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Suzi Quazar

Year: 2013

  • Inspirations: Irwin Allen

    Inspirations: Irwin Allen

    I have a pretty extensive list of inspirations for Suzi, but right up at the top would have to be Irwin Allen.

    Lost in Space
    The space family Robinson

    Allen created just about every one of my favorite shows from my childhood. Classics like Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Land of the Giants were all required viewing.

    Of course, I look back now and realize that most of his shows eventually morphed into kid shows. By season 3, Lost in Space had pretty much became the Will, Dr Smith and Robot Variety hour. I think if they could have stuck with the same formula they used in the first season, Lost in Space would have been remembered very differently.

    Time Tunnel
    Time Tunnel

    Time Tunnel was another show that had a great premise, but lacked in execution. I think this was more a matter of budget constraints that anything else.

    Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a fun show with a great cast and concept. Land of the Giants was kinda the odd man out of the Allen stable.

    Voyage to the bottom of the sea
    Voyage to the bottom of the sea

    The writing was really all over the place, but back then, Deanna Lunds mini-skirts could make me overlook a lot of plot holes.

    Irwin Allen produced some popular disaster shows like The Towering Inferno and The Posideon Adventure in the 70’s,
    but was never able to recapture his success on the small screen.

    Land of the Giants
    Land of the Giants

    Irwin Allen had a good run, and created some iconic characters in science fiction. I hope to capture some of that fun in Suzi’s stories.

    What do you remember about Time Tunnel, Lost in Space or the other Allen shows?

    all images copyright of their respective copyright holders.
  • New Mix on Radio Cosmos

    New Mix on Radio Cosmos

    You like music?
    Who doesn’t?

    We beam our music into the heavens, so you never know what will turn up on Radio Cosmos.
    Playing the best music from, well, whenever!

    Click here or in the sidebar!

  • Sunday Science: Dude, where’s my jetpack?

    Sunday Science: Dude, where’s my jetpack?

    Jetpacks.  A long time staple of science fiction, and the true hallmark of the world of tomorrow.

    jetpack
    Never be late for work again!

    In the 50’s, everyone thought that the future would be full of the things.  Well, here we are in the 21at century and all I got is a Kia.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but dang, we can make celebrities out of Kim Kardashians and Justin Bliebers, but not be able to fly around free as birds?

    Or can we?
    Let’s take a look at the history of this crazy idea.
    I think you will find it’s even older than you thought!

    Leave to the Russians to come up with the idea of strapping rocket fuel to your back and lighting it off.  Inventor Aleksandr Fyodorovich Andreyev came up with the idea back in 1919.  Technologists of the time loved the concept, and a patent was issued, but it seems common sense prevailed as no prototypes were developed.

    In 1958, Garry Burdett and Alexander Bohr supposedly developed a jump belt that used compressed gas to propel the wearer up to 7 meters in the air, but it seems no one was interested and financing never developed.

    Cutting to the chase, in 1965 (a great year for innovative creations!) Bell Aerosystems began developing the Jet Belt.  The first test came in 1969, when a pilot flew about 100 meters in a circle, about 7 meters off the ground.  While the system worked, it was deemed too complicated and dangerous (it operated below minimum safe parachute distance and was very heavy!)

    The Bell Rocket Belt is probably the most famous of the jetpacks.

    Lost in space jetpack
    Gotta find Penny and that stupid Bloop!

    It was used in the James Bond film Thunderball, as well as on episodes of Lost in Space and the 70’s tv show Ark II.
    A really cool device, it could only fly a little over 30 seconds.

    So, it looks like we are still a ways off from being able to jetpack ourselves to work and avoid rush hour traffic.  Then again, if people can barely handle cars, do I really want to be flying around with them too?

    Texting and jetpacking?

    Nancy Atkinson over at UniverseToday.com has an article that shows us the jetpack technology of today.  Go learn something!  It will only hurt a little bit…

  • Saturday Sneak Peek:The sad time

    Sad Suzi
    Lost in another galaxy.

    It’s a big lonely galaxy out there…

  • Inspirations: Matt Mason

    Inspirations: Matt Mason

    Space toys.  Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut.
    I remember all the rocket launches from the late 60’s and early 70’s, and watching as man took his first steps on the moon.

    Major Matt Mason
    Don’t bend those joints too much!

    Major Matt Mason was the must have space toy back in those days.  Remember, this was waaay before Star Wars made space toys common place.

    Made of a flexible rubber, he had a wire skeleton that suffered from metal fatigue once the joints were bent too much.
    That meant that if you bent his arms or legs alot, you soon had a Matt Mason that was missing some limbs!
    He did have a cool space station and accessories, like jetpacks, space sleds and more cool stuff.

    I remember having the space crawler and that rascal could rampage over just about any obstacle.

    Major Matt Mason
    Space Crawler laughs at your obstacles!

    You can still get these guys on ebay, and for a while, I had a home business that would refurbish the broken ones and sell them.
    Back in 2001, I was contacted by a guy who wanted to “lease” a Matt Mason from me to use as a prop in a play.

