52 pages. Colour & B&W.
Starburst Magazines Ltd.
Edited by Dez Skinn.
Cover by Brian Lewis.
Contents:
.2 Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio photograph.
.3 Editorial by Dez Skinn. / Contents / Indicia
.4 The Writers of Star Trek text feature by Christopher Wicking & Tise Vahimagi.
10 Litterbug! w:/a: Dave Gibbons.
12 Star Wars - Buccaneers of Space text feature by Sam Deli.
20 Jeff Hawke Here be Tygers w:/a: Sydney Jordan.
r: Daily Express newspaper strip.
25 Star Wars - Now See the Film at Home advertisement.
26 Things to Come news text feature by Tony Crawley.
29 Andromeda Bookshop advertisement.
30 Pass the Book text story by Harry Harrison; illustrated by UNKNOWN.
35 Jeff Hawke Here be Tygers (cont.)
36 The Making of Star Wars text feature by John Brosnan.
41 Fantastic Filmbooks (one third page) advertisement
42 The Writers of Star Trek (cont.)
46 Advertisements (two thirds page)
47 The Writers of Star Trek Episode Guide
48 Maya Merchandising (two thirds page) advertisement for Maya Merchandising.
51 Spaceburst w:/a: Brian Lewis.
A rendition of (more or less) Star Wars' main cast by Brian Lewis hints at the aspirations of Starburst, while a hastily-added photograph of Mr. Spock hints at what was to become of the title for much of the run - a compromise between innovation and commercial necessity. The first issue is a powerful package of intelligent articles and well-chosen strips, which doesn't pander to the tendency for infantile jokes so predominant in contemporaneous genre magazines from the US. A breath of fresh air.
The opening comments about television in The Writers of Star Trek are interesting to read forty years on:
While the galloping hoofbeats, blazing sixshooters, screeching brakes and barking machine-guns to which the small screen quickly resounded indicate that TV's debt to cinema was the importation of genre (westerns, detective/gangster shows, etc. etc.). Indeed it can be argued that, unique among the media/arts, TV--worldwide--has still to define its true, unique personality.
We have since seen television's true, unique personality in the form of exploitative "reality" television, cruel gameshows, merciless "talent" shows and late-night sex chat programming. Television is the unpleasant guest at the dinner table when not properly kept in check, and only long-form storytelling has redeemed the medium from the gutter to which it gravitates so readily and eagerly.
It is slightly disconcerting that the focus of the article is American television specifically, ignoring the early live broadcasts of Shakespeare's works (unquestionably fantasy), and the groundbreaking performances of R.U.R., Quatermass and 1984 in favour of the juvenile SF across the Atlantic. It is a minor mis-step in overstating the importance of our transatlantic cousins in providing genre material for the medium, and frames the rest of the article in respect to the quality of material being broadcast.
A run-down of the major players in Star Trek's small-screen incarnation follows, and Wicking and Vahimagi do an excellent job of condensing the information down into a manageable number of pages. The piece on Harlan Ellison is incredibly polite given that the man could be so unpleasant, and several writers are grouped together at the end of the article despite having impressive credentials outside of Star Trek. It is the kind of article which would be attempted in several places over the years, but which is best explored in book-form where attention can be drawn to the links between the authors and their other works.
Dave Gibbons' Litterbug! is a clever, and perpetually timely, warning, with beautiful artwork. It shares a lot in common with the Future-Shock one-off strips in 2000 A.D., but is so good that it doesn't really matter.
Star Wars - Buccaneers of Space retells the plot of Star Wars in excitable prose, as if Deli has had four or five mugs of coffee before being sat in front of the film for the first time. With the small paperback collection of comic strips, the already-released **** novel and the weekly comic (published a couple of months later) doing much the same thing, it feels redundant.
It is always a pleasure to read Jeff Hawke, and the reproduction of the strip here fits remarkably well.
Harry Harrison's story Pass the Book is a welcome break from the non-fiction material, accompanied by an interesting illustration. It is unusual to see such variety sharing the pages of a single title, and the sense of love for the material comes through clearly - perhaps a little too much focus on Star Wars, though understandably so. The closing one-page strip by Brian Lewis is genuinely funny, gently mocking the seriousness endemic to SF circles, and is the perfect way to close the first issue out.
What was I saying about a breath of fresh air...
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