The Starlog Project: Starlog #73, August 1983: Superman Returns Again

It might just be my imagination, but the magazine feels as if it's printed on a slightly heavier stock of paper. This issue carries over the extra four color pages and the extra two inside-front cover foldout pages that we saw in #71. As I said in the issue #71 writeup: Things are looking up.

Starlog #73
74 pages (including covers and unnumbered inside front-cover foldout)
Cover price: $2.95

Did anyone take a good cover photo of Superman from Superman III? We remember the blurry nightmare that was the Supe III cover of Starlog #67, don't we? And here again, with #73, we have ol' red-and-blue in a blurry, grainy cover photo. Granted, he apparently is being affected by some Kryptonite rays that are making him blurrier than normal, but, well, it's not a good photo. But at least it's a colorful cover.

The rundown: Once again the "Starlog Science Fiction Classic" poster is a just-released film -- you guessed it: Superman III. With a photo of the super-dude that's not blurry. Would have been a shame to put that one on the cover, huh? In his From the Bridge column, publisher Kerry O'Quinn makes a point I've remembered ever since: It's the tale of two different artists who visited the Starlog offices and viewed all of the original space art paintings lining the walls (I've been there; they had a lot); one of the artists was so impressed with the great paintings, he was saddened because he felt he'd never be that good; the other was so impressed, he was inspired to push himself even further. Shouldn't be hard to guess what Kerry "Reach for the Stars" O'Quinn was saying there, right? In the Communications pages, producer Richard Gordon praises Ed Naha's L.A. Offbeat column, actor/author Walter Koenig praises Starlog for bringing attention to his special project with Mark Lenard, some SF celebrities (Robert Foxworth, Howard Kazanjian, William F. Nolan, Don Bluth, etc.) belatedly praise Starlog on the occasion of its seventh anniversary, and more; short news items in Log Entries include a peek at The Twilight Zone movie, the merchandising of Krull, an obituary for Buster Crabbe, and more.

Da Marie Boyer and Patrick Daniel O'Neill interview David and Leslie Newman, screenwriters of the new Superman III film (which features an opening color photo of Superman that is also distinctly not blurry); Chris Henderson profiles the late fantasy illustrator Roy Krenkel; Lenny Kaye's Space Age Games column reviews Donkey Kong Junior, Donky Kong, Phoenix, and Be an Interplanetary Spy; Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier interview Roy Scheider about his work in Blue Thunder; Don McGregor interviews actor Robert Vaughn about The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Superman III; Richard Holliss and David McDonnell interview Octopussy's Maud Adams; Steve Swires completes his two-part interview with Mark Hamill, "Life After Star Wars"; part two of a three-part excerpt from David Gerrold's groundbreaking new novel, A Matter for Men, also features an introduction by the author and illustrations by Alex Nino; Ed Naha interviews Lysette Anthony about her acting role in Krull; there's a special Jaws 3-D contest; Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier interview Something Wicked This Way Comes' star Jason Robards; Steve Swires interviews Cliff Robertson about Charly and Brainstorm; Ed Naha's L.A. Offbeat looks at "Anthony Zerbe: Has Eyebrows, Will Menace"; and Howard Zimmerman's Lastword is on V, the NBC mini-series.

"You could call it a coincidence, but from virtually the instant I exposed the 'Hollywoodgate' scandal, I didn't work out there. ... Now, happily, I'm working again. It all began with Doug Trumbull. He got me started with Brainstorm, and now my telephone is ringing regularly."

--Cliff Robertson, actor, interviewed by Steve Swires: "Cliff Robertson: From Blacklist to Brainstorm -- Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First"

To view previous Starlog issue descriptions, click on "Starlog Internet Archive Project" in the keywords below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent home.

The Starlog Project: Starlog #67, February 1983: Not-So-Superman

Superman returns to the cover of Starlog with this issue.

