BC: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #1

Borrowed Comics

My grade school friend David Steckel was a huge fan of the science fiction media of the time, in particular STAR WARS and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. In fact, that’s a huge part of how we became friends in the first place. Having seen me making my own home-grown comic books, David wanted to enlist my help in creating his own. He had an idea for a series called STAR RAIDERS which was in great measure just BATTLESTAR GALACTICA with the vin number filed off. I was a better artist than he was, so we wound up working on it together, with him writing and me drawing. We produced something like nine issues this way, none of which was any better than amateurish. But we had a good time doing it. Anyway, Steckel was an avid follower of Marvel’s adaptations of both properties, and he loaned me the complete run of each at a certain point so that I could get caught up. That’s where I read BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #1 for the first time.

But not really for the first time. You see, the material that made up the first three issues of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA comic book was initially released as a single Treasury Edition timed to coincide with the broadcast of the TV movie that would introduce the concept. When the property appeared to have legs, Marvel broke up that Treasury into three regular comic-sized issues, adding new material where necessary to even out the page counts and correcting some errors that had creeped into the Treasury due to it being produced from an early working script that was subsequently changed. My brother Ken dug BATTLESTAR GALACTICA as well, and he bought that Treasury Edition prior to this. While I had leafed through it, I don’t think I had really sat down and read it. I wasn’t a major fan of the show, and the stylized and cartoonish artwork of Ernie Colon didn’t appeal to me all that much back then.

For those that may be unaware, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was an ABC television program that debuted as a TV movie in 1978 before becoming a short-run series from 1978-1979. It was followed up on a year later by GALACTICA 1980, a short-lived sequel series that brought the action to Earth. Created by producer Glen A. Larson, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was meant to be television’s answer to the STAR WARS mania that was gripping the country, particularly among kids, ever since that film first hit movie screens in 1977. It was a crazy mélange of space fantasy and new age thinking and classic mythology that contained some good ideas but never entirely landed on what it wanted to be. It debuted huge, but audience engagement tapered off as the actual series failed to crystalize into something compelling. (Decades later, Ronald D. Moore and company would do a better job in assembling an engaging version of many of these same ideas in their remake series–though they botched the ending.) It was STAR WARS on a television budget, so even though it was the most expensive show of its kind launched up to that point, it still wasn’t going to be able to deliver STAR WARS-level spectacle on a weekly basis.

What BATTLESTAR GALACTICA did have were some good designs and an underlying concept that was simple enough once a bunch of the argle-bargle was stripped back off of it. The most lasting impression was likely that of the Cylons, robotic warriors who had been created by humanity but which turned on organic life and were now pledged to wiping it out. The Cylons spoke in an electronic monotone and their head-visor contained an L.E.D. that bounced back and forth from left-to-right in the manner of Larson’s later creation KITT of KNIGHT RIDER. While the Cylons didn’t possess the personality and presence of Darth Vader, they did an admirable job of keying into the inhumanity of that character and providing a cold and merciless villainy that could easily be reproduced on any school playground. All one needed to do was emulate that monotone delivery and mimic a few key phrases. (“By your command.”)

Like STAR WARS, the action in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA takes place in a far-off galaxy. There, twelve different tribes of humanity have developed on assorted colonies, all the product of a central uniting mother species. But for a thousand years, these twelve tribes have been at war with their own robotic creations, the Cylons. Having gained independent sentience, the Cylons seek the annihilation of the human race and all organic life. At the beginning of the story, though, a peace envoy is heading through space to meet with the enemy in the hopes of brokering a lasting treaty between humanity and the Cylons. Among the escort vessels for the peace envoy is the Battlestar Galactica, in essence a space aircraft carrier that houses wings’ worth of Colonial Viper fighter planes and their pilots and crews. The Galactica is under the command of Adama, whose son Apollo is a Viper pilot alongside his best friend, the roguish (and Han Solo-ish) Starbuck. Flying a scouting patrol, Apollo and his wingman Zac come across a suspicious derelict tanker, which turns out to be concealing a Cylon attack force. The pair are attacked by Cylon Raider fighters, and while Apollo is able to get back to warn the fleet, Zac isn’t so lucky.

