These terrific
Space: 1999 (
"Mondbasis Alpha 1") comics covers from Germany were sent to me over two years ago (!) by reader
Kessler Tobias, but got lost in my e-mail. In any case, better late than never! Kessler didn't include any publication info, or identification of the artists, but damn, look at these! 50's pulp-styled robots! Giant ants! Enjoy!
Christopher, thank you for posting these covers. I have been a die-hard SPACE:1999 fan ever since I watched it's debut as a boy beginning in 1975.
ReplyDeleteSGB
Shared your blog on the Space: 1999 series FB page. Great blog! www.facebook.com/space1999series
ReplyDeleteThe "Zeichnung" (although that should be Zeichnungen or Zeichner IMO) on the cover mentions (José Maria) Cardona as the artist.
ReplyDelete"The robot invasion/Invasion of the robots" came out in '77, and "Planet of the giant ants" in '78.
Zeichnung is used here like art or illustration, a singular noun describing the activity or profession. Makes perfect sense in German.
DeleteBTW, ZAK was (is) a great magazine, it presented a large variety of comics from all over Europe, and probably also the US and Canada, action, sci-fi, history, some sports and romance. Pretty much introduced me to the medium.
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DeleteThese covers are terrific! They make me think of the great painted covers that appeared on Gold Key comics when I was a kid; particularly SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON: LOST IN SPACE.
ReplyDeleteMy own affection for the shows of Gerry & Sylvia Anderson started with SUPERCAR and FIREBALL XL5; series that couldn't have existed in any other decade but the sixties...
Hi Christopher,
ReplyDeletewhat a spooky coincidence - I had totally forgotten having sent the scans to you. Two days ago I took one of the comics from my shelf to read again (after lots of years) and today I stumbled about your update. Sounds like "Twilight Zone". Maybe some other reader from Germany can clarify whether there were more albums than these two - I am not sure.
All the best,
Tobias
http://kinoblog.sz-ticker.de/
Little correction the magazine title is ZACK
ReplyDeleteduring 1972 to 1980 they publish fine comics from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Italy
with spinoff like ZACK-Box what is album edition from Magazine series.
ZACK was Innovative as they order new comic story at Artist
One of those were Space: 1999 comics by artist Cardona and script by Farinas from Italy
To make clear there NOT part of Anderson merchandise !
Jab or Look sharp is the translation of the Zack Magazine. It was published by Koralle-Verlag (Coral-Publishing-House). An independent Publisher. They had a sort of licensing agreement - for the francobelgian, italian and spanish series and artists - and a publishing agreement with other european publishing houses. So there were differently named versions of this magazine/this magazine-concept published under different. Zack-Box means Look-sharp-Box. This was their Album-Imprint. Zack was a sort of variety-anthology-magazine-series published in the european Comic-Album-Format. But with metallic-staples as binding, rather than the more expensive and durable adhesion-binding-process, which they reserved for their Zack-Box-Album-Imprint. I had once a few of the magazines. Acceptable printing quality. Sadly they used machine-font-lettering instead of the handwritten lettering present in the orginal comics. It is still very common, that in west- and east-german-comics typewriter-font-lettering is used. Great covers. Mondbasis Alpha (-1) translates as Moonbase Alpha (-1). The series was first shown on ZDF, Second German Television, in West-Germany. With Jean-Michel Jarre´s Space Music added as Opening and Closing Titles - if i recall correctly. They shortened the episodes and didn´t buy and dub all of them. A wanton random approach that most of west-germany´s public state-subsidized and government-run stations used to do.
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