    I sent him one and a few months later I got a package from London.  Inside was an autographed program from the play This Is Our Youth, starring Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Summer Phoenix.

    They also included a photo of the cast holding the Matt Mason.

     

    What were some of the toys you remember growing up with?  Leave a comment and let me know!

  • Sunday Science: Gravity

    Sunday Science: Gravity

    I have always been fascinated by physics.  Waaay back when, I was a freshman in college with dreams of being a gravitational astronomer working with LIGO.
    LIGO is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Louisiana or Washington.  Much like optical telescopes capture light and let us view distant objects, LIGO reacts to gravity waves.  By using precisely positioned mirrors and lasers, these waves can be measured.

    That brings us to this weeks topic.  Gravity.

    What it does is easy to explain, but how it does it, well, that’s the tricky part.
    We know gravity is a force that is exerted between objects with mass.
    We know that the more mass an object has, the greater the gravitational field it has.
    We also know that objects that are closer exert more gravitational force than distant objects.

    The same force that keeps us on Earth is the same force that keeps the planets in orbit.
    Some scientists searching for the Unified Field Theory claim that gravity, electromagnetic force and the forces at the atomic level are aspects of the same force.

    Tega Jessa over at UniverseToday.com has a great article to get you started.

    Go learn!  Your brain will thank you.

     

  • Saturday Sneak Peek: Saucers, baby!

    saucer
    A retro spacegirl needs a retro saucer!

    Just what every spacegirl needs!  Flying saucers rock, and flying saucers with twin rayguns rock even harder!

    I use a variety of tools in making Suzi.
    One of my goals is to get her animated later this year, so I have been designing the strip using tools like Cinema 4D, then working the image in Photoshop.

    I keep my options open and thanks to my publisher, I plan ahead and design for reuse.
    This will save me a lot of time during the animation process.
    Suzi is definitely a long term relationship…

     

  • Inspirations: Warren Publishing

    I grew up reading just about everything I could get my hands on.  Comics, library books, you name it.  But my most favorite reads of my teenage years were all produced by Warren Publishing.  With titles like Famous Monsters, Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, I was hooked from the start.

    Featuring fantastic art and some really mind bending stories, these books started a flame that still burns in me today. famous-monsters-of-filmland-56-1969 I loved Famous Monsters, the way they would show you the behind the scenes photos from the set of Planet of the Apes, or showing the flying rig used for Ghidorah in the Godzilla movies.  For a kid like me, it was a gateway into a magical world of imagination and storytelling.

    Creepy and Eerie told some really great, really different stories.  Eerie seemed to have more sci-fi related material.  They would feature recurring characters in semi-serialized stories (a pattern that I am totally using in my worlds, btw).  250px-Eerie95Heros like Darklon or my favorite, The Rook, really broke the superhero mold.  The art and the stories were very strong, for the most part.  I have seen a few of them adapted to TV.  I have always wondered why more didn’t make it to Hollywood.  It’s funny how after all these years, there are still stories that I remember so well.

    And its completely easy to see why Vampirella was a hot seller.  I think that helps explain my obsession with dark haired beauties!  Eckerds Drug Store was the only place in my hometown that carried these magazines, and in junior high, I would save my lunch money to buy them.

    warren-064-fI would read them from cover to cover, and the ads were especially cool.  They would offer Super 8mm reels of classic horror movies for sale, along with the projector.  My biggest dream as a kid was to get the money to get those films, then open my own monster theater at my house and have the Saturday Afternoon Movie of the Week.

    Check out ebay and if you can find them, they are well worth the reading.  I haven’t looked at any of the newer ones that came out in the past few years, so I can’t vouch for them.  But I can totally stand by the older runs from the 70’s and 80’s.

    Good times, man, good times…

  • Sunday Science: Cosmic rays

    Sunday Science: Cosmic rays

    Cosmic rays.  Where would the Fantastic Four be without them?

    So what is the real deal with cosmic rays?
    Cosmic rays are super tiny particles that slam into the Earth’s atmosphere.
    Billions of rays every second!  
    But most of these are very low level impacts.

    Most of these rays come from inside our galaxy, from events such as supernovae, black holes and neutron stars.
    These rays are able to travel great distances at fantastic speeds due to the low density of matter in space.
    Cosmic rays are one of the limiting factors in space travel and colonization of other planets, as we would need a strong way to shield ourselves from these particles.

    Jerry Coffey has written an article on cosmic rays over at UniverseToday.com.
    As always, go read and learn about these particles and what part they play in our everyday lives.

  • Saturday Sneak Peek: The Outpost!

    outpost1
    The Outpost

    Saturday!
    It comes and goes way too fast for my taste.
    Here’s another WIP that shows Suzi on her quest to find a way home.

    There are a lot of classic sci-fi elements that go into Suzi.
    I’ve been posting weekly about the inspirations that went into Suzi, many of them coming from the books I read as a kid.
    Mix in classic shows like Lost in Space, Voyage to the bottom of the sea and Land of the Giants (Irwin Allen ftw!).

    What are some of the shows and comics that you remember from growing up?