Two of my areas of interest — comic books and Broadway — came together in 1973 when Charlton Press issued one of the oddest comic books ever. In connection with the release of the motion picture version of 1776, they brought out an adaptation that was…uh, interesting. Western Publishing used to do this kind of thing for their Dell and Gold Key lines but by '73, they'd stop doing that kind of thing. Almost every comic book company had.
I have no inside info on how it came about but I have a pretty fair guess. My guess is that someone at Columbia Pictures remembered when they used to arrange that kind of merchandising with Western or Dell and approached them about it and were turned-down. I'd further guess they went to DC and Marvel and maybe other places before hooking up with Charlton, a firm which didn't say no to much. Charlton occasionally produced some fine comics but they paid poorly and had lousy printing and my sense is that almost every company that made a licensing deal with them was unhappy with the end-product.
At about this time, Hanna-Barbera was doing a lot of comics with Charlton and when the contract ended, they yanked it away and set up a new operation which I worked for. One of the guys I worked for had largely gotten his job because the guy before him had been fired for many bad deals, one of which had been the license to Charlton. I would be surprised if whoever made the deal for the 1776 comic was any happier with how things turned out.
The comic was written by Joe Gill. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Paul S. Newman as the most prolific writer of comic books ever. I liked Paul and he sure wrote a lot of them but I always suspected he was in there because he got the bright idea to submit himself for the title. I can think of several other guys who might qualify, one of whom is Joe Gill. Charlton paid so poorly that in order to make a living, Gill had to churn out scripts around three times as rapidly as the guys working for DC or Marvel. Enough of it was good that you have to wonder what he could have done writing at a more human pace.
His adaptation of 1776 was not among his better efforts…nor could it have been, trying to cram a 141-minute movie into 31 pages of comics. (141 was the original release length. Some home video versions run longer.) The songs, of course, were absent but some of the lyrics were retooled as dialogue. Large chunks of the plot were eliminated…
…and, oh yes: Gill cut out all that stuff about slavery.
I assume he was ordered to do that and oddly enough, it may have been a good cut for reasons of space. I doubt he had the room to treat that topic with any sensitivity. (Or maybe Gill looked at his working arrangements with Charlton and just found the whole topic personally distasteful.) In his abridgement, the primary obstacle to getting the Declaration of Independence approved and signed was merely that various delegates were squabbling about various points, most of them largely unnamed. Most of the romantic tensions between John and Abigail Adams, as well as the romance of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Jefferson, were also trimmed way down.
The artwork was done by Tony Tallarico, who did a lot of work over the years for the lower-paying companies. As with Gill, I suspect he had a lot of talent that didn't show through the low, low rates he was paid. He did a decent job drawing William Daniels in the lead role and seems to have not been given sufficient photo reference on anyone else. It had to have been one of his tougher assignments since all it was really was 31 pages of guys in colonial garb arguing with each other.
Charlton's costs were so low that they probably made a few bucks off the comic, especially if (as there may have been) some sort of promotional deal where copies were given away in some areas to promote the movie. That was done with many of the film adaptations that Western or Dell did.
Anyway, that's about all there is to say about this comic. I am by no means suggesting you seek out a copy of it because it's not good in a bad way or bad in a good way. Given the assignment of adapting a musical about slavery without the music or slavery, I doubt anyone could have done much better. It's just one of the oddest comics I ever came across. And you may have some idea of how many comic books I've seen in my day…