Starlord (comics)

2000 AD had been launched partly in anticipation of a boost in interest in science fiction due to Star Wars, and both the comic and the film had been successful. The runaway box office success of Star Wars in particular led to a massive boom in similar material, with Paramount planning to reactivate the Star Trek franchise, the BBC commissioning Blake's 7 and dusting off Flash Gordon serials for Saturday morning repeats, ABC preparing Battlestar Galactica and Marvel UK publishing Dez Skinn's news-and-reviews magazine Starburst.[3] IPC Magazines' editorial director John Sanders would later relate he was "passionately obsessed with the 'me-too' idea. If you thought you had a winner, do a duplicate of it right away", reasoning that there was potentially a market for two science fiction comics and it would be better for IPC to launch their own 'competitor' rather than allow it to come from Marvel UK or DC Thomson. Initially Sanders approached Pat Mills - the driving force behind Battle Picture Weekly, Action and 2000 AD - to create the new comic but he demurred, feeling it was far too soon. Mills was also in conflict with IPC over his growing desire for greater rights and remuneration for himself and IPC creators in general, leading to his working relationship with Sanders souring.[4]

Instead, Sanders turned to 2000 AD editor Kelvin Gosnell to put together the new comic. Gosnell would later greatly regret the move, calling it "one of the biggest mistakes of [his] life"; while he was still nominally editor of 2000 AD alongside Star Lord, much of the running of the former was carried out by assistant editor Nick Landau. He set out to make Starlord as more than a simple clone of 2000 AD by aiming for older readers by creating a fortnightly with longer stories of 10-12 pages per episode, with the move to 5-6 page stories in 2000 AD compared to the 3-4 in other boys' comics having been identified as a popular move with readers. Starlord would also feature web offset printing, and be all-colour.[4] Gosnell hoped to create a British rival for the likes of Métal hurlant, Omni and Heavy Metal.[5][6][7][8]

Gosnell worked with several 2000 AD contributors to come up with the new title. He recruited Battle assistant editor Steve MacManus to work on the title, but Kevin O'Neill turned down the post of art director, preferring to stay on 2000 AD despite the chance of a pay increase. He would later relate "...I didn't want to work on a knock-off of 2000 AD. Starlord didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but it was a typical IPC thing to do". Instead Gosnell recruited Jan Shepheard, 2000 AD's art director.[4] The team decided to follow 2000 AD's popular gimmick of being edited by the fictional character of 'host' Tharg the Mighty, and the eponymous Starlord - a bouffant-haired superhero, designed by Ian Gibson - was developed by MacManus and the experienced Chris Lowder; each issue's editorial content took the format of a primer for survival in the galaxy, and would be signed off with a catchphrase imploring readers to "keep watching the stars". Similarly, where 2000 AD issues were referred to as 'Progs', issues of Starlord were referred to as 'Starzines'. After O'Neill had succeeded in getting contributor credits printed in 2000 AD, they were included in Star Lord from the start - with the creators credited as 'Blueprinters'.[9] MacManus disliked the character, later describing it as "puerile".[7]

While Mills and O'Neill had turned down staff posts with Starlord, both contributed work to the title - partly as favours to Gosnell - with the strip "Ro-Busters", about a robot disaster-response squad. Mills wrote the initial episodes, while O'Neill designed the characters. Judge Dredd co-creator John Wagner meanwhile worked on futuristic mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha as the lead of "Strontium Dog", though Gosnell would recall they had difficulty coming up with a name for the character and the strip.[4] He was joined by Battle artist Carlos Ezquerra, who had been involved in early work for "Judge Dredd" but had left the strip in acrimonious circumstances. Ezquerra partly agreed to draw "Strontium Dog" as a chance to get back over this perceived snub.[10] These two main features were to be joined by a rotating one-off strip.[4]

However, Gosnell's ambitious plans for the title were causing cold feet higher up in IPC. First of all the colour pages were cut back to eight per issue and then the reality of the cost of radically different printing began to dawn, and Sanders ordered the comic to be turned into a weekly, albeit with improved quality paper to retain the web offset design.[4] Even with these cutbacks, the comic would still retail at 12p, compared to the 8p price of 2000 AD and Tiger.[9] The 12-page stories were unsustainable for a weekly, so a crestfallen Gosnell was faced with suddenly having to find two further features to fill out the comic. "Planet of the Damned" was pulled from the archives, having originally been planned and then rejected for 2000 AD; originally devised by Mills and taken over by Alan Hedben, the stories were credited under the pseudonym 'R.E. Wright', a play on 'rewrite'; Lowder meanwhile hurriedly put together time-travel story "Timequake" and Hedben also began work on "Mind Wars". The increased demands of retooling the comic into a weekly left Gosnell with less and less time to work on 2000 AD; this led to a growing rivalry between Gosnell and Landau, with the latter revelling in taking chances and the former feeling without him the comic went too far. Sanders would later recall he chose not to intervene in their squabbling, believing it motivated both to push for improvements in their titles.[4][11]

Boasting a cover-mounted 'Starlord Trooper' fee badge, the first issue of Starlord was dated 13 May 1978, coming out on the preceding Monday - the same day as new issues of 2000 AD, to encourage new readers to pick up both on the same trip to the newsagents. "Mind Wars" joined the initial trio of stories from the second issue, but MacManus would later note that the late change of plans left Starlord with "two good stories and three weak ones". Finding contributors was also difficult as many were heavily involved in other projects, with Mills - busy on Judge Dredd storyline "The Cursed Earth" - soon quitting as "Ro-Busters" writer and many strips soon using a patchwork of artists. Gibson in particular found himself tapped for late fill-ins after getting a reputation for overnight jobs for "Death Game 1999" in Action.[4]

While Star Lord sold respectably it soon became clear that readers were picking it up instead of 2000 AD rather than as well as, effectively splitting the market. Gosnell would later suggest that Starlord had been launched under IPC management's infamous 'hatch, match and dispatch' philosophy, and was always planned to either be merged into 2000 AD or subsume it. Sanders has refuted any suggestion that IPC ever launched a title to fail, pointing to the £500,000 cost associated with a new launch as evidence that the "economics of it would never have stacked up". For his part Gosnell grew rapidly disenchanted with the perceived interference of managing editor Bob Bartholomew, who effectively had to sign off on all IPC's magazine output before it went to press.[4]

Sanders meanwhile was left to figure out the conundrum of what to do with two under-performing science fiction titles. After some deliberation he decided against folding one or the other into a non-science fiction title such as Battle or Tiger and felt combining 2000 AD and Starlord to provide a single title was still a viable proposition. At the time Star Lord was considerably outselling 2000 AD and seemed set to be the comic which continued; however, the former's circulation took a noticeable dip as Sanders was coming to his decision; while they were still slightly better than those for 2000 AD and IPC's policy was generally to keep the highest-selling title, Sanders followed a 'hunch' that the material in 2000 AD was "excitingly different" and would provide a better chance of long-term survival. After 22 issues, Star Lord was cancelled and would be merged into its companion title.[4][7][12]

• Starlord Special (1 edition, 1978)[2]
• Starlord Annual (3 editions, 1980 to 1982)[2]

• Starlord at the Grand Comics Database