Friday 21 August 2015

2000: CINEFANTASTIQUE MAGAZINE BABYLON FIVE SPECIAL


From 2000 (and therefore, technically, outside the Star Age): CINEFANTASTIQUE magazine's epic retrospective (including full, annotated, episode guide) on BABYLON FIVE.

This hefty whopper covered years 2-5 of the main series (the pilot and season one had already snagged coverage in issues covered in previous posts), the spin-off TNT TV movies (a mixed bag of the good and the bordering-on-bad) and a look ahead to the ill-fated CRUSADE (a show with the distinction of being cancelled before a single episode had even been shown to the public).

This wasn't quite the end-of-the-line for the franchise.  It also spawned a much-derided (although I actually liked it... so go figure) TV movie, LEGEND OF THE RANGERS, in 2002 and 2007's disappointingly low-budget direct-to-disc THE LOST TALES.  Both were intended to kick-start new aspects of the show's epic story arc but both floundered at the first hurdle and the franchise has been dormant ever since.  

It's surprising, given that the 1990s have come of age and that publishers are always looking for established brands to exploit, that no-one has seriously looked at doing a new comic strip version.  It seems a natural for a publisher like IDW.  Maybe the Warner Brothers connection automatically locks-out a third-party publisher (DC dabbled with a short-lived run, reprinted in the first incarnation of Titan's magazine over here, when the show was on the air but obviously struggled to find an audience).

This is Volume 31, issue 12. 

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. regarding your post on star wars world of fire, its more likely it was called star wars 2 as it was volume 2 in the marvel illustrated books series. Volume 1 printed the stories ' wookie world ' , ' day after the death star ' and ' the weapons master. ' You can see them both here:

    http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=596131

    I'm just wondering if volume 1 actually WAS printed in colour because even those stories were reprinted in black and white in the WILD SPACE volume.

    the official star wars site is currently running an excellent series of blogs on SWW, the latest of which you can see here:

    http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-in-the-uk-star-wars-weekly-2

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    Replies
    1. Hi there

      That would explain everything. That first volume is even more illusive than the second and even some of the most dedicated websites don't seem to know that it exists. Oh to stumble across a (reasonably priced) copy of that.

      It does seem weird that WILD SPACE doesn't print the pages in colour but maybe only the reformated-for-the-format panels and pages were coloured and never the original art as published in SWW (and reprinted in the better-late-than-never compilation. DH may have decided the effort of putting it all back together wasn't worthwhile (or possible).

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  3. that series got off to a slow start but seemed to finally gets it's footing from a writing stand point after Bruce Boxleitner joined the cast.

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  4. That Babylon 5 issue CFQ covered the entire 5 seasons of the show not just seasons 2-5 as the writer claims. I hope the story gets corrected.

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