Decline

Space Family Robinson: Lost in Space continued with its strong sales throughout the run of Lost in Space, but signs of waning interest appeared when the letter column feature disappeared early in 1968. The "Silver Age" comics boom was beginning to fade at this point in time, and SFR's subsequent fortunes were also a good indicator of the Silver Age's decline. Some months after the TV series' cancellation in spring of 1969, the comic title joined a large-scale cancellation trend in the industry as it ceased publication, with its 36th issue.

Comic sales for superheroes levelled off in the early 70s, and publishers began to experiment with new approaches, like radical revamping of their superhero characters. They also began to introduce non-superhero comics, in genres like horror, science fiction and fantasy. It was around this time, in the wake of the Apollo moon landings, that Lost in Space was thriving in syndication, and one of its TV contemporaries was spawning an ongoing SF phenomenon of its own. A certain SF TV series that had been a ratings failure on NBC, made a surprising comeback in syndicated reruns ... that was, of course, Star Trek.

It was in the midst of this mini-boom of SF excitement in the early 70s that Gold Key decided to bring the Craig Robinson family back, exactly four years after the original cancellation of their comic. In October of 1973, the series resumed with issue #37 under the mouthful of a title Space Family Robinson: Lost in Space on Space Station One, and continued on a quarterly basis. The new run of the comic, from issues #37 to #54, featured mostly new stories and a smattering of reprints.

This scene, from the splash page of "Battle of Giants," (SFR #41, Oct. 1974), is a good example of Dan Spiegle's flair for vivid alien landscapes, with Tim and Tam in Spacemobile One reconnoitering an ancient ruined city.

Irwin Allen all but stopped doing science fantasy shows after making the NBC TV movie City Beneath the Sea in 1970. He changed his focus to disaster movies and set off a new Hollywood trend for action-packed disaster thrillers with The Poseidon Adventure in 1971, following that up with the epic Fox/Warners co-production of The Towering Inferno. After that, Irwin Allen went back to the Robinsons' roots and did his own remake of Swiss Family Robinson, a 1975 TV movie and short-lived TV series.

Ironically, it was at the end of that big boom year of SF films, 1977, that also saw the premiere of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that DuBois and Spiegle finally laid Space Family Robinson aside. The last new SFR story appeared in the final issue of that year. The comic continued for another seven years, publishing reprinted stories. Equally ironic, the Craig Robinson family suffered the same uncertain fate in the comics that the John Robinson family had on TV, in that neither family ever found its way home to Earth. This turned out to be another major difference of both Space Families from their forebears in the Wyss novel: the Swiss Family Robinson was eventually rescued at the end of the book.

After a long spell of diminishing sales, Western Publishing closed up shop on their Gold Key Comics line in 1984. About that time, SFR ended its run with issue #59.

A decade passed, and it seemed that Space Family Robinson was forgotten, lurking quietly in the shadows of pop culture while syndicated reruns of Lost in Space prospered on TV. With SF films continuing to set box office records throughout the '80s, LiS alumnus Bill Mumy tried, and failed, to convince Irwin Allen to allow production of a Lost in Space film for theatres or TV. Finally, in 1991, a fledgling comics publisher called Innovation appeared on the scene, with a very ambitious, high-quality comic bearing a very familiar title: Lost in Space. This time, it was the TV Robinsons' turn to continue their search for Earth, but in print instead of on film. So, in an odd way, the Space Family Robinson premise had come full circle.

Innovation had licensed a number of other TV and film properties as it set out on its ambitious path into the comic stores, including a revival of the CBS cult TV series Beauty and the Beast, a series inspired by the then-current TV revival of Dark Shadows, NBC's popular time travel drama Quantum Leap, and a fresh adaptation of the classic 1956 SF film Forbidden Planet. Unfortunately, the new LiS comic only managed to run for 12 issues, but not because of poor sales: Innovation's ambitious projects couldn't keep ahead of their bottom line, and the company failed. But, in the midst of the time that this brief resurrection had prevailed for Lost in Space, rumor also had it that another independent comics company, Valiant Comics, which had just made a successful revival of Gold Key's Magnus, Robot Fighter, was also looking into the prospects of reviving Space Family Robinson.

That rebirth didn't take place ... but there's always hope. There was obvious interest manifest, as when New Line Cinema made the 1998 Lost in Space film, which was followed shortly thereafter by the recent Disney remake, The New Swiss Family Robinson, and another new TV Swiss Family TV series starring Richard Thomas, and the appearance of other space shows since then with similar elements, like Earth 2, Hypernauts, Star Trek: Voyager and Farscape. There was even another attempt at a TV revival of LiS in 2004, when The Robinsons: Lost in Space, a series project, shot a pilot episode but was ultimately rejected by the old WB Network (since merged with UPN to become The CW). So hope remains: the entire history of the Space Family Robinson patiently awaits anyone who cares to investigate it, at their nearby comics shop. And who knows? Perhaps a new comics series ... or a new incarnation in some other medium ...

An excellent complete cover gallery of Space Family Robinson is available for viewing at the Lost in Space Collectors Page. By navigating elsewhere on that site, you can also view Innovation's Lost in Space covers. There is great uncertainty these days about the copyright status of the Gold Key Comics properties as Golden Books Family Entertainment, Inc., the successor company of Western Publishing, went bankrupt in 2001. The Golden Books division has since become a subsidiary of Random House Childrens' Books unit, and Western/GBFEI's other media holdings have become the property of DIC Entertainment, Inc. That information will be featured here as soon as it becomes available.

For more biographical information about the late Gaylord DuBois, visit Gaylord DuBois.com, a blog maintained by his granddaughter, artist Wendy Hanson.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Homepage