Wednesday Cover: SPACE: 1999

I've been watching the 1975 television series Space: 1999 on Blu-Ray over the last month or so, and it got me reminiscing about the comic book series published by Charlton Comics. The first two issues were drawn by my pal Joe Staton, but the next several were rendered by John Byrne, who would soon move onto superstardom at Marvel Comics, most notably as artist of The Uncanny X-Men.

Anyway, this is the cover to his second issue (#4), which manages to make two guys watching a video monitor look exciting. I'm not sure that putting the character of Victor Bergman's back to the reader is a great artistic choice, but, to be fair, if you're a fan of the show, there's no mistaking that head! Like Byrne's other early covers for Charlton, it also appears to have been hand-colored with markers.