American Gothic Press
Creators: Carey Wilber, Holly Interlandi, Kostas Pantoulas, Patrick McEvoy, Marshall Dillon, Steve Stanley, RC Aradio and Jenn Pham
Release date: September 2016 and February 2017
Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space: The Lost Adventures was a six-issue limited series based on two unproduced scripts for the television show’s never-realized fourth season. Both scripts were written by veteran television script writer Carey Wilber, who had penned previous episodes of “Lost in Space,” “Star Trek,” “The Time Tunnel,” “Bonanza,” “Maverick” and other television programs.
I missed out on watching “Lost in Space” during the program’s initial three-season run, but I watched it and enjoyed it as a child in reruns. In fact, there was a period in my childhood when my younger brother and I would watch television most Sunday afternoons and catch syndicated reruns of “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” “Land of the Giants,” “Lost in Space,” “Star Trek,” “Maverick” and then “The Wonderful World of Disney” one right after the other into the early evening.
Each of the two Wilber “Lost in Space” scripts were adapted into comics format by Holly Interlandi and published as three issues of this six-issue series. Then each three-issue script adaptation was collected into a nice hardcover format, which is how the books came to my attention. As a fan of the show, I decided to give the two hardcovers a try and bought them when they were solicited. When each hardcover was released, in a move familiar to frequent readers of this blog, I tossed them onto a pile of books to read when I had time.
For reasons I’ll go into more next time, the time to read these hardcovers has finally arrived. And I enjoyed them, although I enjoyed the second volume a little more than the first. Both stories feel like authentic “Lost in Space” episodes, and the dialogue sounds true to the various characters, but that is to be expected since the author of the original screenplays had written for the show previously. The artist of the first story, Kostas Pantoulas, didn’t quite capture the likenesses of the different actors of the show as well as the artist of the second story, Patrick McEvoy, but the art in both was very good.
The tone of the first story felt most like a first season episode to me. “The Curious Galactics” focuses mainly on John and Will Robinson, Don West and the Robot off on a mission away from the Jupiter 2. A pair of aliens conducting experiments on lower lifeforms stumble onto the mission and decide to put the Robinsons and West to the test next. The story was interesting, but it lacked some of the humor the show was known for in later seasons.
The second story, “Malice in Wonderland,” felt more like a second- or third-season episode of the television program. As one might guess from the title, it is a take on “Alice in Wonderland,” making use primarily of Will and Penny Robinson, Dr. Smith and the Robot. While the adventure often puts the characters in peril, the writing is full of laughs and mischief along the way.
One additional element of this second story further intrigued me. At the outset of the story, the two youngest Robinson children, Dr. Smith and the Robot are joined by a purple llama named Willoughby, who wears glasses, can speak and seems to be quite familiar with the members of the Jupiter 2 crew and they with him. I didn’t recall a purple llama in any of the episodes of the show, so I was curious about this element of the story.
Each of these hardcovers contains bonus material such as copies of the original Wilber scripts and other production notes about the making of the comics and the television program. One such note cleared up the Willoughby mystery for me. Willoughby appeared in the next to last episode of the series titled “The Great Vegetable Rebellion.” In that episode, however, Willoughby was portrayed as a slight man with purple hair and glasses, not a llama. According to the notes in the hardcover, the original “Vegetable Rebellion” script called for Willoughby to be a llama, not a man, and says the change was made because Jonathan Harris, the actor who portrayed Dr. Smith, refused to work with a llama. But this being a comic, the creators involved decided to revert to the original llama form for the character.
Each of these hardcovers was a fun trip down memory lane and worthwhile additions to my collection. Come back in two weeks, and I’ll share some more Lost in Space comics memories.
