Star Lord #1

13 May 1978; Cover price 12p.
32 pages. Colour & B&W.
IPC Magazines Ltd.

Edited by Kelvin Gosnell.

Cover by Ramon Sola.

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Contents:

.2 Planet of the Damned UNTITLED, part one, w: R.E. Wright (Pat Mills & Kelvin Gosnell); a: Horacio Lalia, lettering by Bill Nuttal.

.8 TimeQuake UNTITLED, part one, w: Jack Adrian (Chris Lowder); a: Ian Kennedy, lettering by Peter Knight.

14 Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind - Fighting for Star Lord Introduction by Kelvin Gosnell; illustrated by Ian Gibson.

15 Starlord Survival Blueprints! (half page) content information. / Starlord Star-Squad Equipment free gift information.

16 Strontium Dog UNTITLED, part one, w: T.B. Grover (John Wagner); a: Carlos Ezquerra, lettering by Jack Potter.

21 In Starlord Next Week

22 Ro-Busters Day of the Robot, part one, w: Pat Mills; Carlos Pino, lettering by Tom Frame.

Since 1945, more than 100 planes and ships and 1,000 men have mysteriously disappeared between Bermuda and Florida in an area of ocean known as the Bermuda Triangle.

Anita 20,000 ton freighter -crew of 32 -disappeared March 1973
M.S. Marine Sulphur Queen -crew of 39 -disappeared February 2, 1963
Flight 19 -five Grumman Avenger Bombers -disappeared December 5, 1945
PBM Martin Mariner Flying Boat -went to find Flight 19 -disappeared December 5, 1945

Examining these disappearances, scientists have suggested they somehow broke through the Earth's Time-Space Continuum - into another dimension - and are lost on another planet. A planet of no return - A...

Planet of the Damned

George X. Sand has a lot to answer for. There was a publishing boom during the late sixties and through the seventies expanding and expounding on the notion that a nebulous area of water (variously described, but corresponding to a roughly triangular shape) was responsible for mysterious disappearances. It was, of course, complete nonsense, but that didn't stop a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon with their own takes on the concept.

Arriving on the heels of The Fantastic Journey, it isn't difficult to see Planet of the Damned's main inspirations, though at least there is a touch of originality in the handling. An AWT Tri-Star jet on a transatlantic flight is sucked into an abyss, whereupon they discover that they are above a landscape which they don't recognise. As the magnetic compass spins madly, the plane lands.

Lew Kerr, a business tycoon, and Stan Hackmann, a well-known science fiction writer disagree as to where they are. Their location is confirmed to be somewhere other than a remote island when a vaguely-humanoid creature with no eyes or mouth approaches. A rugged chap in a loin cloth leaps in and kills the creature, before introducing himself as Bosun Flint of the brig "Gallantine," and is shooed off as a barbaric murderer.

More of the creatures arrive, and silently lead the passengers to a lake of water. It turns out to be poison, and when one of the creatures is confronted it responds by spitting acid in the co-pilot's face. Flint returns and dispatches the creatures, before striking a dramatic pose and stating that "on the planet of the damned... the only way to survive is the barbarian way.

The Ab-Humans are unsettling, with folds of flesh in haphazard configurations, the passengers are... well, they are prospective food for whatever lives there. Flint, though taking inspiration from Tarzan and the like, is an intriguing enough character. The comment about being a bosun raises the hopes of some Robinson Crusoe style backstory. While the opening sequence feels rushed, there's plenty of detail in the telling to smooth over qualms about pacing issues.

newsflash 0714 gmt 1st May, 1978 Paris Agency I.P.

LONDON, NEW YORK AND MOSCOW HIT BY NUCLEAR STRIKES - STOP - FURTHER STRIKES EXPECTED WITHIN MINUTES - STOP - CATASTROPHE CAN BE TRACED BACK TO MAN BELIEVED CALLED KEMAL AZWAN - STOP

One could politely conjecture that TimeQuake is very, very loosely inspired by John Varley's Air Raid, but a background of the third world war raging significantly raises the stakes for the characters. James Blocker, skipper of the steamer Azwan, is in an empty carriage of a London underground carriage when a man appears from a shimmering light. Blocker is told that he has a mere twenty seconds, but doesn't want to hear more. Two more figures appear, and he is pushed through the warp with barely two seconds to spare.

