1978: MERGER ALERT: 2000AD and STARLORD

From October 1978: The first combined issue of 2000AD AND STARLORD.

Most mergers tended to be half-hearted affairs with incoming strips shoehorned into the existing title (and foisted on an editorial team who had no part in their creation or interest in their long-term success) at the behest of the circulation department in the hopes that some of the readers of the just-defunct book would switch sides and start reading the victorious weekly.

This tie-up, it has to be said, is probably one of the most successful in the STARLOGGED era.  Not only did it give Tharg a stonking line-up of strips but the arrival of Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters transferred two strips that would become synonymous with the galaxy's greatest.

I've seen some reports that suggest that STAR LORD was still actually outselling Tharg when the decision was made to close it.  The logic being that its sales were dropping faster - and it was a more pricy proposition - so the older of the two weeklies was deemed to have the best long-term chances of survival.  At least that turned out to be right.

Tharg didn't make a habit of providing sanctury to his fallen colleagues.  After the less successful merger of TORNADO, the alien editor put a stop to all future shotgun weddings and - after a bedding-in period - the EAGLE became IPC/ Fleetway's main vehicle for mergers as the the number of victims really started to pile up.

1986: SAM SLADE ROBO HUNTER Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

This is the first issue of SAM SLADE ROBO HUNTER, another of the early Quality Comics vehicles repackaging old 2000AD strips for the US market.

Cover-dated October 1986, this formed part of the initial phalanx of QC launches which debuted a couple of months after Dez Skinn's company took over the franchise from Eagle Comics.  The IPC/ Titan partnership had previously piloted a Robo Hunter title with a five-issue series in 1984.

Slade's debut adventure this time out was a coloured reprint of The Beast of Blackheart Manor (a fun riff on Sherlock Holmes, Sweeney Todd and numerous country house killings) originally seen in progs 259 - 265 of the weekly.

The back-up strip was, as the cover suggests, Ro-Busters, a strip Tharg inherited from the departing STARLORD.  

This eventually notched-up a 31 issue run, ending in 1989.  

1977: STAR-LORD in MARVEL PREVIEW (Marvel US)

Here's a thrice (actually more) told tale that should be familiar to former readers of STAR WARS WEEKLY and FUTURE TENSE in the UK: STAR-LORD.  Sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not.  And no relation to the IPC weekly of the same name which appeared - briefly - in 1978, after the character's debut.  Hmmm.

Star-Lord first appeared in MARVEL PREVIEW 4 (January 1976), pre-dating the STAR WARS spawned SF boom, in a black & white strip penned by Steve Englehart for the Marvel/ Curtis magazine.  Following Englehart's departure from the Bullpen, Marvel handed the character over to up-and-coming creators Chris Claremont, John Bryne and Terry Austin.  Their first interpretation of the character appeared, again in black & white, in the pages of MARVEL PREVIEW 11 (below).

The first printing of the issue got Marvel into hot water by claiming, on the cover, that it was "in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein".  The author obviously disagreed and threatened legal action.  The first print run was recalled and pulped, the offending text removed, and then reprinted.

With Marvel UK's STAR WARS WEEKLY constantly desperate for back-up strips to pad-out its pages, it was inevitable that this strip would cross the Atlantic as a serialised filler.

Marvel presumably took a financial hit when the first printing was scrapped... but they found ways of recouping their investment in the end.

With the creative team flavour-of-the-month, thanks to their run on THE X-MEN in the early eighties, Marvel reprinted the strip in the classy STAR-LORD THE SPECIAL EDITION in 1982.  To their credit, they didn't just churn-out the same strip again.  They sympathetically coloured it, added a new wrap-around sequence (by Austin and Mike Golden), added an unrelated DOCTOR WHO back-up (Spider God from the UK weekly) and stunning new front and back covers.

Here we go again... in 1996 Marvel reissued the material, sans a certain Time Lord,  from the 1982 edition as STARLORD MEGAZINE.  It's a nice package (again) but Marvel used their square bound printing process which, time and time again, just creased the cover making the whole thing look a mess.

The one-shot coincided with a new three-issue limited series by Timothy Zahn and Dan Lawlis.

I picked-up both of the above reprints from the same dealer, at the weekend, for the princely combined sum of £1.30p Earth money.  Result.

Star-Lord made several more late-seventies appearances in the pages of MARVEL PREVIEW (issues 14, 15 and 18) and - now in colour - in MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL 10.  

1978: STARLORD ISSUE 1 (IPC)

Today, I'm looking back at the first issue of Tharg's ill-fated offspring STARLORD, IPC's ambitious 1978 SF weekly which folded after a mere 22 weeks on the newsagents shelves.

Starlord was launched in May, some 15 months after 2000AD and mere months after STAR WARS had smashed into British cinemas, giving Marvel UK a runaway hit with spin-off STAR WARS WEEKLY.

In addition to capitalising on the latest craze, IPC were also moving to monopolise (as much as possible) the SF market to avoid a rival launching a similar title that could erode the success of 2000AD.

Starlord was conceived as a fortnightly or monthly (to avoid cannibalising Tharg's readership) boasting better production values... and an inflated cover price to match.  However, at the last moment, Kevin Gosnell's new creation was upgraded - by nervous IPC management - to a weekly schedule, prompting a last-minute scrabble for additional material.

Starlord benefited from better printing, paper quality and interior colour, although this made the new launch more expensive than 2000AD and its other IPC stablemates (12p for Starlord compared with 9p for 2000AD and 10p for Marvel's Star Wars Weekly).

After only a brief run, it became clear to IPC's circulation department that two SF weeklies weren't going to survive.  Ironically, Starlord was outselling its older stablemate but its sales were declining faster indicating that - over the longer term - it was more likely to become unviable.

Starlord ended after 22 issues (the last cover-dated 7 October 1978) and folded its two best strips (Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters) into 2000AD the following week.

However, the brand lived-on in the form of three annuals (published 1979, 1980 and 1981).  A Summer Special also appeared alongside the weekly in the summer of 1978.