Wednesday, June 1, 2016

The First Last Starfighter, Or, There Are No Original Ideas!

Allow me to present this complete 5-page story from Weird War Tales #102 (1981):





Let me reemphasize: that was 1981. 3 years before The Last Starfighter.

Not that I'm saying TLS ripped off this dinky little comic book story--although if I were an unscrupulous Hollywood type looking to take advantage of the sci-fi/horror boomlet of the early 80s, diving into these anthology comics that no one would ever remember might be a good way to find "inspiration."

And of course, it's not to say that this tales idea was first spawned by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn and Trevor Von Eeden and Jerry Ordway--this tale may have published been before The Last Starfighter, but it was also 4 years after the original Ender's Game short story.

No, I'm not accusing anyone of ripping anything off. It's just that sometimes, there are ideas out the in the aether, percolating in the popular subconscious. Like Swamp Thing/Man-Thing, or Vision/Red Tornado, they bubble up into creators minds, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes years apart.

But I guess my real message here is, get better at your video games! Apparently, an awful lot of alien cultures are depending on Earth teens' X-Box prowess to save them!! Quit school, quit your job, and play more video games!!

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