Unfortunately, it looks like Bob Guccione filmed Supes through a heavily vaselined lens. Or someone took the photo during an earthquake. Or the photographer snapped the shot right after a nuclear weapon exploded, with the radiation and heat waves making clear sight impossible. In other words, the cover photo is awful. Blurry. Unclear. Maybe they had a nice Ansel Adams picture all set to go, and at the last minute, Annie Leibovitz calls and a bidding war ensues for some high-quality photos of a science-fiction celebrity. Millions of dollars are bandied back and forth between the publishers and the representatives for Leibovitz and Adams. A huge brouhaha follows; the three parties begin fighting -- first arguing, then physically assaulting each other, finally resorting to explosives. Things blow up. Smoke and grit waft over the scene.

THAT's when they took the cover photo.

Starlog #67
68 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $2.50

This issue is also notable for a good first: the first contribution by Lee Goldberg, a writer who would go on to a notable career in Hollywood himself. Here we get his first article, an interview with "The Man Who Killed Spock!" (that's Jack Sowards, for you non-Trekkies).

The rundown: In his From the Bridge column, Kerry O'Quinn reviews the past year (1982) at Starlog (including his sort-of meeting Paul McCartney when the singer was brought around by the editor of Country Rhythms); Communications letters include reader reviews of the reviewers (from the special movie-reviews issue, #64), a note that the magazine is changing the name of Ed Naha's column from Hollywood Babylon to L.A. Offbeat because it sounds like a legal trigger-happy author -- the appropriately named Kenneth Anger -- wrote a book by the name Hollywood Babylon (and for heavens sake, Mr. Anger was apparently not bright enough to understand that the use of the title in a different medium would actually only help him, but what the heck), a smattering of further reader comments on the Spielberg-Starlog-E.T. imbroglio, and more; and Log Entries short news items include a report on the CBS sword-and-sorcery show Wizards and Warriors, Leonard Nimoy's Lights! Camera! Action!, a plan to film the second trilogy (the first trilogy?) of the nine-(yes, nine) film Star Wars series in reverse order, Forrest J. Ackerman resigns from Famous Monsters of Filmland, and more.

Andrew Mayfair sorta spoofs the spoof Airplane II: The Sequel, with a fake interview with Steve McCrosky; in Space Age Games, Bob Martin surveys the computers that support video gaming (we're talking Mattel Intellivision, Atari VCS 2600, and that sort); Lee Goldberg interviews Star Trek II screenwriter Jack Sowards; Ed Naha's L.A. Offbeat column looks at the Hollywood writing sausage machine; Don McGregor talks with Steven Lisberger, the director of Disney's Tron; the two-page poster in the centerfold is E.T -- The Extraterrestrial; Robert Greenberger talks with Superman III executive producer Ilya Salkind and producer Pierre Spengler about why the heck they put Richard Pryor in the film (plus a sidebar that looks at the "facelift" for the Superman comic books); Bjo Trimble's Fan Scene explores the Fandom Directory; Steve Swires visits the set of Strange Invaders; Jeff Szalay and E.P. Dowd look at Warlords of the 21st Century (a.k.a. Battletruck); David Hutchison looks at how the Genesis Cave (a.k.a. the Eden Cave) was created in Star Trek II -- The Wrath of Khan; David Gerrold's Soaring looks at violence and games in Star Trek ("The Fan Who Molded Himself" -- give yourself credit if you get the pun); and editor Howard Zimmerman wraps it all up in his Lastword column with a look at some SF books news, and he welcomes aboard new managing editor David McDonnell.

"The changes that do bother Sowards were those made before the film began shooting. In Sowards' final draft, turned in to Harve Bennett on April 9, 1981 (two days before the writers' strike), Khan was depicted as a 'mystic' rather than, as Sowards puts it, 'Attila the Hun.' 'One of the things I had with the mystic approach -- which I liked better than the way it was done in the film -- was that Khan actually met Kirk face-to-face in the Genesis Cave,' Sowards says. 'I like that better than the two always being off in space together making phone calls.'"

--Lee Goldberg, writer, "Jack Sowards: The Man Who Killed Mr. Spock"

To view previous Starlog issue descriptions, click on "Starlog Internet Archive Project" in the keywords below.