Comic Book Historians: An Online Fanzine: 1969 to 1972 early Jim Starlin Fanzine Art

Star Studded 16, 1969 is a fantastic "Amateur Magazine" containing very early work by Jim Starlin, as well as a Ditko style adventure by Dennis Fujitake, and a pre-professional pin-up by Dave Cockrum amongst alot of other content. It really is a wonderful lens into some very creative comic/magazine work of the late 1960s/Silver Age. Also, anything with Starlin and Cockrum is fantastic. Jim Starlin was penciling art for Howard Keltner's Star Studded Comics as early as 1967, and in 1970 started work on Keltner's Dr. Weird with writer George R R Martin.

Here is Jim Starlin's short story about post apocalyptic Armageddon in issue 16. It's early and rough form of his art, but shows an unbridled imagination just beginning to discover his talent.

Jim Starlin would develop his craft in the early 1970s with Dr. Weird, Howard Keltner's creation, and bring that magic to Marvel. Something I find interesting about this 1969 ending is that the 1970 sequel to another post-apocalyptic story, Planet of the Apes has the same exact ending with Charlton Heston's character, Taylor activating the doomsday bomb, destroying himself and planet earth.

As this grisly switch goes off, the image whites out with the narrator declaring, ""In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." Gotta love it.

As far as Jim Starlin's growth as an artist, in issue 18, 1972 he made a beautiful Dr. Weird story called "The Miracle" with the character's creator, Howard Keltner. In the 3 years from the above short story in 1969 to this one in 1972, one can see how sleek and cosmic his art had become.