Bionic Pin-Ups by Jeff Cummins

I'm not sure where these pin-ups of Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin and Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers by artist Jeff Cummins originally appeared - I'm not familiar with that Sci-Fi logo - but I'm sure one of you will let me know. In any case, I think they're pretty cool.

UPDATE: Sure enough, over on Facebook, Star Kid Glen Mullaly identified the source as the UK magazine Sci-Fi Monthly. I'd never heard of it. Thanks, Glen!

Happy Birthday, Colonel!

And speaking of bionics (as we were in the last post), today marks the 77th birthday of the original Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors! Colonel Steve Austin is still - and will forever be - our favorite cyborg secret agent!

A Very Bionic Birthday

Here's wishing a very fine 76th birthday (born April 1939) to the great Lee Majors, the original Six Million Dollar Man, and hero to millions of 70s Star Kids.

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN U.K. Annuals

As with most popular television series of the Seventies, ABC's The Six Million Dollar Man was popular in the United Kingdom, and received the "annual" treatment for young viewers. There were at least four of these hardcover collections of fiction, games, articles and comic strips, published from 1977 through 1980. (If anyone know of others, please send scans - or if you have a better scan of the 1980 Annual, I'd like to replace the only one I was able to find online).

Third Coolest Toy Ever: Kenner's BIONIC BIGFOOT Action Figure (Holiday Re-post)

This is the third in a series of special re-posts for the holidays, remembering the coolest sci-fi toys of the Space: 1970 era. Hope you enjoy these "reruns" and have a great holiday season.

The third coolest toy of the Seventies was, without a doubt, Kenner's Bionic Bigfoot from the Six Million Dollar Man.

Unlike the terrifying-but-desperately-coveted Kenner Alien, I did own one of these beauties for a while, although, oddly, I never had a Steve Austin action figure. This meant that Bigfoot usually battled my Mego Superman or teamed up with the Planet Of The Apes Gorilla Soldier against Captain Kirk. Man, those were epic backyard confrontations! Bigfoot wasn't particularly well-articulated, but at a towering 15" he was damned imposing - especially when pitted against the smaller-scale Megos.

On a related note - which Bionic Bigfoot did you prefer - Ted Cassidy or André the Giant?

Obit: Glen A. Larson, R.I.P.

Television producer Glen A. Larson, who created the original Battlestar Galactica and developed Buck Rogers for the small screen, passed away Friday night of esophageal cancer at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. Larson was 77.

An extremely successful producer - although not always a respected one - Larson was responsible for a ton of Seventies and Eighties television, including such hits as Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., B.J. And The Bear, The Fall Guy, Switch, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Alias Smith And Jones, Manimal, Quincy M.E., and more. He produced the second and third Six Million Dollar Man telefilms, and brought the 90's comic book hero NightMan to television.

But for Star Kids, it was Galactica that stands as his shining achievement, an epic-scaled space opera with groundbreaking, theatrical-quality special effects and production design, and themes inspired by Larson's Mormon faith. It debuted in the Fall of 1978 as a Top Ten show, and finished the season as the 25th most popular show on television, only failing to get renewed because of its extravagant million dollar (plus) weekly budget. Despite its abbreviated run, it lived on in novels, comic books and a brief 1980 revival series, eventually being retooled and resurrected in 2004 for the Sci-Fi Channel.

He also worked with Leslie Stevens (The Outer Limits) to update the classic comic strip hero Buck Rogers for Universal and NBC in 1979. The pilot film so pleased the studio that it received a theatrical release in the Summer of 1979, before going on to a two-season run on television.

Although Larson was notorious for ripping off popular movies with his shows (he was even sued by 20th Century Fox and George Lucas over Galactica's similarities to Star Wars), his programs were undeniably entertaining, filled with action, humor and glamor, aimed solidly at family audiences.

I count more than a few of Larson's shows (Magnum P.I., The Fall Guy, Knight Rider) among my all-time favorites, and would rather watch most of them even now than much of what currently airs on TV. If Glen Larson was a hack (as his detractors insist), he was a successful one, and he'll  be missed.

Look-In Bionic Gallery

Hope you're all having a great Monday. To kick off the week, here's a gallery of Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman cover paintings for the British kid's magazine, Look-In. I'm pretty sure that all of these were painted by regular Look-In cover artist Arnaldo Putzu, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm mistaken. Enjoy!

Hall of Fame: John Saxon

Today marks the 79th birthday of actor John Saxon, who has had a long association with science fiction roles, both on television and in feature films, dating back to, at least, 1965's Blood Beast From Outer Space! In that decade, he also appeared in the creepy space horror flick Queen of Blood and an episode of Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel, but it's his forays into Seventies sci-fi that we celebrate here.

In 1974, Saxon portrayed a very Jim Kirk-ish, heroic Dylan Hunt in Gene Roddenberry's unsuccessful television pilot, Planet Earth. A year later, he played a similar role, Captain Anthony Vico, in Warner Brothers' equally-unsuccessful follow-up, Strange New World. In both films, he was a very Roddenberry sci-fi hero, tough but brainy, quick with his fists and his wits.

