Tuesday, September 22, 2015

STAR TREK Meets LASERBLAST

Star Trek (with a weird, hybrid U.S.S. Enterprise), Laserblast (represented by David Allen's stop-motion aliens) and the Universal sci-fi classic, This Island Earth, collide in this cool magazine poster from the late 1970s. I'm sure one of you Star Kids out there can identify where this poster originally appeared and the artist who painted it... because I have no idea!

The artist's signature is indecipherable, unfortunately, and the style isn't instantly familiar.

If I had to guess as to its origins, I'd say it looks like something from the UK's Starburst or maybe the short-lived Science Fantasy Film Classics, or maybe Fantastic Films.

UPDATED: I knew I could count on you folks! Star Kids Martin Kennedy and Glen Mullaly have both identified it as being the work of John Allison. It appeared in Science Fantasy Film Classics #3 from the Summer of '78 (the one issue I didn't have!). Looks like my guess wasn't that far off. Thanks, guys!

9 comments:

  1. I don't recognise it so it isn't from Starburst, or TV Sci-Fi Monthly (which would be the more likely UK possibility).

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  2. Yes its the fold-out poster from Science Fantasy Film Classics magazine no# 3, 1978. Great artwork by John Allison who did a number of similar posters for the magazine http://martinlkennedy.tumblr.com/post/33910507049/fold-out-poster-from-science-fantasy-film-classics

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  3. I agree, definitely not Starburst...

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  4. God I love Laserblast. But I connect it with Star Wars. How the star of Laserblast blows up a Star Wars sign and then the same year he steals Luke Skywalker's Corvette.

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  5. I love publications with Star Trek art that is "off" in some way. One of my favorite examples are the Best of Trek paperbacks which for some reason didn't procure any rights to use Star Trek images. Since the first one came out in April 1978 - maybe it's a good subject the blog?

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  6. Love that the artist attempted to show the "updated" Enterprise from The Motion Picture, which was only beginning to shoot as this mag came to press.

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  7. For a moment, I thought this was one of IDW's Star Trek crossovers, like their Trek / Planet of the Apes miniseries.

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  8. That's an interesting depiction of the Enterprise. Star Trek was going to be a TV show called Star Trek Phase II. They redesigned the Enterprise for Phase II and even built a filming model ca 1977. However, the Enterprise in this artwork does NOT match the Phase II Enterprise. The nacelles are different. But what is interesting is that this design does reflect some later drawings of a possible Enterprise that were done in the 1980s and must have been based on some kind of production artwork that was circulating.

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  9. The angles on that thing sort of remind me of the Federation Battlecruiser from the ADBs Star Fleet tabletop game universe.

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