early eighties Marvel was putting out some different TV-to-comic adaptations (Man from Atlantis, The A-Team, Battlestar Galactica, Sledge Hammer). But no Magnum.

Imagine my surprise...go ahead, imagine it!...when on a trip to London, I found a couple Magnum, P.I. hardcover annuals in a used book store! Whodathunkit? I picked up Magnum Annual 1982 and 1983. They're pretty similar to most British comics annuals I've seen...an oversized hardcover anthology of comics, prose stories, articles, photos and fun 'n' games activities. (Much to my surprise, annuals are still a big deal in the UK at Christmastime. They had a huge stack of 2006 annuals at Waterstones: Justice League, Batman, X-Men, Barbie, plus perennial British favorites like Beano, The Dandy, and British football clubs. If you want to save a little money, wait until after Christmastime to pick 'em up: Waterstones marked 'em down to 99p on Boxing Day! You can't say fairer than that, as the Brits say!)

Anyway, let's talk about Magnum Annual 1982:


There's no artist credits listed in this annual, but there's two types of artwork (plus a handful of photographs) painted photorealistic art to illustrated the endpapers and text stories:


and more traditional comics-style panel art:


I'm not certain at all who's doing either style, but that comic art is vaguely familiar in that British annual style: solid dynamic panel borders illustrate action and drama. Kind of reminds me of Frank Bellamy. Both styles are pretty vibrant, energetic and capture Tom Selleck's likeness well, but it's clear the artists were all heavily using using photo references for these; lots of the artwork corresponds to Magnum publicity photos and stills from early in the series. (Told you I was a Magnum fan!) F'rinstance, note how both the examples above seem to derive from the same posed shot, probably a publicity photo!

The annual starts out with a prose story entitled "Funky Freddie's Payoff" whose opening sentences proves they pretty much knew the attraction of Tom Selleck to a large part of his audience:


Following a nonfiction article on Hawaii is a one-pager called "Magnum's Farce" which supposedly prints some of the wittiest exchanges between Magnum and major-domo Jonathan Higgins. But I've gotta figger the editors of the annual were either making these up (I certainly don't remember any of them from the TV series!), or, at the very least, picked some really horribly unfunny ones, thus missing the point of one of Magnum's top attractions, its humor:


The eight-page comics story "Daddy's Little Girl" follows. It's not bad: authentic Magnum action and first-person narration with a kinda-funny wrap-up that shows whoever wrote it knew the show. But the artist doesn't seem to realize he's drawing American, not English, cars--note the position of the steering wheel:


And really I must object to this bit of uncalled-for racism against bulls!:


A two-page article on the history of Ferrari cars like Magnum's follows (featuring a painted illustration of Enzo Ferrari that makes him look like a pudgy Steve Martin) and another prose story called "The Debt" faces Magnum off against a villain who eliminates the need for his own arrest and trial by [SPOILER WARNING!] running into a spinner airplane propeller. Next, two pages of surfing history, two pages of Magnum photo pin-ups, then another comics story "The Burning Stops." No, it's not an ad for Preparation H (hee hee!). Magnum's in a tight spot when the story opens, being held hostage by either a British criminal (or a British writer who doesn't know we say "gas" in America):


This story features quite possibly the greatest plot twist in the history of comics:


Yes, years before the movie Snakes on a Plane, T.C. faces off against "drug-crazed" snakes on a helicopter! I hope whoever wrote this story sues the pants off Samuel L. "Get these damn snakes off my plane" Jackson! (And don't worry, Roger E. Mosley fans: T.C. [SPOILER WARNING] survives the snakes and Magnum survives the guy with the gas...er, petrol can.)

A prose story called "The Mystery on the 13th Floor" follows. Contrary to the title, it's not a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mystery. But the best is yet to come next with...


My favorite clue? 22 Across: Magnum is one. Since the phrase "Hawaiian private dick who's a love machine* to all the chicks" did not fit in the slot, I'm guessing the answer is "PI." More comics fun follows with the story "Harry Blong's Harvest." Reading this made me think that the writers possibly only had access to the first script of the TV show, "Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii," to write these stories. I've watched the Magnum, P.I.: The Complete First Season DVD collection recently and lots of the elements from the pilot episode show up in this and the next comics story: Magnum being chased by Zeus and Apollo, Higgins's dogs (although it's misspelled as "Appollo" here), Rick in his white tuxedo, Higgins toasting his old regiment: all of these are straight from the pilot. The steering wheel's still on the right-hand side of the Ferrari in this one, too! Some nice Modesty Blaise-style art in this one, though:


An illustrated article on helicopters used in the Vietnam War is next up, followed by a prose story called "Death Drive." And, like everything from the early 1980s, it apparently guest-stars Michael Caine:


One more two-page nonfiction feature (this one on stats of Magnum's Ferrari's engine. Gosh, you learn a lot with these things!) and the annual wraps up with one last comics story entitled "The Death of a Drunken Woman." Not to be outdone by the Michael Caine appearance earlier, this one guest-stars noted comics writer Brian Michael Bendis.


Quite a feat, as Bendis was only 15 in 1982 and would not become big until decades later.

In short, I've poked a lot of fun at it, but Magnum, P.I. Annual 1982 is a fun comic. Britishcisms aside, it captures the spirit of Thomas Magnum's adventures pretty well and is chock-full of fun comics and features. This has some great art, exciting stories, and was a great value at £2.50. As I update this post there's just been a revival Magnum TV series which was pretty good, so you can get your Magnum fix on modern TV. But there's only one Thomas Magnum, and that's Tom Selleck.

Go get 'em, big guy! See ya on the beach!


*I am not allowed to use the "S" word on my website.