It turns out that the peace negotiations are simply a Cylon ruse to lure the leadership of the twelve colonies out to a place where they will be vulnerable, and so in a Pearl Harbor-style attack, the Cylons proceed to hit not just the fleet but its planets of origin, decimating the human race in a single blow. Amidst this chaos, the Galactica goes against orders and leaves the fleet to head back towards Caprica, its home planet. This move turns out to be the thing that saves it, as most of the rest of the colonies’ warships are obliterated by the Cylons’ attack. Upon arriving at Caprica, Galactica discovers that the planet has been scourged, and Adama’s own wife Ila is presumed dead among the missing. What refugees remain are assembled in whatever remaining starships are left and form a ragtag fleet coalescing around the Galactica, which serves as its protector.

As this first issue wraps up, Commander Adama addresses the survivors of the massacre. The Cylons are still out there, obsessively gunning for any stray portions of humanity that may still exist. But the ancient legends of the progenitor species that created the twelve colonies spoke of a lost thirteenth colony situated somewhere far from where they are. A colony that is of course known as Earth. So that’s Galactica’s mission: shepherd this makeshift fleet that represents the last survivors of the twelve colonies until they can find their lost brethren on Earth. As I said earlier, that’s a nice, simple concept that’s easy to understand, and one that immediately indicates how weekly episodes might play out, as Galactica and the fleet enter unknown space and encounter other planets and civilizations and threats. As a comic book, though, the best parts of the production–the performances and the special effects–weren’t translatable, and so you were left with an adaptation that was a bit stiff and wooden. Eventually, though, once Marvel’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA comic went past the events of the pilot movie, it would begin to do some interesting things.

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26 thoughts on “BC: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #1”

  1. I gather there was a huge behind-the-scenes mess with the Marvel Super Special edition. (And it was a Super Special, not a Treasury Edition, although it was published in the tabloid format.) There was a text-page section featuring photographs of the actors, and editor Rick Marschall hadn’t gotten the permissions paperwork to use them. The entire print run of the first MSS edition had to be pulped. It was a contributing factor to Marschall being fired as Marvel’s color-magazine editor later on, which resulted in Archie Goodwin becoming editor of Epic Illustrated magazine, and later head editor of the Epic Comics imprint.

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  2. Tom, I’m looking at the original series wikipedia cause you have confused the first Battlestar Galactica series with the second, in the original series a reptillian race ( whom I remembered — it says they expired long ago, presumably destroyed by their own creations. Could have sworn there was one still alive giving orders ) created the Cylons and in the second series Humans created the Cylons. Adama is the father of Apollo, Athena and youngest on Zac ( neither Zac and Athena were in the remake ). Watched the series ( original and remake-ish ) but never picked up the comics ( Man From Atlantis was the only TV ( or Movie ) to Comics series I picked up ).

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    1. Actually, John, I remember watching that first movie and it was indeed the Cylons who were the bad guys. My inner smartass kept referring to them as mini-Darth Vaders and wondering how they could see anything with those eyeballs moving back and forth. Wasn’t V the show with the lizards?

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      1. Check the wikipedia for the original show, the Cylons in that series were created by a reptillian race, just one of the changed I noticed in the re-boot ( New Adama not having as many kids and the gender and race swaps for characters ).

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      2. I loved OG Battlestar Galactica (and the reboot until it turned me off with some key plot points) and I vaguely remember a shrouded character that would fit with what John read. I hate Colon’s art (still do. His work always seems like he thinks he’s working for Harvey) but I’ve always followed things more for character, concept, and writer. Image artists would change that eventually.

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      3. Oh, I know this! The Cylons were explained as reptillian in the novelizations, but this was based on early scripts that got changed at some point before filming. They were purely robotic in the original TV series.

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    2. John, you are correct, in the original Battlestar Galactica series the robot Cylons were created by a race of reptiles who were then wiped out by their own creations.

      And later on in the series it’s strongly implied that Count Iblis, who’s basically supposed to be Satan, played some sort of role in the original reptilian Cylons’ being replaced by their robot successors, which is why the Cylon Imperious Leader (who is actually a machine, just one that’s designed to resemble the Cylon reptiles) has the same voice as Iblis… which was a clever way to explain away Patrick Macnee playing both roles.

