SWORD BOX ART ORIGINS: MOON BUS, PROSPECTOR, RANGER, SNOW TRAIN AND ANT

In my ongoing quest to locate the artistic sources of SWORD box art I have turned my attention to those three workhorses of the moon fleet: Bus, Ranger and Prospector. I've also had some fun with the Snow Train and ANT. But first let's have a look at the Moon Bus.

Featured previously on the blog, the earliest known image of the Moon Bus we are familiar with is this black and white drawing of a 'Tracked Vehicle' from the Swift Space Flight book 1963 courtesy of WOTAN, who astutely observed in an earlier posting that it looks much more like the Spacex Mobile HQ and the LP Moon Explorer than the SWORD version. It would seem certain that this is the origin of the design of all three. But I am fascinated by the question: was it the basis for the SWORD box art?

Three years later Frank Langford (Ref. GACCH) drew an almost identical 'Grubers' vehicle, below, in the Lady Penelope Comic issue 42 November 5th 1966. The similarity is so great - tracks, radar, nose antenna and rocks in the foreground - that it seems clear to me that the TV21 artist had to hand a copy of the 1963 Space Flight book. As GACCH observes, this drawing appears a good 8 months before the first official SWORD moonbus drawing by an unknown artist (ref. GACCH) in SOLO (August 12th 1967) pictured below and the Century 21 toy (July 22nd 1967 having what appears to be a T in a Circle badge on its nose). Both strip and toy versions have by this point evolved into the classic SWORD Moonbus shape, the principle addition being the second astrodome.

(picture courtesy of the Gerry Anderson Complete Comics History)

(Picture coutesy of the Philosophic Toad)

So, in an attempt to compare four key renditions of the Moonbus, pictured below, I have stacked them more or less chronologically and as mirror -images to make comparison easier. Although the first two early drawings do not appear to have overly influenced the boxart (third down), the mirroring has highlighted the rock feature at the right hand side in each one originating in 1963, re-appearing in 1966 in TV21, in 1967 on the box art and finally in the 1969 SWORD annual double spread (bottom picture). There are other minor connections such as the clouds of dust beneath the tracks and the overall moonbus design but it would be stretching the truth to say that the artistic origin of the 1967 C21 boxart lies squarely in the earlier 1963 and 1966 art. We can be almost sure that the 1963 Space Flight book was available to TV21 artists in 1966 and it may have been seen by the 1967 box artist but in my opinion the moonbus in the boxart was lovingly copied from the actual toy with the landscape coming from the artist's imaginings of a what a lunar landscape looked like.

I'll turn now to my favourite SWORD toy, the Moon Ranger. I had thought that the SWORD box art origin might lie in the box art of the 1963 and 1965 Nichimo Japanese model kits, which inspired the toy (pictured below left and middle respectively) but from the little evidence I have available it doesn't appear so. The related Nichimo Space Scout Tank, with art by the famous Shigeru Komatsuzaki (below right), looked promising but it's dated 1968, a year after the SWORD Moon Ranger.

Some time ago blog reader and space author Darth sent me this picture below of a space bulldozer from the NASA archive dated 1962. When I compared the vehicle to the right, which is just topping a ridge, to the SWORD Moon Ranger below there was a similarity. However, I would feel more confident about any sort of linkage if I knew whether the NASA bulldozer art had appeared in a magazine, book or journal, which a Century 21 artist would have had access to in the UK in 1967. Anyone recognise it?

Moving on, we come to the MOON PROSPECTOR. The earliest artists' renditions are the colour NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE cover and the SWIFT SPACE FLIGHT BOOK black and white drawing both from 1961 and both pictured below [top right and centre left]. These early pictures are clearly related: look at the general squat prospector shape and the docking plate behind each vehicle. However the artists names are not known to me. But did they influence the Century 21 box art? Despite the obvious bulking up of the Prospector I consider the following points of similarity significant: the direction of the vehicle particularly the wheels and stabalisers, the lunar mountain backdrop, the earth's position and the docking plate, which has morphed into a crater. You can see the crater even more clearly on the Prospector art from the 1969 PROJECT SWORD Annual [bottom left], where the outriggers have become radial scars. It would appear then that the original design went from Newsweek to the C21 box and then to find it's way onto the T in a Circle and Chibi toy boxes [centre and bottom right].

On now to take a look at the multi-named SNOW TRAIN aka BEETLE aka THUNDERBIRD 7. It's origin lies in the artwork of the great Eric Eden's SNOW TRAIN from the TV21 Summer Extra 1966 [top right courtesy of the Philosophic Toad]. This debut was clearly the basis for it's next rendering, the fine art of Malcolm Stokes in the 1969 Project sword Annual, featured top left [ref.GACCH] and by an unknown artist [ref.GACCH] the similar Snow Train from the Make a Model book of the same year [centre left and flipped bottom left]. Malcolm Stokes, in the 1969 SWORD Annual, also drew the Snow Train with it's heat-shields up [ref. GACCH], a configuration known as the BEETLE [bottom centre]. This was the basis for Imai's THUNDERBIRD 7 model kit three years later in 1972 and it's fabulous box art by Japanese Thunderbirds meastro Shigeru Komatsuzaki complete with miniature Booster Rocket [bottom right]. This was the closest we got to a Century 21 Snow Train toy! [as good as one when assembled by reader Ferryman complete with custom JR21 box featured previously].

Last but not least in this tour of SWORD art is the ANT. The first artist's impression I can find is one WOTAN flagged up back in 2008, the WEE WLLIE WINKIE strip seen in TREASURE, a comic for smaller readers. Below is my own copy showing the cover and date, 17th February 1968 and the double-page story depicting the ANT twice.

With permission and under licence from LOOK AND LEARN [owners of Treasure] pictured below is an 'official' close-up scan of the first page of the story in all it's wee glory. Alas the artist is unknown.

As observed earlier by WOTAN, the Treasure image is clearly an artists's impression of NASA's 1960's MOLAB [below], which had appeared a year earlier in the TV21 Annual 1967 [ref.GACCH].

Finally, this is Malcolm Stoke's stylised version of the ANT, complete with trailers and SWORD Tank from the superb 'Booster Rocket' strip in the 1969 PROJECT SWORD Annual [ref. GACCH]. It has always surprised me that the ANT never made it to the Century 21 toy factory or as far as I know a model kit manufacturer.

This article is indebted to the superb GERRY ANDERSON COMPLETE COMICS HISTORY website [GACCH], The Philosophic Toad, WOTAN, Darth and LOOK AND LEARN.