Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Schomburg is one of the defining illustrators of both the comic book and sci-fi golden ages, and you can see a partial list of his extensive work at ISFDB. You can see a list of the stories in this volume—the book’s subtitle is Stories About the Time When Men Will Be Adventuring to the Stars—here.
(Image via The Golden Age)
It’s no The Last Starfighter Super Electronic Gun, although it does come with an “interplanetary code”—for some reason.
Thanks to Warpo, I now know these post-apocalyptic-themed, Mad Max-inspired toys exist. Billed by Tonka as a “male-action survival” line for “older boys” and following the release of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), it was a good shot, if a misfire (profit-wise), by Tonka. The post-nuke trope was in high gear in film, comics, and especially neo-pulp novels at the time, but I would say the concept appealed mostly to boys older than the 5-10 age range Tonka was targeting.
(Images via Orange Slime and the Action Figure Archive)
The stunning paintings are by Robert Engle for a gorgeous “bendy” action figure line that influenced space/alien figures and toy design for decades. (Look how closely Orbitron resembles Membros from Mego’s Micronauts line, for instance.) The Outer Space Men followed Mattel’s popular Matt Mason toys (the first great space line) and had an initial run of one series only, as the public lost interest in the space program quickly after Apollo 11. The top painting shows series one. The bottom painting shows the unproduced (at the time) series two.
Following the success of Star Wars, Colorforms and Mel Birnkrant, who created The Outer Space Men, smartly released a Space Warriors Adventure Set and a series of jigsaw puzzles based on the characters in the 1968 line. In 2010 Four Horsemen Studios re-released the original Outer Space Men along with some new figures based on Birnkrant’s designs.
(Images via melbirnkrant.com, where Mel praises Engle’s work.)
A flying saucer flying saucer. Well played, Wham-O.
The minis are great, but it’s the brilliant cover piece by Trampier that caught my eye. I believe it’s original to this product. I did an image search to see if I could find the piece anywhere else and thought it really interesting that Jim Steranko’s cover for the Blade Runner Marvel Super Special repeatedly popped up in “visually similar images.” Notwithstanding the somewhat similar color schemes, I think Tramp’s work does have quite a bit in common with Steranko’s renegade sensibilities.
Tramp is rightly famous for his early AD&D work, but in my opinion his interior art for the Star Frontiers modules Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes (1984) and The War Machine (1985) is just as good or better. You can see a few examples below courtesy of starfrontiers.com, an excellent resource and history site. Go there to browse the whole modules.
I posted the original Bob Larkin cover art on Facebook last week. Here’s some original Dave Cockrum art from the same issue. You can read the whole comic—written by Roger McKenzie and illustrated by Ernie Colón—at Alberto’s Flickr. It’s good stuff, and there are lots of extras.
Bonus: here’s a photo of some 1978 kids transfixed by the oversized beauty.
2 Warps to Neptune 