Battle of the Planets: The Comics
Left: One of the North American 1979 comics. Princess is at the top, and then from left to right: Jason, Tiny (because purple is the new green), Keyop (wearing Mark's uniform...hmm), and Mark (who appears to have lost a bet). Right: French comic. Comics were also published in the Netherlands (JuniorPress).
1979: The Gold Key/Whitman Comics
Though they were already foundering as a company at the time, Gold Key/Whitman was responsible for distributing BotP comics during the original television run, in 1979 and 1980.
Each comic book was in color and ran 32 pages. The art isn't particularly impressive, and you might even use the word "abysmal" to describe some of it. For one thing, the characters don't look much like themselves.
Mark and Jason have interchangable faces.
Zoltar is this-is-your-body-on-steroids-buff, and his face and lips are decidedly masculine, rather than the more androgynous, lipsticked Zoltar we all know and love.
And as Mr. Kitty so concisely puts it, "Keyop's gibberish-speak...includes the phrase 'zmftkpt,' which is probably now somebody's Livejournal password." (Be sure to check out Mr. Kitty's commentary on the 1979 American and European BotP comics.)
There were only 10 issues in the US, and though the first half of the run is fairly easy to come by on eBay, even the most rabid fans won't usually pay more than a dollar or two for them.
The stories didn't reflect what was going on on the television version of BotP, but Zark was still an integral part of the stories. Not only did he provide his usual commentary, he squeezed into the plot ("We've lost contact with 7-Zark-7!" "That's impossible! 7-Zark-7 is infallible!").
The little nods to Gatchaman might have been clever, but they might also have been confusing.
2002-2005: Comics, Crossovers, and Manga
After Wizard magazine did an article on the Big '80s, comic book illustration icon Alex Ross asked to do the Big 70s. Since he watched the original BotP run from 1978-1979 as a child, one of his strongest associations with the 70s was Battle of the Planets, and he wanted the opportunity to do a BotP painting. In the May 2001 Wizard Magazine, he got his wish.
Munier Sharrief, who did most of the writing for the Top Cow comics, contacted Ross about a possible BotP collaboration. According to Ross, though Marvel was extremely interested in the project, Top Cow seemed like the company that would make BotP a priority.
One artist the team considered was Yanick Paquette; unfortunately, Paquette's style was significantly different from the feel of the original Gatchaman animation. But newcomer Wilson Tortosa captured the original style beautifully and was brought on board.¹
The BotP Comics
In spite of the enthusiasm that comes with loving something as a child, most fans felt that the BotP comics derailed pretty quickly. Wendy Dinsmore has the most comprehensive discussion of each comic's pros and cons at her Home of the White Shadow.² On the other hand, many if not most of the stereotypes and characterization complaints had some root in Sandy Frank's original Battle of the Planets translation. Jason was a cool, insubordinate troublemaker who liked running off to hit on chicks. Mark was sanctimonious and bossy and a bit of a prude.
Some of the most common complaints about the comics included sloppy, stereotyped (and/or off-base) character development (Wendy pointedly remarked that even the OAV Joe had more personality than the BotP comic Jason at some points); comic cliches; long-winded and pointless monologues; continuity problems and a plot that infuriated fans and stopped dead without any wrapup; and an unwieldy meshing of the BotP and Gatchaman universes almost guaranteed to confuse. And then there were the jokes about the group rate on collagen.
In other words, many felt that the so-called Gatchaman/BotP book "curse"—mediocracy at best and devastatingly awful more often—is alive and well. (Personally, I was so thrilled for new material in the old style that I just about turned inside out in spite of the problems. I'll take the problems.)
Mark punches Jason in the next frame.
Can you blame him?
The Characters
Jason goes through all of the comic books sneering, snarling, and sexist (all of which are allegedly a big coverup for inner torment), and he and Mark have the same relationship that plagues too much Gatch/BotP fanfiction: Mark is a choir-boy prude who can't or won't get laid—annnnd that must mean he's gay. (He's also a boy scout, golden boy, and a bit of a wuss from time to time. If I were a ninja and someone said that stuff to me, someone would get socked pretty quickly. It's also kind of insulting to gay people.) Jason mouths off, spits orders back in Mark's face, and generally is way too cool (if you think being cool is sneering, snarling, and sexist) to be on the team in the first place.
Some examples of Jason's studliness: "At least I get off on chicks instead of food" to Tiny and "If you want to let off steam, why don't you try girls?" to Mark. When the team is called on a mission at one point, all of the characters are shown doing something—and guess what, Jason's in bed with a faceless blond bimbo. One starts to wonder what he's hiding here. Performance problems in bed? Sexual orientation issues? A desperate need for therapy and a semester on the feminist movement?
And I kept wondering why Jason would make smarmy comments about Mark needing a woman when Mark already had a girlfriend (and Jason didn't), and one Jason ought to respect as a friend. If I were Princess in that situation and Mark didn't deck Jason, I'd do it. Probably more than once, if for no other reason than that relationship was none of his business and he was being a jerk.
Meanwhile, Zoltar became the cardboard cutout that characterizes too many "psycho-killer" movies and books, though I believe that was going to change as the comics went forward. (I always think of the cardboard-cutout type as the characterological equivalent of the MacGuffin.) Katse's one of my all-time favorite fiction characters because I think he's an incredibly fascinating, multi-layered character, and even Zoltar showed hints of that depth. (Now there's the next writeup I should do.) But in the comics that were published, he gets almost zero time and space in the story—no, that goes to the incredibly annoying Tomak (who, let's face it, wasn't meant to be endearing), who should have been strapped to a Tomahawk missile á la Wile E. Coyote and launched right the heck out of the story.
If you're wondering why they're talking on corded and cellular phones when they're both wearing communicators, join the (very large) club.
War: The Writer vs. the Fans
When fans began lambasting writer Munier Sharrief for the types of complaints noted above, he became defensive on the Yahoo! BotP Mailing List:
From day one this book has way more character depth than the BOTP series ever had. Talk about cookie cutter. No one can tell me that [the characters in the comics] aren't developed...ten times more so than in the show...
Zoltar was a by the book villian [who's]...one sick puppy...having Zoltar carve a name in Anderson's chest shows that he hates him deeply, and he has good reason, a reason that will be revealed in issues to come...
I can say with all honesty that I think the book is good and that it's an improvement on the show...
Regardless of what you think of his response and whether you think he deserved the flames, it's hard to blame him for trying to defend his work .
...continued on the next page: page 1 2 (next)
—Notes for this page: a great deal of the information above came from these two resources:
¹ Hofius, J. and Khoury, G. (2002). G-Force: Animated
² Dinsmore, W. Home of the White Shadow. http://www.chronicsite.com/gatchaman/comics.html.
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I hate to say and/or repeat one-sidedly unpleasant things about people (or their work) who may very well end up reading them, so I tried to contact Sharrief so I could include his thoughts and experiences, but so far he hasn't responded—maybe I'll get lucky and he'll read this and decide to...?!