When Blocker awakes, he finds himself 85 million years in the past. He attempts to leave, believing that he has been kidnapped by crazy people, but the sight of a dinosaur stops him in his tracks. Informed of the destruction of London, Blocker is told that he is the direct cause of the devastation. This is where things get more interesting - the Droon, a highly-developed but brutal race from the Rigel system are mentioned as an aggressive element in the far future.

"In 1997 a man called Lyon Sprague discovered a means of travelling faster than light. The Sprague Interstellar Drive carried man to the stars and beyond. By the 40th century man was the greatest power in the universe!"

The Droon, in some means we aren't privy to, managed to steal the secret of temporal warp-displacement. Or, for laymen, time travel.

The group which pulled Blocker from London are introduced as Harl Vinda (controller of the station, from the 38th century), Suzi Cho (princess of Haniken Empire, from the 32nd century), Quexalcholmec (pure-strain Aztec), and Marcus Geladius (a centurion attached to the 9th Legion), and they are all members of Time-Control. By changing the past, the Droon have managed to defeat humanity in the future.

At which point the Droon arrive to kill everyone.

Lowder has so many big ideas to play with that the story risks being overloaded, but there is a remarkably clear set of problems for the characters to solve. Reading the story now, there are hints of everything from TimeCop, through Time Trax, Seven Days, to the adaptation of Varley's story, Millennium. The timewar angle has since been beaten to death by Star Trek: Enterprise, though nowhere near as skillfully, yet none of the various properties riffing on the idea have so varied or interesting a cast.

The quality doesn't flag. Strontium Dog begins as it means to carry on, with an action-packed scene of Johnny and Wulf being fired upon. Their attackers are wearing chameleon cloaks, making it difficult to accurately defend against the attack, but the attackers aren't prepared for Johnny. Using his x-ray vision, he sights the position of the two men, and both Johhny and Wulf return fire.

Using advanced technology, Wulf returns one of the men to life so Johnny can interrogate him for the location of Max Quirxx, convicted of multiple murder on Bario-3. Learning what they need to know, they let the man die a second time. Setting off to take down their target, the anti-mutant prejudice is clear in the jeers and offhanded comments of the citizens they pass.

Carlos Ezquerra brings a comprehensively futuristic setting to life, with ridiculously detailed backgrounds and faces full of character. It isn't the kind of strip which can be called traditionally beautiful, yet is gorgeous to look at all the same.

The prologue for Ro-Busters contains an unnecessary jibe at Japanese imports (with stereotypical dialogue) which takes the sheen of the strip a little. Ro-Jaws, F.R.E.D. 2L (Federal Recycling and Environmental 'Droid) and Hammerstein (an army surplus war 'droid) are sent to Mek-Quake to be destroyed, but Howard Quartz, a billionaire who had his organs replaced to extend his life (thus the nickname Mr. Ten Per Cent), has done a deal to purchase them for his international rescue operation.

A colour two-page splash kicks off the story properly, and is an insanely detailed disaster. Pages which follow this are peppered with homages to sixties Thunderbirds comics, with jagged borders and angled views of the ships used in the rescue missions,clearly signaling that the story isn't to be taken too seriously. While the strip may be simple in comparison to the other contents, there is a real sense of love for the characters. Even the secondary robots (Angel and Chatterbox, in particular) get interesting scenes which play to their abilities.

This is a great start to the title, with the only downside being a vaguely-unlikable host in the form of Starlord himself. He looks far, far too smug. The overall package is a step up in quality from 2000 A.D. (better paper, more colour pages), and even the slight mis-steps can be overlooked as teething troubles.