SPACE 1999 COMICS

Continuing my nostalgic look at vintage Gerry Anderson series in comic strip form I come to what I, personally consider to be the final classic sci-fi series that Gerry produced - Space 1999.

I remember picking up Look –In magazine which started its Space 1999 strip in 1975. The full colour dramatic artwork was by John M Burns, but sadly it didn’t capture me sufficiently to place a regular order.

In time Mike Noble took over illustrating the strip but by then it had been relegated to black and white which even though Mr Noble is, undoubtedly a fine artist, the young fella I was in those days wanted to see colour!

The point of my meanderings is that at that time, although I watched the series on TV I didn’t feel the need to follow it in a comic like Look - In.

The only strips I read at the time were in the Space 1999 annuals which by and large were pretty uninspired. This one from the first annual was written by Angus Allen and drawn by John M Burns..

I did get the final Space 1999  annual in 1979 which unlike the other annuals was full of American reprints.

These were apparently from an American publisher called Charlton Comics who’d released a series of Space 1999 comics from 1975 to 1976 both in colour and black and white. These days much is known and written about these comics but at that time the reprints were a bit of a mystery to me.

As an example I've chosen some panels from the first colour version of the comic which wasn’t actually in the annual. It featured a brief summary of the opening episode, ‘Breakaway’, before the  story, ‘Moonless Night’ begins. The art is by Joe Staton .

This second example from issue 7 of the colour series was the final edition, and the only one to feature characters from the second season. These are the opening pages to a comic strip adaptation of the second season opener, The Metamorph’.  The art is by Pat Boyette.

If these comics had been generally available in Britain I'd have probably  made the effort to pick them up. The artwork and stories was fairly good and as they were comics dedicated to the show rather than sharing strip stories with pop pin ups it makes them a bit more collectable too.