''Star Rangers'' was a four-issue
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
science-fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univers ...
comic-book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
series created by writer
Mark Ellis and artist
Jim Mooney
James Noel Mooney (August 13, 1919 – March 30, 2008) was an American comics artist best known for his long tenure at DC Comics and as the signature artist of Supergirl, as well as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, both during wh ...
, following the adventures of a military spaceship crew in a 25th-century controlled by corporations.
Publication history
''Star Rangers'', released by the
independent comics
Alternative comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which i ...
company Adventure Publications, ran four issue
cover-date
The cover date of a periodical publication is the date displayed on the cover, which is not necessarily the true date of publication (the on-sale date or release date); later cover dates are common in magazine and comic book publishing. More unusu ...
d October 1987 to February 1988.
[''Star Rangers'']
at the Grand Comics Database
The Grand Comics Database (GCD) is an Internet-based project to build a database of comic book information through user contributions. The GCD project catalogues information on creator credits, story details, reprints, and other information useful ...
It was created by writer
Mark Ellis and artist
Jim Mooney
James Noel Mooney (August 13, 1919 – March 30, 2008) was an American comics artist best known for his long tenure at DC Comics and as the signature artist of Supergirl, as well as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, both during wh ...
. Scott Behnke edited the series, for which
Dave Dorman
Dave Dorman (born 1958 in Michigan) is a science fiction, horror and fantasy illustrator best known for his ''Star Wars'' artwork.
Early life
Dorman's parents are Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jack N. Dorman and Phyllis Dorman. Both parents ar ...
provided cover art.
Mooney was a longtime industry veteran of ''
The Amazing Spider-Man
''The Amazing Spider-Man'' is an ongoing American comic book series featuring the Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man as its main protagonist. Being in the Earth 616, mainstream continuity of the franchise, it began publication in 1963 as a bim ...
'' and other series who had recently ended a contract with
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...
to enter semi-retirement.
In a 2007 interview, Ellis recalled that
Story
Set in the 25th century, the series revolved around the crew of the ''Sabre'', the last ship in the Frontier Battalion of the once-fearsome Star Rangers Corps. In both ''Star Rangers'' and its companion series ''
Death Hawk {{No footnotes, date=December 2018
Death Hawk is a fictional American comic book character, a self-styled salvage expert in the 25th century. The character starred in a namesake, three-issue series published by Adventure Publications from 1987 to ...
'', the era is a
dystopia
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
of
Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...
-spanning
corporation
A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...
s that held the true power behind the centralized government of the Sol 9 Commonwealth. By the time of the series, the Star Rangers Corps has been reorganized into a token peacekeeping force while the corporations maintain their own security divisions, such as the Sol 9 Shogunate's Tigers of Heaven. As such, all Star Rangers ships and weaponry are outdated, making it difficult for ''Sabre'' crew to perform its duties. The ship patrols Sectors Four through Nine of the
Orion Arm
The Orion Arm is a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy that is across and approximately in length, containing the Solar System, including Earth. It is also referred to by its full name, the Orion–Cygnus Arm, as well as Local Arm, Orion ...
.
The crew consists of:
* Commander Jon Blake
*Aristo the
reptilian medic
A medic is a person involved in medicine such as a medical doctor, medical student, paramedic or an emergency medical responder.
Among physicians in the UK, the term "medic" indicates someone who has followed a "medical" career path in postgradu ...
* Ahrikeem, master of combat from the Vholon Empire
* Radac, the ship's
synthetic human engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
*Maya Lucas, an embittered pilot who has little use for men.
They report to Commodore Nyota M'membe.
The story arc of the four-issue series dealt with the Rangers uncovering a conspiracy between two corporations and the criminal empire of Lord Rogue on the Freeworld of Amicus, and finding themselves branded criminals by their own organization.
The character
Death Hawk {{No footnotes, date=December 2018
Death Hawk is a fictional American comic book character, a self-styled salvage expert in the 25th century. The character starred in a namesake, three-issue series published by Adventure Publications from 1987 to ...
appeared as a
back-up feature by writer Ellis and penciler
Adam Hughes
Adam Hughes (born May 5, 1967) is an American comics artist and illustrator best known to American comic book readers for his renderings of pinup-style female characters, and his cover work on titles such as ''Wonder Woman'' and ''Catwoman''. H ...
in issues #2-3.
Plans were made for a second ''Star Rangers'' series and a crossover with Death Hawk, but Adventure Publications dissolved in the interim.
References
{{reflist
External links
MarkEllisInk.comDeathhawk.com
American comics titles
Science fiction comics
Space Western comics
Fiction set in the 25th century