The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Thunderbirds. Stingray. The Avengers. Doctor Who. Apart from being all top notch TV programs what else do these icons of the 60s and 70s have in common? Simple – they all appeared in comic strips of one description or another. Of course, there are many more out there.

(cover of TV21 showcasing the immortal Thunderbirds from 1967)

Lady Penelope. Captain Scarlet. The Persuaders. The list goes on and on. Those strips were featured in a variety of comics and magazines, now sadly no longer in print. Diana, Countdown, TV21… where have they all gone? I suspect the very technology all those TV shows hinted at has finally come around to bite them on the backside. Something has happened to society as a whole and it seems that kids just don’t read anymore (well, apart from J K Rowling books. And Philip Pullman books. And Jacqueline Wilson, who started out working for D.C. Thomson. And… Okay, let’s just say some kids today don’t read as much and leave it at that! – Joe). Now it’s all about CGI and interactive games: never has death and destruction been so accessible – albeit in a cyberworld!

(cover to Diana for Girls from 1964)

“The old ones are the old ones,” they say. Well, I don’t see too many of today’s TV programs appearing in comic form. Imagine a strip about a ‘reality show’… can it be far away? (what a thought – Joe)

That said, its comics some of us still love even though they have changed beyond (almost) all recognition in the past 15 years or so. New writers, editors and artists have brought gritty realism into the genre (I hate that word but it works) and changed the look of all our favourite characters. For some reason even Marvel are re-designing their main characters’ costumes. Is this to do with copyrights or just a desire for change? Or both? Even stalwarts such as the Beano and 2000AD constantly change their format to keep ‘in touch’ with today’s young comic readers. I ask, do things need to change so radically and is it for the best? Where are all the new strips? The new characters? The talent to produce them?

Film also has had something to do with the current change in direction of our medium. Along with big money. We’ve already had trilogies starring Spiderman and X-Men. Two Fantastic Fours and a Daredevil. Now take a look at his summer’s blockbusters. They all feature characters at least 40 years old: Iron Man, The Hulk, The Batman (although Hellboy is a good bit younger, but that’s not in the same mega budget league as those flicks, although I’m sure it will be at least as inventive if not more so – Joe). Indiana Jones is almost thirty years old; an attempt by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to bring the best bits of the pulp heroes of their childhood to the big screen. They wanted him to be a comic strip icon on celluloid and they pulled it off.

(cover to Look and Learn from 1968, part of a ‘Famous Firsts’ series of images, in this case depicting the first spacewalk. For fact fans that would be cosmonaut Alexy Leonov, who climbed out of his capsule and hung floating over planet Earth in 1965; if the Space Race had gone a little differently he might have been the first man on the moon. Your useless space trivia for today supplied by Space Cadet Joe...)

Lucas and Spielberg are huge comics fans and in Lucas’ case it doesn’t take much to work out where his influences are from. In fact, at one time Lucas owned part of a comics and SF shop.

My hopes are still for someone to create a new set of characters that we can get to like and love over the years. Someone to care about and read with anticipation.

But I’m not going to hold my breath. Maybe I’ll just have to create my own…

Crikey! issue 6 will be on sale in July and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently fiddling with his Thunderbird 2 model while telling kids “it’s not a toy, don’t touch it”.