Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior in the U.S.) remains, and will always remain, one of the most sophisticated, most uncompromising, most meaningful, most convincing, most thrilling action movies ever made. Every time I watch it—at least once a year—I’m awed by how perfectly it holds up.
(Images via madmaxmovies.com)
The first shot is another winner from lfics’ Flickr. The event is Galacticon II, 1979. Second photo is from Supercon 10, same year, via The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. The costume is based on the character as seen in Marvel Premiere #45, with cover (below) and interior art by the great George Perez. The cosplayer—obviously not a term anyone used at the time—is unknown.
That’s Paula Crist on the left. Crist toured as Zira in a Planet of the Apes show in the early ’70s and later became a stuntwoman, appearing in Battle of the Planet of the Apes and Logan’s Run, among others. She’s also closely associated with early Star Trek and sci-fi fandom, impressing Gene Roddenberry so much that he gave her a spot as a crew member in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The event above is a convention called the American Quincentennial Celebration held at Grossmont College in San Diego County. See more at Flickr.
UPDATE (9/22/15): The young man on the right is William “Bill” Blake, who played Cornelius in “Meet Zira & Cornelius,” the “promotional roadshow,” as he calls it, mentioned above. Blake is a makeup artist (mentored by John Chambers, who won an Oscar for his makeup work on the original Planet of the Apes film), actor, and special effects technician. More background on Blake and his career can be found here.
Crist and Blake are actually doing professional promotion for Logan’s Run and thus “cosplay” is not exactly an accurate description. The title of this post has been revised accordingly.
Just a kid among kids. The venue is the 1977 Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Con, which ran from April 8 to April 10 at the LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) Marriott. The Star Wars premiere was less than two months away. More shots from the con are at lfics’ Flickr.
A gorgeous relic and one of the earliest board games based on a shopping mall. The game board actually looks like a then-contemporary mall directory. I worked in a couple of malls during and after high school and remember quite a few of these stores, especially Waldenbooks, where I spent a lot of time as a kid. Kaufmann’s was an east coast chain, and so was Circus World Toys.
Also check out two other mall-themed board games, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Electronic Mall Madness (1989), the former based on the classic zombie film directed by George A. Romero.
(Images via eBay)
I mistakenly dated two of these designs (Darth and the Falcon) as 1977 in a previous post. I still like Lando the best. More Empire transfers here.
2 Warps to Neptune 