RICK RANDOM'S HELICARRIER

As a bit of a post script to Woodsy’s post on the SHIELD Helicarrier, this is a flying aircraft carrier which pre-dates the Marvel one.

It’s used in one of Rick Random’s adventures called The Frozen World, and is dated 1958.

Being a big fan of the Rick Random series, and artist, Ron Turner, who drew most of the Random strips, including this one, I thought his flying carrier was worth a mention.

The carrier is actually referred to as a high speed mobile H.Q. and visiting aircraft board it by means of large padded ‘paws’ which attach and  pull them aboard into a large hatch beneath the craft.

The Rick Random series of story strips featured in Super Detective Library starting in 1954 with ‘Crime Rides The Spaceways’  and continued until’ Rick Random and the Kidnapped Planet’, published in 1959.

SARGE

Sarge took an ionic shower. He let the warm jets dance on his body. He was so soul-shatteringly weary, a husk of his former self. He cupped the fluid over his face and hair and sighed deeply.

"F*ck!" he spluttered. "God damn them all at Project SWORD!"

The recent shift to Martial Law weighed heavilly on him. Thousands of Casuals and Rejects had been rounded up and brutally interned by SWORD High Command in the vast ruins of stadia left over from the Second Mill. In the Third Mill's tectonic hell there was no room for sport anymore, except the netting of these poor bastards fleeing the advances of trundling Scramble battalions like mad rats.

Only the Warrior Nuns held their ground. Sarge loved those tough mothers. They'd watched the state-run terror from their holy citadels until they could watch no more. The old armouries were unshackled and the nuke pikes and plasma halberds tested on steel scarecrows normally used for scaring rooks. Now the Nuns, entrenched in their sacred domes, alone kept SWORD at bay through sheer bloody determination, spreading the message that SWORD will soon cease to sound.

One nun had emerged to lead the resistance. Clutching her beloved rosary, She rose from her silence like a raging dragon, inspiring her proud sisters to fight the vile injustice of SWORD oppression. The nun's name was Sister Florence Flowers, but in homage to the legendary Boudica rousting the romans in the First Mill, she was known simply as Beads.

God how Sarge would love to help Beads to victory and waste legions of SWORD scum along the way. He got dressed in the puke green garb of convicts. He was under house arrest for punching SWORD Supremo Jansen in the jaw. The electronic tag grated against his ankle and he rubbed his grizzled face. Visions of clashing nitro-falchions sparking on the battlefield filled his head and he vowed to rid himself of his tag and make his way to assist Beads in her war with Project SWORD.

Checking My Pulse

Following on from Woodsy's query about the colour of the Nuclear Pulse, here's my take on the mystery.

courtesy John Eaton

The blue version appears on the card back and in the Golden Astronaut advert in US mail order catalogue. But all actual instances of the toy, in separate and boxed sets are orange. The model shown on the trade photos is clearly a prototype, as you can tell by the opaque docking bay cover.

Courtesy John Eaton

As a kid, I expected to find the boxed toy to be blue and red and was seriously annoyed when it wasn't! Consequently, in the eighties when I assumed I would never see another Spacex toy again (pre internet!) I decided to 'repair' my battered Nuclear Pulse and repaint it.

It was a moderately successful job, but pretty crude. Then, years later, I discovered the internet and voila!

I now have my original painted Pulse, a boxed one and a fixer upper. So if anyone has two spare rotors they can sell or trade..

COSFORD TALKS: ALAN PERRY & ROBIN McDONALD

The next guest talk at the Flights of Fantasy was the pairing of director Alan Perry and focus puller Robin McDonald.

 Alan Perry became one of Century 21’s regular stable of directors working on Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons, Joe 90, The Secret Service and UFO.  He also worked as a camera operator on the feature film, Thunderbirds are Go.

Robin McDonald worked on many of the Gerry Anderson productions including UFO and the Protectors. His skill as a focus puller (working with the camera operator to maintain image sharpness on whatever is being filmed) has meant he’s worked on many films and TV series over the years, including Special Branch, where he was reacquainted with George Sewell, and The Professionals, where, in separate episodes he met up with Mike Billington and Ed Bishop.

Again, this talk was very entertaining with these two old mates  recounting several funny stories together much to everyone’s amusement.

Alan retold the story of how he and the crew, while trying to achieve a spiralling shot for the end of Alan Tracy’s dream sequence in T.A.G. went up in a helicopter to an altitude of 5000 ft, over an island just off the coast of Portugal . The helicopter then spiralled down with Perry filming.

However the shot was deemed unusable, so it was left to special effects maestro Derek Meddings to solve the problem.

He just had a small model of Tracy Island made in the Slough studio and filmed that!     

THE SPACEX S.H.I.E.L.D HELICARRIER

This month I had the pleasure of seeing the new Marvel Captain America film, the Winter Soldier. I really enjoyed the flick and one of the many craft in it blew me away, the mighty SHIELD Helicarrier pictured above.

The Helicarrier was first created by the great Jack Kirby in 1965 when it appeared in Strange Tales 135 pictured below:

When I saw the Helicarrier on the big Screen I couldn't help thinking it resembled our Spacex friend the Nuclear Pulse, which was created by the equally great Eric Eden in 1966 for the TV 21 Summer Special.

It graced the shelves of toy stores in 1970 as part of the Spacex range in the UK and Golden Astronaut in the USA. Who's had or got one?

The Crowded Moon

COSFORD: FIRST DE-BRIEFING

Continuing my look at this year’s Flight of Fantasy event, here’s some of the many items on display that I’d not seen at Andercon.

First up a David Sisson replica of the Explosives Truck from the Joe 90 episode, ‘Colonel McClaine’.

Originally designed by Mike Trim, it’s considered to be the inspiration for the SHADO Mobiles.

This original SHADO Interceptor is one of several original props brought to the show by mega Anderson collector Phil Rae (whom, I now remember briefly chatting to at the event, but unfortunately failed to recognise, so my apologies Phil)

 It’s been a while since I’ve seen this smashing piece of Anderson history so thanks to Phil for taking the trouble to bring it.

Next up this excellent model of Supercar complete with pilot, Mike Mercury sporting a natty pair of shades.

Guest talker, Martin Bower was seen at some point in the proceedings posing with the model for fan photos.

In fact, the opening guest talks were Martin being joined by special effects wizard, Brian Johnson.

The pair reminisced about Martin providing models for Space 1999, some of which he’d built several years previously after seeing the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 They also talked about the film ‘Alien’ and the way director, Ridley Scott, striving for perfection would think nothing of altering meticulously made miniatures’ by breaking chunks off to get his desired effect.  

Mighty Jack!

I first came across Mighty Jack [MJ] in Dennis Nicholson's bible back in the mid-1990's, where the Imai model kits are described. Since then I am not the only one who noticed a resemblance between Japan's Mighty Jack arrowhead emblem and that of the UK's Project SWORD. I featured an MJ toy on the blog in its first few months I seem to remember,

Both SWORD and Mighty Jack, were contemporaries in 1968, had amazing space-age machines and similar world peacekeeping roles, Mighty Jack being the name of the 11 agents who made up the organisation.

Reader and friend Arto agrees with me that MJ is So Gerry Anderson, so Thunderbirds! Here's the Wiki site and Arto has pointed out this taster of the original Japanese series of 13 episodes in 1968. Two of the episodes appeared in the States in 1986 as a film. Did anyone see it?

Anyways, here's a sample of some of the toys and kits I've seen online. There are more over on the cool Kaiju Korner blog.

Any of you collect Mighty Jack?