Valley of the Dinosaurs "Bride Battle" Valley of the Dinosaurs #9 (Charlton) Art and Story: Unknown August 1976

A young man from a rival tribe has his eyes set on Katie as his mate.

Story Summary

Baka, a young man from a rival tribe has his eyes set on Katie as his mate. One night, after watching the cave dwellers village closely he spies Katie alone by the fire after the others have gone to their caves to sleep. He rushes in and grabs her. If he could get her back to the caves of his people, by tribal law she would be his wife. Katie kicks and screams as he carries her off into the jungle, explaining his intentions. The girl complains she doesn't want to marry him and she's too young to marry anybody yet. But Baka is not deterred.

Then, Lok jumps upon him and the two fight. Baka swings his stone axe at Lok, but Lok dodges and brings him down with a right cross to the jaw, as he learned from his boxing lessons with John Butler, and Baka is out cold. Katie wraps her arms around Lok and kisses him, telling him that someday she'll marry someone just as brave as him. Lok blushes and muses he's too young to get married.

THE END

Didja Know?

"Bride Battle" is a 2-page text story in Valley of the Dinosaurs #9.

This story is also reprinted in Valley of the Dinosaurs #1, a giant-size one-shot issue published by Harvey Comics in 1993.

Katie was abducted by a rival tribe in "Captured by the Cliff Men", as she is here. In that story, there was no explanation given for the abduction, but I speculated it was to be the mate of her abductor. In our current story, that is the actual motive for her abduction!

Didja Notice?

This story indicates that the Butlers live in Gorok's cave with his family. It was never made clear in previous stories if that was the case or if the Butlers had their own cave among the others used by the cave dwellers.

This story indicates that John has trained Lok in boxing techniques. We first learned of John training Lok in some Western self-defense in "The Jade Skull".

As in "Captured by the Cliff Men", Katie gives Lok a kiss as a reward for her rescue. She even goes on to say, "I'm too young to get married now, but when I do get married, it's going to be to someone as brave as you are, Lok!"

I think the artwork that accompanies this text story may have been borrowed from panels of previous VOTD comic book adventures. The first image is of John and Lok, but John does not even appear in the story. The second is of Lok knocking out Baka, but it almost looks like two scenes mashed into one, with different art styles, with Lok having clean, sharp lines and Baka looking sketchy with thick lines. And the last image is of Katie and Lok, but Katie appears to be holding a handful of berries or something, which never happens in the story.