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  3. Oh Battlestar Galactica, you’ve no idea how badly you broke my heart. My buddies and I were dying for a good science fiction show on television. We’d suffered through “Man From Atlantis,” that lame Bermuda Triangle show, the increasingly silly Six-Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman. Now we’re promised a Star Wars style show with Lorne Greene offering his best Ben Cartwright to reassure us each week that there was hope in the world!

    Only what we get was Commander Kor from Star Trek as the uber-evil dude in charge of a bunch of little Darth Vaders blowing up a bunch of stuff – and ABC’s budget – before settling into a series that essentially aped some movie each week along with making us endure that annoying kid and pet whatever-it-was. It was soon back to rewatching Shatner, Nimoy and crew going where no man had gone before.

    On a side note, the Battlestar Galactica movie was preempted on the West Coast with a special broadcast of Isreal and Egypt signing their first peace agreement. Very nice, but I found it a bit ironic that after that, I’m watching such a peace agreement that led to an unprecedented attack.

    As for Galactica 1980, the less said, the better.

    I wasn’t reading comics at this time but would’ve passed on this one.

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  4. I wasn’t a big fan of the show either…I think I was turned off by the fact that the humans were the underdogs, running and hiding from the Cylons. And I was experienced enough in the ways of television to know that status quo would probably never change, nor would they ever actually find Earth (turned out I was wrong on that last point, at least). In any event, I never paid any attention to the comic. Looking at it now, I quite like Colon’s art — he draws very expressive faces, and he’s pretty good with the “special effects” too (page 19 is a good example of both).

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  5. In Britain in 1980 there were three different Galactica comics.

    Marvel UK reprinted the American comic book in Star Wars Weekly and elsewhere, TV-based comic Look-In ran a separate all-new strip by writer Angus P Allan and drawn by Martin Asbury, and publisher Grandreams put out a Galactica annual with more new material, including comic strips drawn by John Higgins.

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  6. The scan of the book is Excellent! It’s like holding the real comic in hand. No detail is lost due to “photoshopping”. You can even see the staple area thus again proving it’s like have the actual comic in ones hand. Natural, Authentic & Beautiful!

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  7. The Ernie Colon art does look nice, but I didn’t start buying this book until Walter Simonson started drawing it.

    The show debuted during my first semester of college, and the University Union Cinema Society, which I had swiftly become a member of (we showed movies on campus), was for the most part extremely excited about the show and there was much anticipation and a watch party to see the premiere. Though I was on ticket-seller duty that night, so I watched most of it on a very small portable TV next to me on the ticket counter.

    It was a very impressive pilot, but my memory of it is that the first non-pilot episode featured cowboys in sheet metal hats and a robot gunslinger (I may be wrong about that, but it was the first “regular” episode I saw), which made me decide they’d blown the whole budget on the “movie” and the series was going to be crap. So I stopped watching and didn’t bother with the comic.

    But for Simonson art I’d change my mind…!

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    1. You’re close, the western episode, The Last Gunslinger, was the 6th (3rd non-pilot) episode. There was a two-parter immediately after the 3 pilot episodes. I also didn’t like the epsiode, although that was because I’ve never liked westerns (which is why, despite its cult status, I don’t like Serenity). I love SF, so I watched every episode of BSG and Galactica 1980 along with almost every other SF series, including Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. As I also like romance movies, I didn’t mind the romantic subplots in the shows, but I really disliked them having cute robots (and R2D2 and C3PO are not cute robots, but well written comic relief [based on Tahei and Matashichi in The Hidden Fortress – an excellent movie, IMO]).

      Despite my love of both SF and comics, I didn’t buy the comic adaptations of SF shows until I finally bought DC’s 1984 Star Trek series. As I Love Simonson’s artwork in The Mighty Thor and The Fantastic Four (which I just read earlier this year) I’ll have to see about finding his work on BSG.

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      1. Any Simonson fan should at least get issue 16, which he penciled, inked and colored, and is truly gorgeous. The rest of his run is inked or finished by Klaus Janson, so it looks quite nice, too.

        Also, later issues of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA are the first time Walter was the solo writer on a book for Marvel or DC (as opposed to co-plotting), which was a development that led to lots of good things.

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      2. I really disliked serenity too but not because of the Western theme. It just felt like a waste to be SF and use as little SF as possible. The lead turned me off since his soap days too.

