Space Family Robinson aka Lost in Space

[ray gower]

Before the film rescued it. Before the awful TV series ruined it. There were comics!

I never actually bought the comics, but I did recently buy back my 1969 Space Family Robinson Annual from a jumble sale. I know it was mine, it had my name in it twenty years and two hundred miles from when and where I threw it away!

The sixties was when man was just starting to get to grips with shunting man into space. Marvel were launching the Silver age of comics with Spiderman and the X-Men, with DC lumbering hard on their heels, reinventing Superman for the third time. Up pops a new kid on the block, in the shape of West US based, Gold Key Comics, with a real Sci/Fi comic, if based upon a somewhat older work by Robert Louis Stephenson:- Space Family Robinson, the combined product of editor/writer Gaylord DuBois and artist Dan Spiegle.

Spiegle in particular obviously loved creating the unique look of Space Family Robinson. He displayed a distinctive style for rendering futuristic settings which, in the '60s set him apart from most of his East Coast peers in the industry. Despite the typical "comic book" scientific inaccuracies and gosh-wow "Buck Rogers-isms" that often crept in to mar SFR scripts, Spiegle's space hardware and alien architecture showed a particular 'feeling' for realistic differences.

They were quite novel and convincing when compared with the dated designs of most of the other established comic artists of the time: here were alien cities that looked alien, instead of those interminable Flash Gordonesque depictions of alien worlds as something like a outlandish hybrid of all the World's Fairs held between the turn of the century and 1940. And while the Robinsons' own technology was quite streamlined and almost advanced enough to blend in with the hardware of many of the alien races they encountered, Spiegle didn't shrink from the challenge of differentiating the alien guest stars' buildings and vehicles by clever design. Even if it was simply by either creating something looking just a bit more exotic, or by going to the other extreme and using something even more plain. Spiegle's 1960s designs, while dated in some ways, are still worthy of study after three decades.

Even the ship the Robinsons' were marooned upon is/was different to the television and film. No dull saucers. They were for some of the other races. The Robinsons vessel was a marvelous flying square 'H'.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/9680/ish-one.html

[Tabitha]

I never knew this was based on a comic! I always thought when people referred to it as "Space Family Robinson" they were just referencing its Robert Loius Stevenson inspiration, rather than the title of the comic it was adapted from.

[ray gower]

I think the film was based more upon the TV series than the comic.
As far as I know there was never a robot and Doctor Smith was notable by his absence in the annual I have.

[ray gower]

To add to the confusion a little, possibly?

Lost in Space is technically different from SFR.

It is rumoured, in some corners that the two were produced independently, and that Irwin was not aware of the comic. This is largely based on the fact that SFR significantly lacked:- Robot, Dr Smith and Major Wot-sit.

However, Goldkey managed to obtain the rights to produce comics of all of the Irwin shows, from 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' through 'Time Tunnel' and 'Land of the Giants' and seemingly at no cost. Which other rumours obviously suggest was a cheap pay off for what would inevitably be an expensive court case.

The truth is undoubtedly in the middle somewhere. As they both look as if they fed off of each other for everything during the overlap.

[Dave]

I've never read the comics, nor have I read "Swiss Family Robinson" (which incidently was written by Johann David Wyss not Robert Louis Stevenson though the stockade sequence in "Treasure Island" is similar and both have pirates.)

But I recently re-watched the '60's Disney film on TV (with John Mills.)

Originally posted by ray gower
Lost in Space is technically different from SFR.....

This is largely based on the fact that SFR significantly lacked:- Robot, Dr Smith and Major Wot-sit.

Actually I was struck by the number similarities between Swiss Family Robinson and Lost In Space.

In Swiss Family Robinson there is a mother and father, the father has the great ideas, the mother is more stay at home. The eldest son is a hunk, athletic, country-pursuits loving. There is no sister, they instead pick up a tom-boy hiding from pirates who scrubs up well. The youngest son is inquisitive, picking up any stray animals (but no robots) and always getting into trouble setting off coconut bombs, attacking tigers, etc. The middle son could be Dr Smith. He is the scientist, knows everything in theory, but is not very practical.

I'm not disagreeing that they are very different, just saying that they are distant cousins.

[ray gower]

Think you would be even more impressed by the similarities between Space Family Robinson and Swiss Family Robinson.

Everything in the book did appear somewhere during the life of the comic. We had two brothers, mother, father and the stow-away female.

The only thing replaced was the flying H for an island.