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.

War of the Satellites: the Prequel

Well...it looks like I have to slightly revise my understanding of last Wednesday's entry, which it now appears was the second panel of a narrative sequence. It seems that the space pirate's satellite-thingy was engaged in a dogfight with some sort of composite of an X-wing fighter and a Colonial Viper (suggesting that this was drawn slightly later than I'd imagined), as seen here, before defeating it in the previously-shown piece. It is likely that the off-panel assailants of the pirate craft in the other piece would be found to resemble the ship shown here. Aren't you glad we cleared that up?

War of the Satellites

I find it interesting that the ship in the foreground that I actually put most of my effort into is in fact a mere observer of the action, with the actual assault on the space pirates' ship coming from off-panel.

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.

The tiny, awkward X-wing seems very much an afterthought, added to lend some sort of drama to the static frontal view of Lord Vader's souped-up TIE fighter. I don't think it succeeds.

Note with Incidental Colonial Viper

If I thought anyone would believe it, I would claim that the Viper was drawn specifically to illustrate the note. A (possibly) interesting side note: later that year, I would dream that I'd received a life-size prop Viper for Christmas (on my grandmother's front lawn with a huge bow tied around it), and the rest of the dream was concerned with the monstrous impracticality of owning such a thing, and my ambivalent feelings about this albatross of a gift. I believe this may have been prompted by an article in Starlog tracking the fates of a couple of similar life-size rockets offered as contest prizes in the '50s, but it may have actually been before I read that. It was perhaps my least fun toy-related dream ever.

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.

Return of the Space Cowboy

Here is the other version of this drawing that I mentioned last week. I wonder if they're perhaps copies of an image I saw somewhere, since the drawings are so similar. (though, in coloring, I seem to have turned the lasso into a balloon...which changes the mood a bit).

Some People Might Call This a "Space Cowboy"

Few, if any, would call it a "Gangster of Love", however.

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!

Space Guy Swinging on Rope

Well, this guy's kind of an odd mix-and-match of source material...the "swinging on a rope firing a ray gun" bit is coming from the STAR WARS scene where Luke and Leia swing across the chasm, but the pose here is more akin to Spider-Man, particularly as depicted on the Bakshi cartoon. His mask is kind of a fruity Mardi Gras version of the helmets worn by the Spectrans on BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, crossed with Zoltar's mask from the same show. That part I definitely remember. Unlike the aforementioned characters, I conceived this guy as a hero, but I don't recall naming him. I do recall being very pleased with this drawing at the time.

Old-Timey Spacesuit

Referenced from the cover of some '30s pulp machine, possibly by Frank R. Paul. There were a bunch of coffee-table books of pulp art in those days, frequently offered as remainders, so I had quite a few. I believe I improvised the boot-rocket and the tentacle claw thing. And yes, I'm aware how one might interpret said claw, so you don't need to comment on that aspect of this drawing, Beavis.

The War of the Worlds

Two different drawings of Martian war machines from the George Pal production of War of the Worlds. While it was always a favorite (helped along by plenty of coverage in Famous Monsters and Starlog), these were probably prompted by a 1979 showing of a double feature of WOTW and Close Encounters of the Third Kind that I attended at the Sky-Way Drive-In in Anderson, SC (about a year before it shut for good). I recall being amused at the juxtaposition of the radically different views of alien contact, giving a kind of 'point/counterpoint" approach to the theme. My other most vivid memory of the drive-in experience is from a year previous, when I dragged my parents to The Incredible Melting Man. I was thoroughly disappointed with it, and irritated with the gratuitous '70s nudity, when I was there to see melting flesh and action, and there wasn't enough of either! Phooey! I do hope to at some point get the Halloween costume, though.


To conclude our presentation, let me note that today's posting is sponsored by the letter "F".

"The Martian"

Just to mix things up a little, here's a short story for you fans of Speculative Fiction. It's taken it 31 years to see "print"... but that still means I'm doing better than all the people whose stories are in THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS.
In case you can't decipher my elegant calligraphy, here's a transcription:

The Martian

by Devlin

One day as I was walking along, I met a Martian. I wanted to take a picture, but I forgot my film. It had 39 eyes, smelled like rotten eggs, had 59 limbs, and had blue skin. All of a sudden it shot a ray g* at me! I lunged at it and knocked it into its spaceship. It flew off. The End.

* Presumably, I had originally intended to write "ray gun", then decided that "ray" alone was adequate, but then, for whatever reason, neglected to erase the false start.

This fellow is not meant to represent the titular spaceman, but it's from about the same time, so why the heck not?

Behold the Protractor!

...also the triangle and the circle guide. I think these were done partly with the aid of a spiral-bound set of flimsy cardboard stencils and templates sold under the name "School Tools". A cool idea in theory, but its being made of cardstock with die-cuts that you had to punch out meant that all your traced shapes tended to have a couple of flaws at the connection points, and use with "juicier" felt-tips would soften the working edge of the template. So, like all poor craftsmen, I blame my tools for any flaws thes images may hold.

Flying Saucers

Not much to say about this one...just a couple of outer space types out for a weekend drive around the solar system.

The Solar System and Beyond

A reasonably accurate map of the solar system, though the relative sizes and distances between the planets are obviously off. Also, I've depicted no moons other than Earth's, and only Saturn has its ring (though, in my defense, I believe that none of the other rings would be discovered until a few years later). And, for the record, Pluto is still a planet as far as I'm concerned. I have no objection to adding a few, but I'm not giving up any of the ones we already had. Note the additional portrayal of young Kal-El's rocket leaving Krypton and its red sun, embarking upon his long journey towards Smallville and his new parents.

Space Baby

Popeye's gonna need a lot of spinach to rescue Swee'pea this time. Note the relatively sophisticated way I handled the radio-transmitted crying (and the unusually sloppy hands). But for real precocity in the field of sequential fiction, click here.

The McDonalds of the Future

The Jetsons influence is evident...as is the shaky perspective on the offramp. There's also the question of why there is a need for this elevated roadway if air travel is so common that the sky is filled with rockets. Also the question of why the sky-cycle cop is hassling the hovercraft when there are clearly space pirates in the vicinity...possibly led by the Hamburglar of the Future!

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.