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  8. There’ a scene in the original movie where Apollo explains to Boxey that the Cylons were built by some lizard people, also called the Cylons. The metal Cylons rebelled against the lizard Cylons and then went to war on humanity.

    I didn’t like the Colon artwork in this issue when I saw it as a kid, but I really like it now. Colon became one of my favorites at some point, maybe after reading Amethyst and realizing he was ‘the good Richie Rich artist”. I’d buy a collected edition of the Marvel BSG if they had one. It was a fun series. Certainly better than the TV show.

    I guess if they wanted to make the comic more like the show they could have just pasted Colon’s panels of the spaceships from this issue into every other issue.

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  9. As a 16 year male, Battlestar Galactica was aimed directly at me and it completely missed. To me, it was just a mishmash that was acted overly seriously but with no actual depth. Meanwhile, I loved the goofiness of Buck Rogers, perhaps because in its first season it never aspired to be anything more. The less said about either series second season, the better.

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    1. I recently rewatched the original series and I was surprised how kid-oriented it was. I think it was targeted more and more at a younger audience as the season progressed. There’s an excellent rewatch series on the Youtube channel “Return of the Son of the Show” that I commented on a lot.

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  10. I had a tabloid=sized edition of the “Battlestar Galactica”. Was there more than one? Or just the material that Tom says here was split into 3 standard issues? I remember the art looking very cinematic (not the word I’d have thought of way back then), with effective naturalistic lighting and shadows. I was 6 or 7 when the show debuted on TV. Though I first saw one of the regular season episodes, and wouldn’t catch the pilot until it was broken up for re-runs on local UHF stations some years later. But I remember the large format comic showing me events that I realized took place before the episodes I’d seen on TV. Like the death of young Boxey’s pet Moffet, which would later be replaced by a mechanical facsimile that had some fake fur on it.

    As John and Rick discussed, there was a mysterious, but organic, alien who was behind a podium on an elevated platform, who’d look down and give orders to the human traitor Baltar (a name my young comics brain knew was close to Thor’s ally, Baldar the Brave). This “Leader” commanded the Cylon forces, and wanted humanity destroyed. There were also some “conehead” robots who ordered the Cylons around, too. Their faces weren’t that different than the round, clock-sized Dr. Theopolis face that “beedy-beedy-beedy” Tweeki (voiced by Mel Blanc!) carried around on his chest in “Buck Rogers” (1979-1981), also produced by Battlestar Galactica’s Glen A. Larson. The laser beam sound effects were the same in both shows.

    I’ve liked a lot of Ernie Colon’s art over the many decades. The highpoint being the late 1980’s “Cosmic Boy” miniseries, with the beautiful covers by the amazing Steve Lightle. But Ernie’s art was very economical without lacking on fundamentals. Fine figures and faces, strong action. And he had to deal with Rok’s abysmal Pepto-Bismol pink tights. I remember wishing he was drawing Flash or Green Lantern regularly, titles he’d later edit. His work looked good in “Arak: Son of Thunder”, and “Amethyst”, but those stories couldn’t hold my interest. Years later he’d draw Marvel’s “Damage Control”, which I couldn’t keep interested in (funny to see them appear in the 1st om Holland Spidey movie, with their female boss perfectly cast, but now they’ve warped into something more sinister). And I’d’ve preferred it Ernie had drawn a Spidey book, instead. The 9/11 Commission books are worth mentioning, too.

    “Battlestar Galactica” was a big deal among my small circle of young friends. As was the 1980 “sequel”, but that quickly fizzled out. Starbuck from the initial series was very popular. I have to say, Larson’s set up of the rag-tag fleet of survivors being shepherded by a military starship echoed the famous, over-simplified pitch of “wagon train in space” pitch used by Gene Roddenberry for the original “Star Trek” series (though there was no escorting civilian refugee ships). At least the idea of a wagon train I’d seen in “westerns”, even as late as “How the West Was Won”.

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    1. I’m sure I read these as a Marvel zombie at the time, but I was watching the Emmy Awards broadcast the night that the Battlestar Galactica pilot aired. I know this because I remember that Tim Conway quipped in his acceptance speech that his kids wouldn’t see him win because they were home watching Galactica. Other things I remember are the gunslinger episode that made such an impression on others here, the corny science fiction-ified language (“now wait just a centon!”) and having a crush on Anne Lockhart…

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