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That’s one small step for man... MOON Summer LANDING 2019 MANIA No. 5 | $8.95 Snuffy Smith turns 100 The Original Greatest Feel the force American Hero! of our up-close- William Katt and-personal Interview Blast off with Jason of Star Command MAJOR MATT MASON the spaceman MARK HAMILL 5 with the bends 1 INTERVIEW 7 3 0 0 8 5 6 2 “The First Time I Met Tarzan!” • TV Dinners • Celebrity Crushes & more! 8 Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! 1 Snuffy Smith © King Features Syndicate. Major Matt Mason © Mattel. Jason of Star Command © Filmation. All Rights Reserved. 51 The crazy cool culture we grew up with CONTENTS Issue #5 | Summer 2019 47 Columns and 69 Special Features Retro Comic Strips 3 Barney Google and Snuffy Smith 3 at 100 Retro Interview Mark Hamill 74 Retro Interview 27 Snuffy Smith Cartoonist Will Murray’s 20th John Rose Century Panopticon The First Time I Met Tarzan Departments 35 Andy Mangels’ Retro 2 Saturday Mornings Retrotorial Jason of Star Command 35 18 51 RetroFad Retro Television Moon Landing Mania The Greatest American Hero 20 57 Retro Toys 69 Retro Interview Major Matt Mason William Katt 26 60 Celebrity Crushes Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum 32 Museum of Pop Culture – Too Much TV Quiz Seattle, Washington 60 47 Retro Food & Drink TV Dinners 20 79 RetroFanmail 80 ReJECTED 18 RetroFan fantasy cover by 27 Scott Saavedra Cover image of Mark Hamill at the Star Wars: The Last Jedi Japan Premiere Red Carpet on December 6, 2017. Photo by Dick Thomas Johnson [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]. RetroFan™ #5, Summer 2019. Published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: [email protected]. Four-issue subscriptions: $41 Economy US, $65 International, $16 Digital. Please send subscription orders to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Snuffy Smith © King Features Syndicate, Inc. Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. Major Matt Mason © Mattel. Jason of Star Command © Filmation. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2019 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224 Mark Hamill The Jedi Looks Back by Glenn Greenberg Meet Luke Skywalker! One of four 1977 Star Wars promotional posters illustrated by Del Nichols and produced as a Coca-Cola premium. Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. Courtesy of Heritage. He may not really be a Jedi Knight, but make no mistake—Mark Hamill is a Force to be reckoned with. All an interviewer has to do is ask him a question and then just get out of his way. Because, in delivering an answer, Hamill will go into great depth, providing rich backstory and texture, and he will often go down paths that are both unexpected and thoroughly delightful. He’s a natural storyteller, which should come as no surprise to people who have followed his career closely and are aware of his writing work—he created the comic-book miniseries The Black Pearl, published by Dark Horse Mark Hamill at the 2017 Disney Legends Awards luncheon. StevePHOTO: Sherman in 1996, which he has hoped to adapt into a film—and his turn behind the RetroFan Summer 2019 3 RETRO INTERVIEW: MARK HAMILL (LEFT) Howard Chaykin artwork graces this rare promotional poster distributed at the San Diego Comic-Con and Kansas City WorldCon in the summer of 1976, roughly a year before the film opened. (ABOVE) Compare Chaykin’s poster art to his iconic cover for the Marvel Comics’ first issue of Star Wars (July 1977). Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. Courtesy of Heritage. camera, as the director of the 2004 talking for nearly an hour. Unfortunately, Mark Hamill: I can. I’ll never forget it, mockumentary Comic Book: The Movie due to the main focus of the article, and as a matter of fact. Mind you, I didn’t (in which he also starred). the fact that other people involved in read the entire script until I’d gotten But, of course, on top of his highly the franchise—specifically animator the part. I met George [Lucas] and there acclaimed voice work as the Joker in Dave Filoni and production designer was just a general interview. He didn’t the now-classic Batman: The Animated Doug Chiang—were also interviewed speak at all. Brian DePalma was also Series and its various spin-offs, Hamill is and quoted extensively, most of Hamill’s looking at actors for Carrie, so George best known for playing Luke