A Brief History of Starlord

Timequake, a great strip with all the ingredients for a classic, was somehow shot in the foot before it had a chance. Written by Jack Adrian, Timequake told the story of a group of humans from all ages of Earth’s history, locked in eternal combat with the evil Droon, a bunch of six-limbed battle toads attempting to rule the galaxy by manipulating time. Thrown into the mix was Mockney hard man James Blocker, who had inadvertently aided the Droon in destroying Earth. Commander Harl Vinda and his Cretaceous Era based team, use Blocker’s knowledge to thwart the Droon, but unfortunately for Blocker, exposure to such large time jumps rendered his DNA unstable, forcing him to remain with the team or crumble into dust.

Blocker’s appeal as a working class everyman provided readers with a foil for high-brow Vinda. His knuckle-headed reactions and low brow understanding drove the story forward, creating a narrative device to explain to the readers exactly what was going. Timequake should have been one of Starlord’s top stories, but great early art by Ian Kennedy and John Cooper made way for the muddy style of Magallanes Salinas, and the Aztec story by Ian Mennell was a dud. After thirteen episodes, Timequake got its marching orders.

The four opening strips were joined in issue two by Mind Wars, a twenty one part tale by Major Eazy creator Alan Hebden, with art from Jesus Redondo, that ran until the final issue. Mind Wars was a convoluted tale of telepathic twins, manipulated by both sides of a galactic conflict that had reached stalemate. Arlen and Ardeni Lakam were given enhanced powers by the Jugla Empire, to tip the balance of power in their favour against FISC, the Federal Interstellar Strike Corps. Although Mind Wars strayed off into minor sub plots as often as possible, and was dragged out far longer than was truly required, it was still very popular, and made a brief reappearance in one of the Starlord annuals.

Starlord ran with these five titles until the conclusion of Planet of the Damned after ten issues. Occasional one-off stories by John Wagner and Alan Hebden, very much in keeping with 2000AD’s Future Shocks, began appearing from issue eleven, normally replacing Strontium Dog. Otherwise, Starlord ran just four strips per week until its conclusion.

Timequake was replaced by the markedly inferior Holocaust, the last new strip to appear in Starlord. Written by Alan Hebden, with art by Horacio Lalia, Holocaust was essentially just a copy of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, but without any charm or saving graces. Main protagonist Carl Hunter was another by-numbers Clint Eastwood clone, somewhat given away on the cover of issue fourteen, which was based around a badly redrawn publicity still from Dirty Harry.

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