Innovation
Creators: David Campiti, George Broderick Jr., Bill Mumy, Matt Thompson, Mark Goddard, Miguel Ferrer, Kevin Burns, Terry Collins, Karen May, Robert M. Ingersoll, Peter David, Eddy Newell, Mark Jones, Michal Dutkiewicz, Peter Murphey, John Garcia, Barb Kaalberg, Dan and Dave Day, George Perez, Joe Dunn, Shane Glines, Jim Key, Scott Rockwell, Vickie Williams
Release date: July 1, 1991, to June 1, 1993, for issue Nos. 1-12 and two annuals, per Mike’s Amazing World of Comics
Strap in; this is going to be one of my lengthier posts.
Last time, we discussed a pair of Lost in Space hardcovers published about five years ago and adapted from some unfilmed scripts written for the 1960s television series. I wanted to read through those hardcovers before re-visiting this early 1990s comic series because they were chronologically earlier adventures of the Jupiter 2 crew.
I bought and enjoyed the first 11 regular issues and the first annual of the Innovation Lost in Space series when they were released, but the title came out somewhat sporadically. I enjoyed what I’d read of the series and had since purchased the later issues. The plan was to someday re-read this series to see if it still held up and finally read the issues I had missed the first time around.
I was prompted to moved that Lost In Space reading project from sometime to now after a very nice retrospective article in the pages of Back Issue magazine published by TwoMorrows Publishing. The specific issue was No. 128 from July 2021, and the issue focused on a number of Bronze Age TV tie-in comics. The Lost in Space article covered a number of topics, but my interest in this series was rekindled by the excellent coverage Back Issue did on the Innovation title. The article included a lot of quotes and behind the scenes information from David Campiti and Bill Mumy, among others.
The Lost in Space comic Innovation launched in the summer of 1991 begins following the Robinson family — John and Maureen Robinson and their three children, Judy, Penny and Will — Major Don West, Dr. Zachary Smith, and the Robot three years after the end of the television series. That means the ship has been lost for six years by this point. The series involved a number of creators, as evidenced by the lengthy list above, but also featured input by several of the original cast members, most notably the adult Bill Mumy, the actor who portrayed Will Robinson in the three-season television program. Mumy wrote several of the stories in these first 14 issues (12 regular issues and two annuals) and also served as a creative consultant for the overall series.
There had been efforts to either re-launch the show or otherwise continue the adventures of the Robinson family, but many of them were reportedly stymied by none other than series creator Irwin Allen. Bill Mumy himself had created and tried to launch a motion picture that would resolve the Jupiter 2 crew’s story only to be told “no” by Allen, according to a text piece Mumy wrote for one of the Innovation issues.
Then along came David Campiti, a fan of the show and the then-publisher and editor-in-chief at Innovation Comics. Campiti wanted to bring Lost in Space to comics. At the time, Mumy told Campiti the chances were slim that approval would be forthcoming, but that if Campiti could get the go-ahead, Mumy would like to be a part of the process. Obviously, permission was granted, but various difficulties among the initial creative team led to further delays.
Finally, the stars aligned and Innovation’s Lost in Space debuted on July 1, 1991, according to Mike’s Amazing World of Comics. That first issue depicts the Jupiter 2 crew being forced to land on yet another planet for repairs. Once there, they are beset by some plant monsters, the ship is further damaged and Dr. Smith discovers a hidden memory chip buried deep inside the Robot — a chip which has not only recorded his original sabotage of the Jupiter 2 but many other details from before the launch of the Alpha Centauri colonization program.
The first issue cover (and many of the subsequent covers, too) featured a gorgeous painting of Will, Penny and Judy Robinson along with the Robot in peril outside the Jupiter 2. The story presented the familiar characters, and while plant monsters might immediately conjure mental images of some of the sillier television episode plots, the threat is presented in the issue as a serious one, and the crew reacts accordingly.
I very much enjoyed the first issue, and I apparently wasn’t the only one to do so. The series was popular, and the first two sold-out issues were each reprinted in a couple of specials that featured new covers and additional behind-the-scenes materials. The third and fourth issues, a two-part story, were the first to be written by Bill Mumy. Those two issues were also later collected and re-presented as a square-bound comic, again with a new cover and bonus materials.
The Innovation Lost in Space series explored a number of interesting topics. Issue No. 9 of the series, for example, features another tale written by Bill Mumy and sports a George Perez cover. This issue details the environmental and sociological impacts on a planet resulting from one of the Jupiter 2’s many forced landings. Issue Nos. 3-4, that first story written by Mumy, involve the Jupiter 2 landing on an inhabited planet with several warring factions and depicts how the denizens of that planet react to the space travelers. Other issues go more deeply into the various characters’ lives and motivations before the Jupiter 2 mission began. Along the way, readers are even given their first glimpse of the mysterious Aeolus 14 Umbra, the individuals who hired Dr. Zachary Smith to sabotage the Jupiter 2 mission that resulted in the Robinsons — and Smith himself — being lost in space.
Issue No. 5 was another stand-out, helping as it did to reconcile the sillier aspects of the television show with the more realistic presentation of the Jupiter 2 adventures in the comic. This issue presented the story of the Jupiter 2’s accidental encounter with a meteor shower from two very different perspectives. The image at the top of this post is from issue No. 5. The top half of each page is devoted to John Robinson’s log recording and presents the events in a realistic manner in keeping with most of the rest of the Innovation series. The story on the bottom of each page is the same adventure, but told from the perspective of Penny Robinson’s diary, where she details the family’s adventures, but in a more fanciful fashion. The Robot is less logical and more humorous, for example, in Penny’s version of events. And while Dr. Smith’s actions in both narratives are similar, his motivations and the circumstances around the events are very different.
A central theme throughout the Innovation series is the adolescence and resulting loneliness of Penny and Will Robinson. I don’t know that exact ages for these two were ever given in the television series, but I know from interviews that Bill Mumy was 10 when the series began filming. Assuming his character was the same age and Penny was about 12, the pair are 16 and 18, respectively, when the Innovation series begins. They have their family with them, and Judy and Don were always a couple, but there are no other humans with whom Penny or Will can form friendships or romantic attachments.
While this would be a very real issue the Robinsons would have to deal with at some point, the artists involved, especially in the early issues of the Innovation series, took the concept to an extreme with Penny. The familiar diamond pattern on Penny’s uniform tops in the television program became a cut-out emphasizing her cleavage. I’m not opposed to “good girl” art or pretty pictures of pretty women, but things got a bit out of hand when several of the early issues of the comic depict Penny in her underwear or barely-there pajamas. But thankfully that tendency went away as the series continued.
Bill Mumy’s was not the only influence from Hollywood on the Innovation series. Issue No. 7 focuses on Major Don West, and Mark Goddard, the actor who portrayed West in the television show contributed to the plot of the issue. Miguel Ferrer, an actor and friend of Bill Mumy, contributed to the plot of the first Innovation Lost in Space annual, which features a villain who physically resembles Ferrer.
Then, in issue No. 12 of the Innovation series, the Jupiter 2 crew manages to finally find their way to the Alpha Centauri solar system. The events of the comic series to that point have taken another one to two years of the characters’ lives, so they are faced with the prospect of finally touching down at their destination after being lost in space for nearly eight years. Unless the agents of Aeolus 14 Umbra can finally end the Robinson family once and for all, that is.
The Innovation comic series didn’t end after these first 14 issues, although it very easily could have. But let’s hold off on exploring issue Nos. 13 onward for next time. Join me back here in two weeks for the epic story titled “Voyage to the Bottom of the Soul.”
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