Star Rangers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article concerns the comic book. For the novel by Andre Norton see Star Rangers (novel).
Star Rangers was a short-lived (four issue) comic series created and written by Mark Ellis and penciled by Jim Mooney. Released by Adventure Publications, it ran from 1987 to 88.
Set in the 25th century and initially conceived as “Lonesome Dove in Space”, the series revolved around the crew of The Sabre, the last ship in the Frontier Battalion of the once-fearsome Star Rangers Corps.
The 25th century as presented in Star Rangers and its companion series Death Hawk was anything but utopian. Solar-system spanning corporations held the true reins of power and the centralized government of the Sol 9 Commonwealth has become little more than a bureaucratic façade.
By the time of the series, the Star Rangers Corps has been reorganized into a token peace-keeping force, inasmuch as the corporations maintain their own security divisions, such as the Sol 9 Shogunate’s Tigers of Heaven.
As such, all Star Rangers ships are outdated and most of their weaponry is hardly cutting edge, a situation that the crew of the Sabre find almost intolerable in the performance of their duties. The ship patrols Sectors Four through Nine of the Orion Spur.
The Sabre’s crew consists of:
- Commander Jon Blake
- Aristo the reptilian medic
- Ahrikeem, master of combat from the Vholon Empire
- Radac, the ship’s synthetic human engineer
- Maya Lucas, an embittered pilot who has little use for men. A gorgeous brunette, she affects a head-band.
The crew reported 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.
Although reader reaction to Star Rangers was generally positive, and the painted covers by Dave Dorman very eye-catching, response to the character of Death Hawk who appeared as a back-up feature in issues 2 and 3 was such that the publisher decided to give him his own title—which necessitated putting the Star Rangers series on hiatus.
Plans were made for a second Star Rangers series and even a crossover with Death Hawk, but they never came to fruition due to the dissolution of Adventure Publications.
In 1993, a TV series entitled Space Rangers aired on CBS. Set in the year 2104 at Fort Hope on the planet Avalon, the series featured a group of law officers of the Space Rangers Corps. The main cast consisted of:
Captain John Boon (note the initials) played by Jeff Kaake and his crew: Doc (Jack McGee), the ship's bionic engineer, (aka "Tin Man"); Zylyn (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) a master of the Zylyusian Flute Sword from the planet Grakka; JoJo (Marjorie Monaghan), a gorgeous blond pilot from the planet New Venus who thought men were wimps and who affects a head-band; Youthful cadet Daniel Kincaid (Danny Quinn).
The misfit group reported to Commander Chennault (Linda Hunt).
The TV series was almost as short-lived as the comic series that inspired it. The six episodes are available on DVD.
Star Rangers'©Mark Ellis 2006
