Saturday, May 12, 2012

SPACE: 1999 (1975-76) Charlton Magazine Cover Gallery

At the same time that Charlton Comics were publishing their monthly, four-color comic book series based on Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999, they also published a magazine-sized, black & white companion series. This series ran for 8 issues in 1975-76. The interior stories were produced by Neal Adams' Continuity Associates studio, and all of the cover paintings were executed by the amazing Gray Morrow.

I love Morrow's paintings on this series. They're very imaginative and reminiscent of some of the sci-fi paperback covers and B-movie posters he painted.

Sadly, I don't actually have any of these magazines. As far as I remember, I never saw them on any of the local newsstands when I was a kid, although the color comic wasn't hard to find. I've hunted for them in various back issue bins over the years, but never came across any copies. I've poked around online, too, but never found any that I felt were reasonably priced. Oh well....

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7 comments:

  1. Kiwi TVMay 12, 2012 at 5:23 AM

    I've never liked Morrow's comic illustrations - a scratchy thin lines, but have to give him credit, these covers are nice work.

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  2. abdul666May 12, 2012 at 8:47 AM

    Space 1999 : grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
    When I discovered the show I did not spot that it was the successor of UFO. UFO was so *British*, here the cast is for a part that of Mission Impossible.
    Read later that the UFO audience wanted more emphasis on the Moon Base (no doubt Lt. Ellis was a decisive element), but that for some reason the project evolved to an entirely new show.

    And thus instead of Lt.Gay Ellis / Gabrielle Drake in minidress we got Dr Helena Russell / Barbara Bain (the worst, most inexpressive actress I ever saw) in pyjamas...
    Grrrrrrr I repeat :-)

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  3. wordboyMay 12, 2012 at 10:45 AM

    I remember them. They had some good stories in them.

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  4. Britt ReidMay 12, 2012 at 11:13 AM

    The Gray Morrow cover art for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 was also used for both tv station promo ad art and licensed product art (I have "puzzles in a can" with art from 1-4 on them and had a t-shirt with #4's art on it)

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  5. Thunderbird 7May 13, 2012 at 3:50 PM

    Christopher,

    If you're only interested in seeing what the magazines were like rather than collecting, they're all available at Space1999.org. Charlton's out of business, so they're not losing any money on these, although I don't know if your scruples might make you consider downloading these as depriving ITC of some license royalties. Then again, Charlton paid all necessary royalties to ITC decades ago.

    http://www.space1999.org/gallery/magazines/comic_magazines.html

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  6. MikeSeptember 17, 2012 at 10:05 AM

    I personally loved Morrow's comic illustrations. I guess I'm just weird like that.

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  7. AnonymousMarch 9, 2013 at 6:56 AM

    I owned every single copy of these as child (thx Dad!)

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