Since, I plan to be using this blog for practical purposes soon, I'm going to be putting one of the more personal/embarassing entries down here for the intrepid to find.

I woke from a summer afternoon dream recently thinking obsessively about a pair of comic books that I'd read awhile ago. These were obscure bronze age books. Bronze age meaning that they were late 70s comic books and they were to comic medium what the late 70s were to popular music. They also had a sense of possibility that has long sense been bled out of most mainstream comic with the dominance of soap-operatic superheroes. No, these are space-operatic superheroes. In an effort to put these images into context, I was able to tie down some of the details in my own personal narrative.

At The Art of Don Newton, I found this cover art. which pretty much somes up the story itself. The swooning damsel in our hero's arms by the way is suppossed to be the ship's captain. The hero's name is Donovan Flint. Yeah, I know, it makes Nick Carter Warlord of Mars look positively progressive. It helps to keep in mind that this a fantasy of power and competence . The sorts of things that people dream about when they don't have them.


Remember this was 1977-8, I was 8 going on 9. I'd also just gone through a very odd transformation. The previous summer I had been unable to read. This was a huge breakthrough for me, I had real problems learning to read, I was a real slow learning and was subject to all sorts of remedial and special education. The stories really resonated with me. I had just mastered a truly magical skill. These were stories about people developing ever greater skills and abilities and using them to achieve ever more wonderous things. I was hooked.

The other book was Seeker 3000. This was originally published in 1978, when I read and fell in love with it. The single issue ended in a cliff hanger. The crew of Seeker 3000 had been exiled from Earth to an inhospitable universe. This story was not going to be continued until 1998, but several things had changed in that time. I was now a depressed gread student/editor, not so much thrilled by endless horizons of possibility, and the characters had abused steroids in a self-destructive fashion.

The comic book I loved even more than these was the darker and more ironic Howard the Duck, but since Howard has some popularity, websites, even a movie, I won't comment, my dreams were about truly obscure comics. Seeker 3000 and Star Hunter are each too obscure to get even a single tribute site. I attribute my literacy more to these comics than to anything the schools ever did for me. They made me want to read. Cats and hats turned me off incredibly. It was literally painful to work my way through an easy reader and the pay-off was just so pitiful.

Star Wars had also come been released the year before but it would still be years before I would see it. My parents, for a variety of reasons, never took us to the movies. Hence, the obvious rip-offs and general lack of originality displayed in some of these stories was lost on me.

Summer of 1980(?, though it may have been as late as 1982 according to information on the internet), I remember reading and getting blown away by Starlord. Marvel has made several attempts to bring this character. But the version I remember best was in black and white with really large pages. I read and re-read that book until it fell apart.

A particularly good source for this sort of research seems to be the ComicsDb. I should note that we are talking about obscure episodes in an obscure period of an obscure medium. Even significant comic-book-guy obsessiveness can't overcome that.  ¶ #

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