My Ebay pre-settings just flagged up this intriguing listing, a comic called Mighty Crusaders [I've had some of the action figures in the past]. There's mention of another Project SWORD! Anyone know the story?
"MIGHTY CRUSADERS #6 (OF 6)
Written by ERIC TRAUTMANN & BRANDON JERWA Art by JULIAN LOPEZ & JOHN LUCAS Cover by STANLEY 'ARTGERM' LAU In this final chapter, it's all-out Durlan civil war with our heroes caught in between! There's only one way out, but first the Crusaders will have to finally solve the mystery behind Project SWORD! On sale DECEMBER 15."
I don't read that comic, but I know that one of the Mighty Crusaders is a red-white-and-blue garbed character called The Shield, so a "Project SWORD" may have some connection to him. Just as the competition at Marvel introduced a group called S.W.O.R.D. as a space-themed counterpart to their secret spy organization S.H.I.E.L.D.:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.W.O.R.D._(comics)
As opposed to, say, S.P.E.A.R. or L.A.N.C.E...
Fascinating Richard. Do you think that the larger broadsheet format of SOLO' TV21's Project SWORD would fit well in a 'normal' comic? I wonder if Marvel or DC ever thought about bringing it to the US back in the Sixties?
ReplyDeleteThat's an excellent question. Let's see how my answer holds up...
ReplyDeleteThere are almost no cases of British comics material getting picked up for American reprint before the late Seventies/early Eighties. When the Gold Key comics imprint published Supercar and Steve Zodiac and the Fireball XL-5 they used their own original material. These titles can't have been a commercial success, either, considering Gold Key never did a Stingray or Thunderbirds comic. Bear in mind Gold Key published such unlikely comics as Room 222 and Dark Shadows and H.R. Pufnstuf…so for them to pass up a tv tie-in must mean something.
Of course, the biggest strike against a Project SWORD comic in the States is that we never saw the toy line under that name. There would have been nothing for Gold Key or similar publisher to cross-promote. If we'd had the entire toy line here, they might have given it a shot as they did with one of my most fondly remembered comic books and toy lines from 1971, The Microbots:
http://www.milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=fullsize&issue=53481407460%201
Sounds very reasonable Richard. Without a the momemtum of many of the Anderson shows being on TV I imagine it would have been hard to have promoted Anderson toy lines [although I'm always amazed how popular modern Anderson collectables sites are across the pond like FABGear USA]. There was a range of SWORD toys in the US and Canada during the late Sixties by Tarheel of Tarboro but, without the SOLO/ TV21 comics giving them a 'home' they presumably were sold as general space toys in the shops driven by homeland interest in NASA and the Space race. I suppose the Golden Astronaut range [aka Spacex] is a good example of a popular generic space toy line.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly when Century 21 picked up licences for more general books and toys it included US shows like The Monkees, HR PuffnStuff and Man From Uncle!