He appeared a couple of times on Universal's The Six Million Dollar Man (and Bionic Woman); first, as a lethal android that gave Steve Austin a helluva fight (and inspired Mattel's "Maskatron" action figure), and then a season or two later as an evil alien using the legendary Bionic Bigfoot in his malevolent schemes!  On Wonder Woman, he played a Nazi, and also showed up as an extradimensional tyrant on The Fantastic Journey in '77!

In 1981, he starred as the tyrannical Sador, the smoothly sinister galactic baddie of Roger Corman's space opera epic, Battle Beyond The Stars. He rounded out the Space: 1970-era with another villainous role in the 1983 Richard Hatch vehicle, Prisoners Of The Lost Universe.

Of course, while we focus here on his science fiction accomplishments, in his sixty-year career, the actor has played a couple hundred roles in every genre imaginable. Equally adept at playing tough guy heroes and despicable villains, Saxon has had - and continues to have - a career to be admired (and no doubt, envied, by other actors).

Happy birthday, sir!

Unused SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN Comic Art by Staton

 

Here's an interesting find: an unpublished cover painting of The Six Million Dollar Man's Colonel Steve Austin battling an alligator by my friend and collaborator, legendary cartoonist Joe Staton, intended for the fourth issue of the 1976 Charlton Comics series. For some reason, a considerably less-dynamic piece by Jack Sparling was used instead.Cool, huh?

News: THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN Season 5 DVDs Announced

For those of us who didn't buy the deluxe, Time-Life complete series set of The Six Million Dollar Man a few years ago, the good news is that the fifth and final season of the show will be receiving its standalone DVD release on February 18, 2014 from Universal Home Entertainment:

In Season 5 of this science fiction cult classic, the dangers are never greater and the assignments never more impossible as Steve Austin tackles national security threats on land, beneath the sea, and beyond the stars. 

Summoning every last atom of his bionic strength, Austin leaps into action against man-eating sharks, a reawakened Bigfoot, a murderous computer, hostile extraterrestrials, treasonous space explorers, and a nastily revitalized scientific probe. Revisit the astounding astronaut's final journeys in this unprecedented, digitally remastered DVD set featuring 21 uncut episodes!

This final Season not only includes Colonel Steve Austin (Lee Majors) in rematches with both the Bionic Bigfoot and the dreaded Venus Death Probe, but also features guest shots by a number of Space: 1970 favorite thespians, such as Pamela Hensley (Buck Rogers), Jenny Agutter (the Logan's Run feature), Ted Cassidy (Genesis II and Planet Earth), Rick Springfield (Battlestar Galactica), Jack Colvin (The Incredible Hulk), Jared Martin (The Fantastic Journey), Bibi Besch (Star Trek II), and in the final episode, John Colicos (Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, The Starlost).

The six-disc set has a suggested retail price of $39.95, and will not contain the extra disc of bonus material included in the Time-Life edition.

Behind-The-Scenes Pix #44: THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN

The bionic man himself (clad in iconic red track suit), Lee Majors, hangs with the original Dr. Rudy Wells, noted actor Martin Balsam, on location at Edwards Air Force Base during the shooting of the original Six Million Dollar Man television movie/series pilot in 1973.

News: SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN Season 4 DVDs in October

According to TV Shows On DVD, Universal has announced the wide release of the fourth season of The Six Million Dollar Man DVDs (previously available exclusively from Time-Life as part of a "Complete Series" package) on October 8, 2013.To refresh our aging memories, this is the year that Lee Majors sported that stylin' 70s 'stache!

The set includes all 22 episodes of the Fourth Season, along with three crossover episodes of The Bionic Woman. Episodes include: "The Return of Bigfoot," "Kill Oscar," "Death Probe," and "The Bionic Boy." Guest stars include Lindsay Wagner, John Saxon (Planet Earth), Stefanie Powers, Ted Cassidy (as Bigfoot!), Sandy Duncan, Farrah Fawcett (Logan's Run), Elke Sommer, John Houseman, Jennifer Darling, Carol Jones, Dick Van Patten, Joan Van Ark, Bernie Kopell, Robert Loggia, Ray Walston, Kim Basinger, Pamela Hensley (Buck Rogers), John de Lancie, Nehemiah Persoff, John Hoyt, Heather Menzies (Logan's Run TV), and Yvonne Craig, among others.

As noted above, this penultimate season not only featured the return of the alien Bionic Bigfoot (with Ted Cassidy replacing Andre the Giant in the role) but the inexplicably popular Venus Probe - a Soviet robot tank that accidentally lands on U.S. soil and goes on a rampage of destruction. Considering that the "Death Probe" was nothing but a malfunctioning machine with no personality, it's weird how excited I - and a couple million other kids - were by the damned thing. The "Death Probe" episodes were so highly-rated that the producers even had to bring it back for a rematch with Steve Austin in Season 5!

