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| An excellent idea this – a western in space, set on the planet Arizon! It would be easy to turn this into a series – a pastiche if you like of those 1950s/60s TV westerns we all loved- or the long-running Italian comic, Tex.
The world-building on this one is exemplary – detailed, consistent, innovative, great characters – everything that a good space opera should be. I know that Harry Harrison wrote a number of Rick Random scripts and I wonder if this is one of them, it ‘feels’ like Harry – though I believe it was more likely to be Conrad Frost?
Loved the bottom frame page 38 |
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| A gripping tale enhanced by terrific art from Ron Turner with his amazing mastery of black and white. He was so prolific too, yet I swear it would take me at a couple of days to turn out just one page as detailed as any of his. And such great hardware, I love his futuristic ships and cars... Let's hear it for Ron Turner! An SF icon. |
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| There’s something a little odd about the art for this issue. The story is clearly drawn by Ron Turner, but who drew Rick Random’s head? To me, it doesn’t look like Turner’s style, and I wonder if it might have been done by Bill Lacey. For example, have a look at pages 47 and 66 of this scan, and compare this with the style in some of the other Random stories drawn by Turner around this time eg #49 “The Man Who Owned the Moon” which was published only a few months before. If this is right, heaven knows why they thought it necessary, unless they wanted something more “normal” and sympathetic for the hero than Turner’s highly stylised renditions of his characters. Rather ironic if so, as the supercool 40-a-day smoking Random is one of Turner’s most convincing characterisations. |
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| Goof, I agree that Rick's heads appear to have been redrawn by Bill Lacey. Given that Lacey was the strip's first artist, maybe the editor felt Turner didn't follow Lacey's design closely enough? In #44, "Kidnappers from Space," there's a rather awkward pasteover Lacey head on story page 9, last panel. |
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| I think you're right, Crashryan, and I’ve now seen a couple more stories where Lacey did Random's heads – #64 Five Lives of Mr Quex, and #91 Mystery of the Milky Way (for another artist). It’s particularly bizarre in the case of Turner and Lacey because their styles are chalk and cheese. It was a different matter when Lacey shared stories with Selby Donnison because their styles were reasonably harmonious. The bright ideas of comics editors are sometimes difficult to fathom. |
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| Additional Information |
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| Publication | Price: 9d [0-0-9 GBP] | Pages: 1 | Frequency: The first Thursday of each month |
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| Cover | The Gold-Rush Planet |
| Featuring | Rick Random |
| Credits | Pencils:? (Painted) | Inks:? (Painted) | Colors:? (Painted) |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction |
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| Comic Story | The Gold-Rush Planet (64 pages) |
| Featuring | Rick Random |
| Content | Genre: Science Fiction |
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| The data in the additional content section is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
More details about this comic may be available in their page here |
