Over on the Down The Tubes forum my fellow space geek John Freeman has been encouraging artists to send in work to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of human beings first walking on the Moon, as risky and dangerous a piece of exploration as any carried out in human history but which provided us with the magnificent triumph of Apollo 11′s lunar lander, the Eagle, touching down on the Moon on July 20th, 1969. A little later the first human footsteps in the entire history of our species were made on a celestial body that was not our own home world. Science fiction became science fact. It was a brilliant success for engineering ingenuity and sheer courage, and watched by many via another marvel of the age, globally broadcast television (Sir Arthur C Clarke would later comment that the first lunar landing had been described endlessly by many science fiction writers, in many ways, but they never anticipated a global audience watching those astronauts take that giant leap for manking on television).
(naturally John and collaborator Mike Nicoll had to add a tribute of their own from their science fiction series Ex Astris, which appears in Spaceship Away, online and on mobile phones)
Appropriately enough there are a number of events and programmes marking the fortieth anniversary of one of the most historic moments in history (the BBC is running a whole series of programmes across its network this month) and as a lifelong space geek and comics reader I’m rather pleased John’s brought together these tributes to the magnificent Apollo programme from our beloved genre; go and have a look. For any artists out there interested in contributing, John is still looking for more relevant lunar art.
Thu, Jul 9, 2009
Art and animation, Comics and cartoons