Movies - Battlestar Galactica

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	Movies - Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica has been adapted to the comic book format since its inception, with no less than four publishers taking on the project of relating the story of the Colonial Fleet and their adversaries, the Cylons at different points.

Marvel Comics

The comic book “Battlestar Galactica”, based on the ABC television series of the same name, was published monthly by Marvel Comics from 1978 through 1980, and lasted 23 issues.

Although there were other attempts to adapt Battlestar Galactica into a comic book format, the Marvel series is considered by many to have been the most successful in terms of run, sales, and content.

This was accomplished against some notable odds. Although Roger McKenzie was most often the writer, and Walt Simonson the most regular artist, the book also had a heavy rotation of guest writers and artists.

Marvel Comics’ began its adaptation of Battlestar Galactica with Super Special #8, a magazine format comic released as a tie-in to the start of the series. Based on an early script of the three hour series premiere “Saga of a Star World,” this adaptation, which gave a relatively short treatment to the third hour, was also released in a tabloid format and then later as a paperback as well. The tabloid version was also printed by Whitman Comics. It’s success led Marvel to print a regular monthly comic depicting the adventures of the ragtag fleet.

Scripted by McKenzie and drawn by Ernie Colon, the Battlestar Galactica Super Special is an attractive adaptation with unusual panel design and use of shadow. In particular, the attack on Caprica, the psychic starting point of the series, is treated in a vivid and memorable way.

When the regular run of Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica comic book began some months later, the Super Special adaptation was expanded by several pages, and provided the material for the first three issues of the comic.

The direct adaptation of the series continued in issues #4 and #5 which chronicled the adventures depicted in the two part television episode Lost Planet of the Gods. Roger McKenzie continued as scripter, with Walter Simonson now providing the art.

With issue #6, the TV adaptations ceased, and Marvel’s team began to create new stories about the characters of the Battlestar Galactica universe, picking up from where issue #5 left off.

It is important to note, that from this point, both in terms of story content and the narrative arc, Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica does deviate somewhat from the televised adventures. Marvel's contract with Universal Studios specifically did not allow them to use anything from the television series that followed Lost Planet Of The Gods. Despite this, Marvel made a conscious decision to continue the story with their own vision of how the series would progress, and so presents an interesting interpretation of Galactica – through a Marvel paradigm.

In should also be noted that although the run of the Battlestar Galactica comic coincided with the broadcast of the short-lived Galactica sequel series, Galactica 1980 on ABC, the newer program was never referred to in the pages of the comic, apart from the letters page, and no attempts were made to construct the comic with the events of Galactica 1980 as a foreseen plot outcome.

In addition, much of the comic’s run took place in the magnetic void which the rag tag fleet encountered in the TV episode Lost Planet of the Gods. In the end of the TV episode, the fleet moves back into normal space, leaving the void behind, but in the comics the rag tag fleet remains in the void beginning in issue #4, with the fleet finally returning to regular space in issue #14. This makes placing the episodes within the span of the TV series difficult, since much of the action could be surmised to have taken place between Lost Planet of the Gods and “Lost Warrior”.

In terms of tone, many of the Galactica comics had classic horror elements, which was a theme visited in only a couple episodes of the TV series, as exemplified by the evil Ovions of “Saga of a Star World.” An incomplete list of monsters from the comic series would include a space vampire (issue #9), a carnivorous planet (issue #10), alien vermin (issue #15), a crewmember who transforms into a red ape (issues #17 and #18) and a monstrous shapeshifter (issue #21). Even the menacing and relentless Cylon Mark III in issue #16 owes as much of his origin to horror elements as he does to science fiction. Taken as a whole, Marvel’s Galactica is somewhat darker in tone than the series, but this not-so-subtle paranoia is arguable truer to the initial premise of the series than were some of the latter episodes of the television program.

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Movies - Battlestar Galactica

Marvel Comics

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