Killdozer!

Speaking of Theodore Sturgeon, it was twenty years ago today that a man in Granby, Colorado, went on a rampage with a heavily modified bulldozer that has since been dubbed "Killdozer." Maybe that was after Sturgeon's story "Killdozer!", which was published in Astounding Science-Fiction in November 1944. "Killdozer!" was adapted to comic book form in Worlds Unknown in April 1974 by writer Gerry Conway and artist Dick Ayers. Two months before that cover date, in February 1974, NBC had broadcast a made-for-TV movie version of Killdozer! with Clint Walker, Neville Brand, and Robert Urich. We watched that movie when we were kids. I haven't seen it since. Anyway, this makes a quadruple-Killdozer! anniversary year: eighty years since the first publication of the story, fifty since the movie and comic book adaptations, and twenty since the real-life Killdozer rampage. Maybe every thirty years there's a Killdozer outbreak, so watch out, America, in 2034.

Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1944. Cover story: "Killdozer!" by Theodore Sturgeon. Cover art by William Timmins (1915-1985).

Worlds Unknown, April 1974. Cover story: "Killdozer!", originally by Sturgeon, adapted by Gerry Conway. Cover art by . . . I'm not sure. That looks like Gil Kane art under somebody else's inks? Comic books are supposed to be a low art, science fiction barely higher, but I would say that the comic book version of the Killdozer cover is better, and not by a little.

And speaking of influences or possible influences . . . a year after "Killdozer!" was first published, Weird Tales had its own story of a murderous machine. The title is "The Murderous Steam Shovel." The author was Allison V. Harding. This is the first Harding story I have looked at with a woman as the narrator. Her name is Vilma. That might lend some credence to the idea that Jean Milligan (1920-2005) was Allison V. Harding. Whether she was or not, it seems that at least some of the Harding stories were influenced or inspired by stories written by others. This one looks like an example.

"The Murderous Steam Shovel" by Allison V. Harding in a two-page spread in Weird Tales, November 1945. The art is by the rare and elusive Boris Dolgov. It doesn't seem likely to me that the artist for Marvel Comics in 1974 saw this image from nearly three decades before. Nevertheless, he arrived at a similar kind of personified machine. Artist Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965) also personified machines--to perfection.

Addition:

In 1939, Riverside Press published Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. Here's an image of the dust jacket of the first edition, swiped from the Internet. Dolgov's murderous steam shovel looks a little like Virginia Lee Burton's version, named in her book Mary Anne. They're seen from the same angle, and both were drawn with a crayon or charcoal on textured paper. (I think.) I wonder if Dolgov was aware of Virginia's book.

Text and captions copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley