Full disclosure…I’ve never read Dreadstar.

It’s not anything personal. I’m sure it’s great and has fans. One day I might get the bug to check it out and think it’s the greatest thing ever.

The reason I’m sharing this ad is that it was on the back of some of the comics I had during the primordial days of my comic reading. Before Superman entered the chat but after I started actually wanting my parents to buy comics for me. For some reason, seeing it more than once seared the image in my brain. I specifically remember sitting in a hospital bed (I was having my tonsils removed in the summer of 1984) and looking at this ad and being kind of fascinated. The characters looked weird. There was a dude with a sword. There’s another dude with a cat head. It was fantasy but also kind of sci-fi. This was a year after Return of the Jedi and I was firmly in my Masters of the Universe phase, so there was enough on the ad that felt familiar, but I had no context for anything I was looking at.

Was I interested enough to seek this book out? No, and that’s not surprising. Again, this was during the really early days when comics were just one of many things I was into. I would get the occasional book, especially when we made a trip to the Triangle Pharmacy, but I was also into He-Man and G.I. Joe and Garfield and Star Wars.

Still, this ad is still very much a thing for me.

Maybe I should track down issues of Dreadstar.

But I probably won’t.

This is the problem with being somewhat mercurial.

More to follow…