Forget your Guardians of the Galaxy. Those of us who grew up in Blighty in the 1970s know there's only one Starlord - and that's the comic that was launched by IPC magazines almost exactly thirty seven years ago this week.
When I say, "almost exactly," the cover date was May the 13th, though, as so often happens with these things, I do believe it may have been in the shops before that.
I thought I only had two issues of it but a quick peruse of the Grand Comics Database tells me that I actually had three issues.
My memories of what was in them are fairly vague. Obviously, from the cover above, Strontium Dog was in it. I do believe Ro-Busters may also have been in it before both strips migrated to 2000 AD when Starlord folded after just twenty two issues.
Why did it fold, when 2000 AD was such a success?
I don't have a clue. Maybe the 12p price tag put people off. Maybe there was only room for one sci-fi mag in Britain at the time. Maybe it was something else altogether.
From what I can recall of it, it seemed more grown-up than 2000 AD and was printed on flatter, smoother paper. I seem to recall there being something in it about some explorers trapped on a world that had acid rain, and also some sort of strip about a brother and sister with psychic powers.
Then again, I may be remembering completely wrongly.
Regardless, this post contains the covers to the three issues that I had. Why Clint Eastwood's on one of them, I have no clue. I can't say Dirty Harry's ever struck me as being a sci-fi concept but what do I know? Clearly IPC thought otherwise, and they ran a successful comic company and I didn't, so they were probably right and I'm probably wrong.
I do love the way that issue manages to cram a reference to Clint Eastwood, The Spy Who Loved Me and Close Encounters of the Third Kind into one cover. You couldn't accuse them of not trying.
I'm indebted to Lew Stringer's blog for reminding me of this epoch-making birthday.
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