A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: The screen siren turns 77! Every year on Jan. 16, we run our birthday tribute to actress Caroline Munro who, to our way of thinking, would have been the perfect Talia in a 1970s Batman movie. Here it is again, in fact. (She’s turning 77.) The whole reasoning is based on her role as Margiana in 1973’s Ray Harryhausen-infused The Golden Voyage of Sinbad: But now we have something new to add to the mix: a phenomenal commission by artist Frank Cho, showcasing Munro in the movie. Check out what he posted online: “Took a break from my regular work and finished a commission that I started months ago,” Cho wrote on Facebook. “The commission was of Caroline Munro, but since I’m a huge Ray Harryhausen fan, I had to add the centaur-cyclops from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.” Naturally, I showed this to our pal and 13th Dimension house colorist Walt Grogan, and he promptly whipped up this magazine-y cover: See, that just reinforces that she would have made a great Talia too. (Here’s Cho’s website, by the way.) For history’s sake, this is how Margiana was portrayed in Marvel’s groovy, two-part Golden Voyage of Sinbad adaptation in 1974’s Worlds Unknown #7-8, by Len Wein, with art by George Tuska and Vince Colletta: Oddly, she has blonde hair on the cover of Issue #8: Now, if I could only go back to the ’70s to get that Batman movie made. — MORE — CAROLINE MUNRO — The Greatest TALIA That Never Was. Click here. — The Kitschy Greatness of THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD. Click...
CAROLINE MUNRO TURNS 77: Our annual birthday rumination on what might have been… — UPDATED 1/16/26: Caroline Munro turns 77! This piece first ran in 2016 but we reprint it every year because you guys always dig it. Plus, this year we have a bonus for you — Frank Cho’s rendition of Munro from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad! Right on. — Dan — When Sir Christopher Lee died, I wrote that the one great villain he never got to play was Ra’s al Ghul, Batman’s megalomaniacal adversary (click here). When I was a kid in the ’70s I’d write to DC Comics — not quite understanding how such decisions were made — pleading with them that Lee be cast as the Demon’s Head. Ideally, the movie would be based on this Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams/Dick Giordano/Irv Novick masterpiece: But if Christopher Lee were the perfect Ra’s al Ghul, then Caroline Munro was the perfect Talia. I knew Caroline Munro from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and The Spy Who Loved Me. She was not just beautiful, she was magnifcently sexy and, like Talia, had an appearance of exotic, if nonspecific ethnicity. Lee and Munro acted together in Dracula A.D. 1972. If only they could have been reunited. The British sci-fi/horror actress’ birthday is this week (she was born Jan. 16, 1949) and usually we do a 13 COVERS salute to our favorites here at 13th Dimension. But that’s not really fitting in this case. Instead, just ponder these pix and imagine the ideal casting that was, sadly, never meant to be: So did Neal Adams base Talia on Caroline Munro? We asked him. Click here to see what he had to say. — MORE — Frank Cho’s CAROLINE MUNRO Is a Perfect Tribute to GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (and, Coincidentally, BATMAN’s TALIA). Click here. — CHRISTOPHER LEE: The Greatest RA’S AL GHUL That Never Was. Click here. — REEL RETRO CINEMA: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Click...
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