You can pre-order Season 4 now from Amazon: The Six Million Dollar Man: Season 4

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1974-78) TV Guide Ads

 Just for the heck of it, here's a selection of vintage TV Guide advertisements for ABC's The Six Million Dollar Man that I've collected over the last couple years. It's sort of a "greatest hits" package: the Bionic Woman, the Bionic Bigfoot... and the infamous "Death Probe!" Enjoy!

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1976-1977) Charlton Magazine Cover Gallery

Neal Adams

As they did with the Space: 1999 property, Charlton Comics of Derby, Connecticut published both a series of color Six Million Dollar Man comic books and a black & white, magazine-format series. The magazine artwork was produced primarily by Neal Adams' Continuity Associates in New York, with scripts written primarily by Charlton staff writers Joe Gill and Nicola Cuti.

I've showcased a couple of these great pieces before; specifically, Jack Sparlings art for Issue #3 and Earl Norem's striking cover for Issue #5. I hope you enjoy this bionic art gallery!

Neal Adams

Jack Sparling

Earl Norem

Earl Norem

Earl Norem

Earl Norem

Another Bionic Birthday

Space: 1970 wishes the one in-six million Lee Majors, a very happy birthday today. America's favorite astronaut-turned-cyborg secret agent, the original Six Million Dollar Man, turns 74 today.

Six Million Dollar DYNAMITE

Seventies cyborg superspy Steve Austin strikes an iconic pose in this terrific Six Million Dollar Man illustration (artist as yet unknown to me) from issue #8 of Scholastic Publishing's Dynamite kids magazine, published in February of 1975.

Steve Austin once again graced the cover of Dynamite a year or so later, battling it out with The Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers! The November 1976 issue, #29,sported this illustration - which looks to me like it could have been rendered by the same artist. Great likenesses of Lee Majors & Lindsay Wagner (even if - as a commenter points out below - they're wrestling with their non-bionic arms)!

Show of (bionic) hands, Star Kids: how many of you had these issues?

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN by Earl Norem

From Charlton Comics' mid-70s run of Six Million Dollar Man magazines, here's artist Earl Norem's original cover art for Issue #5 (May 1977), where we find super OSI agent Steve Austin battling a four-armed, bionic Yeti (a cousin of the Bionic Bigfoot, I wonder?)!  I don't have this issue, and not having read the story this painting illustrates ("High Stakes in the Himalayas"), I'm not sure what's really going on. But the amazing Mr. Norem does a great job on the cover!

Captain's bLog: What I'm Watching

Thanks to a couple of recent - and generous - reader donations and a well-timed tax refund, I've been able to pick up a few more additions to my Space: 1970 DVD library this month. (I also - as I mentioned here previously - ordered and received a VHS copy of the 1980 telefilm, The Aliens Are Coming, which I transferred to DVD-R. Overall, I rather enjoyed it and think it would have made an okay series, but I really disliked the lead character, played by Tom Mason. Or maybe it was the actor I didn't like. The miniature spaceship effects were pretty cool, though.)

At the beginning of the month, I finally acquired the Universal Vault Series edition of Gene Roddenberry's 1974 pilot film, The Questor Tapes, which I had never seen all the way through before. I enjoyed it a lot - it may be my favorite of Roddenberry's non-Trek genre efforts - and will be writing up a full review here on the site in the coming weeks.

(Now if someone would release Roddenberry's occult pilot, Spectre, on disc, I'd be quite content.)

Then, I traded in my Buck Rogers In The 25th Century - The Complete Epic Series set for the re-issued Season 1 and Season 2 volumes. I was hesitant to do so, since they cost more combined than the original package, but what finally convinced me to double-dip - aside from the fact that the re-issues were on single-sided discs instead of the trouble-prone flippers in the Epic Series set - was Universal's late inclusion of the TV version (as opposed to Theatrical Cut) of the first episode, "Awakening," as an extra feature on the Season 2 discs. It clearly was a last-minute decision, too: its presence is not mentioned on the packaging (I think there may have been a sticker), and the episode itself is presented without chapter breaks or subtitles.

Last night I picked up Universal's The Six Million Dollar Man - The Complete Third Season. This is probably my favorite season of the show, as it brought back (and spun off) Lyndsay Wagner's Bionic Woman, and featured the first of Steve's encounters with the "bionic" Bigfoot (in the very impressive shape of hulking Andre The Giant).

The season also features the return of several other popular guest characters from previous years, including Monte Markham's "Seven Million Dollar Man," John Fujioka's "Last Kamikaze," Oscar Goldman's favorite secretary Jennifer Darling, and adorable ESPer Robbie Lee.

Finally, I've ordered the 1974 Wonder Woman pilot movie from Warner Archive. I haven't seen this one in years - decades, probably - and I'm looking forward to giving it a spin. This is the one with blonde Cathy Lee Crosby as the Amazon princess, battling the evil machinations of Ricardo Montalban while wearing a star-spangled track suit. Whatever else it may be, this incarnation of WW is definitely a product of the Seventies! Obviously, I'll be reviewing this one here at the site sometime soon, as well.

Cosmic Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day!