"Mytek the Mighty" is a British comic adventure strip, appearing in titles published by Fleetway Publications. The story revolves around Mytek, a large and powerful robotic ape. The strip first appeared in the boys' anthology title Valiant on 26 September 1964. The story was written by Tom Tully and initially drawn by Eric Bradbury, with Bill Lacey later taking over.
Creation Since Valiant's inception the off-beat adventures of the Steel Claw had been popular with readers, and the addition of "Kelly's Eye" after Knockout was merged into the title proved a similar success. By 1963, both were being written by Tom Tully, a relatively new arrival who, as a freelancer, was also working on "Heros the Spartan" in Eagle, then published by Fleetway Publications' rival Odhams Press. Nevertheless Tully soon took on further work for Valiant, adding off-beat athletic story "The Wild Wonders" to his workload in March 1964, and then "Mytek the Mighty" from September 1964. For the latter he was paired with Eric Bradbury, who had been drawing for Fleetway and predecessor Amalgamated Press since 1950. For "Mytek the Mighty" Bradbury adapted a darker style, influenced by the work of Spanish artists working on other Valiant strips such as Jesús Blasco and Francisco Solano López.
Publishing history "Mytek the Mighty" first appeared in the 26 September 1964 edition of Valiant, and soon proved popular with readers. The strip would eventually run until January 1970 before being replaced by "College Cowboy". Bradbury illustrated "Mytek the Mighty" until 1966, when he began work on another Tully-written story in Valiant, "The House of Dolmann". His replacement was Bill Lacey, who had extensive experience on Fleetway's line of Picture Library titles, as well as drawing "The Sludge" for Lion. The strip originally ended in February 1968, but returned in June. Like many Fleetway strips of the time, "Mytek the Mighty" was sold to overseas publishers for syndication. French publisher Éditions de l'Occident had particular success assembling the Valiant serials into small-format albums, with 16 being produced between April 1972 and October 1974 and a second run of reprints from January 1977 to May 1978, published by Mon Journal. For these, the series was retitled King Kong despite being unrelated to the famous film simian. The same editions were also translated into Swedish by Semic Press and Spanish by Vertice and later Surco. The strips were printed again in English in 1975 as part of the small-size reprint series Vulcan, now rendered in colour; the same comic was also produced simultaneously in a re-lettered German version under the name Kobra. This only lasted until 1976, when the comic was merged with Valiant to form Valiant and Vulcan; this took the format of a short-lived small mini-comic attached to the staples of the parent comic, featuring edited conclusions to the stories running when Vulcan had cancelled, with the first wrapping up the "Mytek the Mighty" reprints. The character was briefly revived in 1992 for the 2000 AD Action Special, a one-shot featuring various classic British comics characters reimagined by 2000 AD creators. The update to Mytek was written by Si Spencer and drawn by Shaky Kane. Any chances of further such revivals were nixed when editorial staff belatedly realised that the character was not among those purchased from IPC by Egmont Publishing when they took over the former IPC titles that were still being published in 1987. Instead Mytek had to wait for 2005 before another revival, when the characters still held by IPC were licensed by TimeWarner and appeared in the WildStorm mini-series Albion. Both Gogra and a mainly inert Mytek appeared in the story, with the Spider killing Gogra, stealing Mytek, stomping warden Captain Hurricane and leading a mass-breakout in the closing stages of the series. In 2018 the rights to Mytek and other comics still owned by IPC were purchased by Rebellion Developments. In 2020 a new 11-page "Mytek the Mighty" story was featured in the 2020 Smash! Special, written by Suyi Davies Okungbowa and drawn by Anand Radhakrishnan. The creative team was chosen by Rebellion editor Keith Richardson to address the robot's problematic origin.
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