Star Trek

I'm trying to figure out what the thing at the bottom (apparently not part of the Star Trek bit, since it's separated by the line above it) is supposed to be. It reminds me of the crude, stylized race cars in Indy 500 (or Rally-X, but that's still several years in the future). It's possible that I drew a car, and then was idly doodling, connecting outer edges, then corners. Alternately, the car image I see might just be coincidental, and it's an attempt at a version of some Star Trek vehicle or prop that I just can't remember, as I really haven't seen a whole lot of episodes in the last 20 years or so.

Three Comic Strips

What Grandfather could ask for a finer birthday gift than a trio of pantomime gag strips? In March of 1977, my own grandfather, John T. Thompson, Sr. was obliged to consider that very question on the occasion of his 65th birthday. If dissatisfied, he never mentioned it.
Said comics seem likely inspired by the Gold Key Club comics pages then used as filler in comics from that publisher. Sometimes they would just be wordless gags by staff artists, and other times there would be setups provided by the company and finished by readers. (Most if not all of these were 10-year old reprints-or just old used comics-at the time I was reading them, but it was all new to me). In this instance, though, I had to start from scratch. Taken in order:

• Icarus: In my retelling, Daedalus isn't involved. Icarus does it all himself. Of course, this may just be some other dude making himself a set of wings, but the mythological angle adds a touch of class. I thought the first panel was worthy of Saul Steinberg.

• Star Trek: A rather slight gag, but surprisingly post-modern and sophisticated for an 8-year old, if I might pat myself on the back.

• Superman: The least successful, mostly because the third panel is incomprehensible. I think it might involve Superman's construction of a jail cell, but I don't get it. The readers' interpretations are hereby solicited.

In retrospect, I wish I'd structured the third one to end with an explosion, so as to maintain the narrative symmetry, but I apparently wasn't all that concerned with it at the time.

A Busy Day on the Moon

There's a lot going on here-- there's Space Station K-7 (propelled by rockets for some reason), the proposed L-5 Point Space Station, a Mercury capsule, and what I think are a couple of Robert Goddard's early experimental rockets, along with a dome-shaped lunar base and a couple of robots of my own design. A pretty odd mix.

USS Enterprise NCC-1701

I might have done better if I'd rotated the paper 90º before I started drawing. If only I'd thought of that 31 years sooner!

Star Trek Props

Referenced from the photo section in The Making of Star Trek. Or possibly The World of Star Trek. They kind of run together in my memory at this point. On the left we have three views of a communicator. In the middle, a phaser (type II), under a funky egg-shaped gun that I guess was used by aliens at some point. To its right we have what I can only assume is a pickle of the future, above two medical instruments (the left one is an anabolic protoplaser;the middle one is possibly a laser scalpel) and a universal translator. This was, in retrospect, perhaps not the best use of my precious childhood days.

Self-Rejected

Two drawings that I apparently found unacceptable at the time. Now I find myself to be my own Max Brod, bringing to light work that the 8-year old me never wanted to be seen. Sorry, kid. I guess I can see why I didn't like Bulletman, but he has his charm. My own Bulletman was chewed to death by a neighborhood dog; my associates and I made a sarcophagus for him from an old toolbox and put his remains in a crypt deep inside a stack of terra-cotta pipes behind our apartment building. I actually don't recall ever exhuming his remains over the subsequent decade of my residence there. The place has been messed with considerably since then, and I know it's long gone by now, but I do wonder at what point somebody found this puzzling relic. The Enterprise and the Andorian look comparable to my other drawings of the time, but I apparently felt differently. It's possible that the Andorian was referenced from the Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual, which I've still kept around, just in case I ever need to intubate a Gorn.

Contour Drawings

Not blind contour drawings, but that would probably been even more hilarious. Note that, at this point, at least, I have equal allegiance to Lucas and Rodenberry. STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE sorely tested my faith, though in the end it would seem almost watchable next to the horror that was RETURN OF THE JEDI. Nowadays, I'd be just as happy if I never saw anything new from either camp ever again.

MONSTERS IN SPACE

Both sides of a folder from either third or fourth grade (I skipped forward at mid-year, so I'm not sure). I feel that this has to be one of those rather than second grade because of the fact that the shuttlecraft on the STAR TREK side is referenced from the Dinky Enterprise, which I got at Lenox Toy & Hobby on a trip to Atlanta sometime in mid-1976. I had drawn what appears to be a light bulb-nosed robot Superman being captured in some sort of net or bubble, but chose to erase him and do the Flair (or possibly Bic Banana) felt-tip rendering of the Enterprise instead. The monsters on the other side are from nowhere in particular, except for the upper left-hand one, who is from THE OUTER LIMITS, drawn from a book on science fiction films that I had (Can't remember the title, but it had a violet cover with a photo from FLASH GORDON on it). I can't seem to find the original photo anywhere, but this trading card is the same monster, I think.