Skywalker comments ended up on the cutting-room stayed silent. It was a little “tell us in five Star Wars movies—and he will floor, so to speak. It seemed like the full about yourself” kind of thing—there take on that role again, for the sixth and interview would never see the light of day. was no talk of a movie or anything, they presumably last time, in Episode IX, due But thanks to RetroFan editor-in- just want to get a feel of who you are. for release in December 2019. chief Michael Eury, who expressed great Then, based on that, I got a screen test, I had the opportunity to interview interest in publishing the complete text, and it might have been a seven-, eight-, Mark Hamill on April 6, 2017, in the interview is finally getting a home. nine-page scene, in the cockpit of my capacity as a senior editor and Much gratitude to TwoMorrows publisher the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo— journalist at TIME Magazine for Kids, John Morrow, for his efforts to secure Mr. Harrison [Ford] did it with me—and for which I was writing a feature story Hamill’s blessing for this piece to run, to then, I heard I got the part and they about the 40th anniversary of Star Dante Ciampaglia, my original editor, for sent the script to my house. Wars and its impact on our culture. his support and encouragement, and, And I was by myself and it was a The release of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi above all, to Mark Hamill himself, for his little one-bedroom apartment on the was eight months away, and, naturally, time and his ongoing generosity. beach in Malibu. And I sat in my living there was very little that Hamill could room and—well, I say living room, but say about it, so the conversation was you walk in and it’s one big room and primarily about the past, rather than RetroFan: As a comic-book fan, and as one bedroom [chuckles]—and in any the future. someone who grew up loving science case, I read this thing and I was just I had expected and prepared for fiction and genre stuff, can you remember astonished. I mean, I couldn’t believe our conversation to run only about 15 what your initial reaction was when you my eyes. I was a Famous Monsters of to 20 minutes, but he and I ended up read the script for the original movie? Filmland magazine kid, I idolized the 4 RetroFan Summer 2019 RETRO INTERVIEW: MARK HAMILL black-and-white King Kong and all the about this project, people said, old Universal horror classics—I was so “Oh, it’s like Flash Gordon or into this stuff. Ray Harryhausen was something.” And yes, it is. But I an idol of mine, Willis O’Brien, Marcel thought it much more strongly Delgado, all those old, cool, stop-frame favored a traditional fairy tale. animation people. And had we been traveling around But anyway, I’m reading this thing in horse-drawn carriages, it would and I just can’t—like I say, the script have become very clear. And itself, even without John Williams’ that’s why I thought it had a much fantastic score and all the brilliant broader appeal than traditional special effects and the art direction science fiction, which is usually dry and all that—just the core story as it’s and sort of scientific and lacking in written down, is thrilling. I mean, you humor. I mean, 2001 is obviously a have that same sense of swashbuckling masterpiece, but a barrel of laughs adventure, and that whole “swept it ain’t. away”—I remember thinking specifically, this really smacks of Wizard RF: Right, right. of Oz, with a gender switch. Instead of a MH: And this one, I thought, young girl from a farm in the Midwest, was hilarious. And I also admired here you have this boy or young man, how they used concepts like the someone who’s like—I was guessing Force, which was sort of a way to Luke was in his senior year of high talk about spirituality and religion, school, otherwise why wouldn’t he have which makes everyone—well, just left home? And he’s swept away I’m speaking in very broad strokes on this incredible adventure where he here—but makes people uncomfortable, 2004’s Comic Book: The Movie was Mark meets this fantastic array of characters, you know? It was a way to be able to Hamill’s directorial debut. Courtesy of Heritage. from a swaggering pirate and smuggler acknowledge that aspect of our beings and rogue and an impudent, imperious without too much… resistance, I say, from princess who’s beautiful and he falls the audience. in love with, and he meets a wizard.